Search Results for: general aviation inc

As more and more technology is welcomed into our formerly round-dial cockpits, many pilots have expressed growing frustration over the lingering need to do some things the old-fashioned way. In the new, high-tech cockpit, flat-panel screens, all-electronic flight instruments and portable, tablet-size computers with built-in GPS dominate our must-have lists. Along the way, these much-welcomed advances have helped simplify the pre-flight planning task. But much of the information we need for every flight remains stuck in the abbreviated, ALL CAPS format used when DC-3s and J3 Cubs were the cat’s meow. The notice to airmen (Notam) function is perhaps the best/worst example of how international regulatory agencies have failed leveraging new technologies to improve dissemination of flight-critical information. But now, thanks to an unlikely set of circumstances, an overhaul of the Notam system is underway. Here’s what’s going on, why and what you can expect.

The FAA FAR Part 23 Aviation Rule Making Committee (ARC) formed in the fall of 2011 met for the last time to finalize its recommendations for the overhaul of certification standards for aircraft weighing less than 19,000 pounds. More than 65 regulators and industry team members from the U.S., China, New Zealand, Canada, Brazil and […]

At first blush, you’d expect the year 2012 to have been a placeholder, a midrecession period where general aviation companies treaded water while waiting for the economy to recover. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, 2012 saw a remarkable level of innovation, from the most unassuming sport airplanes to the fastest and most […]

With all the innovation and new products that landed on the general aviation scene in 2012, there were more than enough big stories to fill out the year. As AOPA’s list of most clicked-on eBrief stories shows, however, some of the most popular were those that returned to GA’s roots and celebrated the blending of […]

Still confused about whether you’ll need an ADS-B receiver that’s capable of operating in the 978-MHz UAT or the 1090 MHz frequency band? Garmin is making that discussion more or less moot for the vast majority of us with the introduction of the GDL 88, the first FAA-certified ADS-B receiver capable of receiving both frequency […]

Few things are more important than being at the right altitude on an instrument approach. In the abstract that sounds easy, but in practice I often see pilots make mistakes in this most unforgiving aspect of instrument flight. Most of my flying is in aircraft with moving maps, as part of either a GPS or […]

The fight between the Coalition to Save Our GPS and LightSquared continues. Last week, the Coalition responded to the Federal Communications Commission’s request for comments regarding LightSquared’s request to modify the ancillary terrestrial communications (ATC) authorization of its mobile satellite services (MSS), which would allow the company to launch its broadband network. The 21-page document […]

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The United States Air Force has signed a contract with Australian Locata Corporation, a company that has developed a technology for ground-based precision navigation as a backup to GPS signals. The scope of the multimillion-dollar contract is to provide LocataNet positioning services, which essentially works as a local positioning signal hotspot, for a 2,500-square-mile area […]

The FAA’s WINGS program has been a key element of joint agency/industry safety education efforts for many years. It is considered gospel among many general aviation safety advocates, and the program has indeed produced positive results. Yet, many are concerned it reaches only a fraction of those pilots who need it, and the positive safety results the program achieves would have resulted anyway because of the safety culture embraced by its current “church-goer” participants.