Search

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Amphibious LSAs are like a cold ice cream cone on a hot summer day: Nobody really needs one, but once you've had a taste, you really, really want [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] When Aspen Avionics announced its retrofit PFD system in 2007, we were impressed with the design's ingenuity and its workable price point. A year later, they were shipping [...]

One of the benefits of a light sport aircraft is that you can install non-certified equipment. All you need is the part, a willing shop and a letter from the [...]

Last month we looked at buys on late-model, four-seat singles ('Late-Model Cruisers: Cessna, Cirrus Are Tops,' Aviation Consumer March 2009) and were shocked at how many good deals there were [...]

Fuel prices may be in a momentary decline, but the handwriting is clear: The cost of owning even a fixed-gear, four-place single is slipping away from more and more pilots. [...]

Flight bags are too often a necessary evil. Bought with the best intensions, they devolve into a chaotic mess of dead batteries and candy bar wrappers with an expired AF/D [...]

Cirrus Design and Diamond Aircraft Industries are success stories in this business because they took chances. Diamond's DA20 opened the door for composite aircraft in certified, light GA, and then [...]

Task one in looking at logbook software is figuring out what you want to log and why. If you're not detail-oriented and only care about when your last BFR or [...]

Let's be clear right away as to our criteria here. We only looked at new aircraft, as classic LSAs were covered in our January 2008 issue. We also looked for [...]

The first thing we noticed about the SmartDeck is that its just looks great. Our flight tests proved that this beauty was more than skin deep. Subtle shading and thoughtful [...]

In the four years since our last survey (May 2004 Aviation Consumer), several things have changed in the world of engine overhauls. Teledyne Continental Motors (TCM) and Textron-Lycoming have both [...]

It's the scope of aircraft interior work that's hard for many owners to wrap their mind around. Imagine you want to spruce up your living room. You could spring for [...]

The correct name is the Garmin GFC 700, but most buyers think of it as the built-in autopilot for the Garmin G1000 flight deck. You'll find essentially the same system [...]

The glass panel revolution hasn't happened yet. The big leap is to synthetic vision, where blue over orange is replaced with a topographic terrain in 3D perspective and navigation is [...]

There isn't one among us who hasn't felt the butt pucker of descending towards minimums on the ILS or approaching a black-hole airport at night when we know the obstacles [...]

Rationalization and denial are key skills for any airplane owner. How else to justify the cost of owning and operating an airplane? On rare occasions, a GA airplane beats the [...]

Ah, the joys of a new airplane: the custom N-number, the smell of a fresh leather interior, the sunlight glinting off the LCD displays. If you're buying new, you're likely [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Bendix-King (by Honeywell) has been making an aggressive bid to reestablish itself as a market leader in avionics. Last year their AV8OR handheld staked a firm hold on [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] It's almost a truism that aircraft performance numbers are a smoke-and-mirrors act where best-case scenarios are pushed forward as simple facts. Looking at the numbers we have to [...]

For many of us, the mention of a repo man may conjure images of Emilio Estevez hunting down a '64 Chevy Malibu with aliens in the trunk. But the sad [...]

Options for digital plates abound, so long as you want government charts. Jepp users have been stuck with Jeppesen's own JeppView system, which works on heavy and often cumbersome laptop [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] At a Wall Street analysts' forum in 2007, the CEO of Ballistic Recovery Systems, Larry Williams, told the audience why he thought the all-plane parachute made sense: 'In [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] While no single gadget is the perfect tool for everyone, some are well suited to the fat section of the bell curve while others will appeal to the [...]

One thing from our survey was crystal clear: Most pilots love their current headset. An astounding 90 percent of the over 900 pilots who answered our survey considered their headset [...]

Here's a surprising statistic: Of the just under 600,000 pilots listed on the FAA's records 90,000--or about one in six--are flight instructors. How many actually actively teach? Probably under 50 [...]