Gear

Garmin this week unveiled its latest app, Garmin Pilot, which is available immediately in the Apple App Store. The app brings dozens of enhancements, an all new flight planning interface, a remarkably handy little bulls-eye waypoint inspector and a menu system based on the one on its touchscreen GTN navigators and G5000 panel-mount systems. Our […]

Vertical Power took the wraps off an intriguing backup EFIS at Sun ‘n Fun that the company claims can fly your airplane safely all the way to the threshold of the best appropriate runway in an emergency. Press one button, and the unit will calculate the best airport you can safely glide to, taking into […]

On the first day of Sun ‘n Fun, Avidyne President and CEO Dan Schwinn announced that his company was pursuing a number of certifications for its DFC90 digital autopilot. In addition to the Cirrus SR20 and SR22, for which Avidyne earned STC approval last year, the company will pursue certification for the Cessna 182, Beech […]

GlobalNavSource, a Florida company that does certification and testing of the iPad for aviation use, has reported that the latest iteration of the tablet computer, which Apple is just calling the iPad, has passed rapid decompression testing to 51,000 feet. The test is necessary, says the company, in order to confirm that the pilots have […]

If one-stop shopping for your database updates sounds too good to be true, well, you’re still mostly right. But for some owners, the time has arrived, thanks to a program from Jeppesen and Garmin called PilotPak that lets select owners pay for one database subscription and install it on all of their panel-mount units. PilotPak […]

For those operators who have several pilots flying for them, or even a changing cast of characters, the use of electronic charts, principally iPad charts, has offered great savings over the past couple of years. Now ForeFlight, which has developed the best selling charting app, ForeFlight Mobile (the winner of a 2011 Flying Editors’ Choice […]

At the indoor static at Heli-Expo Garmin was showing off its STC retrofit of the G500H flat panel avionics into the popular Robinson R44 four-place piston powered helicopter. The STC can be applied to every iteration of the R44, including those with Spartan panels — the seven hole versions — and those with all the […]

(February 2012) Flat-panel avionics systems for light airplanes, which seemed like the stuff of science fiction just a handful of years ago, have been around long enough to advance to a second generation. As far as Garmin avionics are concerned, that second generation of glass panels takes the form of G2000, a system that makes […]

(January 2012) I pulled the radar-detector-size electronic device from my flight bag, set it on the glareshield and frowned. Electrical and audio wires dangled across my lap as I plugged the first cord into the power receptacle on the far-right side of the cockpit and the others into my David Clark headset, which I then […]

(January 2012) Sitting in the darkened area control center in Zurich, Switzerland, the air traffic controller on duty could scarcely believe what he was seeing on his radar screen: Somehow, two airliners in his sector cruising at precisely the same flight level were just miles apart on a collision course over southern Germany. Keying his […]