Here’s a short list of eight of the most important aviation technologies in the history of flying, and you might be surprised how early some of them were introduced. 

Radio Communications

There is no shortage of miracle technologies we pilots take for granted. I’d argue that near the top of the list should be in-flight radio communications. Most pilots think that radios have been around forever, and they’re not far from being right about that. You won’t find any photos of Orville sending reports to Wilbur from the Wright Flyer; it was just over a decade that the first successful air-to-ground radio call was made, when, in 1915, Captain J.M. Furnival picked up a transmission from the ground sent by a Major Prince (first name unknown), who radioed the message, “If you can hear me now, it will be the first time speech has ever been communicated to an aeroplane in flight.” It’s a little meta for our tastes—we prefer “Watson, come here, I need you.” But it was a start.

By the early 1930s, radios, which, like a few other aviation technologies, seemed to mature in lockstep with aviation’s progress, were small, light and reliable enough to have even in small planes. And around that time, the International Commission for Aerial Navigation had formed, in part to avoid a Babel-like world of communications, putting forth the first standards for aerial radio communications.

Where this technology led is familiar to nearly every pilot. Today, we can communicate air-to-ground, ground-to-air and air-to-air with ease, usually with excellent voice fidelity even from great distances. The benefits of this technology are too numerous and obvious for us to list here but, suffice it to say, it’s hard to image a modern world of aviation without pilots and controllers playing together.

Handheld Radios For Pilots

Instrument Landing System

The instrument landing system is a presumptuous, even boastful name. Even when it was introduced, it was hardly the first or the only system for helping an airplane find the airport in conditions of low visibility through the use of instruments. But just as no one complained when Muhammad Ali called himself “The Greatest,” because he so clearly was, the same was true for ILS. Whereas a VOR approach could get you within shouting distance of the final approach fix (with the help of a stopwatch, a guess at the winds and, if you were lucky, an intersecting radial), an ILS provided the whole shebang, with lateral and vertical guidance, and it did it with such precision that most ILSes got you down to 200 feet AGL. True, it required a lot of infrastructure, but it created a high-precision landing system at a time when the technologies that air navigation architects could leverage were rudimentary. They were essentially nav radio signals arrayed vertically (the glideslope) and laterally (the localizer component) with an instrument in the airplane to keep track of each. While flying an ILS takes practice and requires skills that don’t come naturally to many pilots—staying on the glideslope is as much an art as a science—it’s a self-contained system that makes the VOR approach look positively primitive.

Sure, precision RNAV approaches are better in a few important ways, but ILS was the undisputed champ of instrument flying for more than 50 years. And with it in wide use still, even for automatic landings, few expect it to go away any time soon.

GPS

The development by the United States Department of Defense of the Global Positioning System (GPS) was a watershed in area navigation, though it wasn’t the first such system. Before civil-use GPS came along in the late 1980s, there were already a few area navigation systems, though few ever made their way into the flight decks of small planes.

There are area navigation systems that calculate position based on the relative positions of radio navaids and DME—they were extremely accurate. Bendix-King’s KNS-80 navigation receiver was a modestly popular product and can still be found in the panel of some small planes, though, in our experience, they are seldom put to use.

There are also inertial systems that use sophisticated (and enormously expensive) combinations of gyroscopes and/or lasers or solid-state gyros along with magnetometers and other aids to calculate position based on rates of rotation. The science behind these various systems is complex, but their operation is fairly simple. And like sophisticated area nav units, inertial systems are very accurate. Moreover, they don’t rely on navaids or satellites to work. They are entirely self-contained. Not surprisingly, these kinds of systems were widely adopted by large commercial, military and private users.

Another system, Loran, developed during World War II, used very low-frequency radio waves bounced off the atmosphere. In its initial iteration, Loran was accurate to 100 meters or so, but in its later form, Loran-C, which came to the fore in the 1970s, it was accurate to tens of meters or better. And because the revolution in electronics enabled far cheaper, smaller and lighter receivers, Loran looked like the wave of the future. Instead, it was shut down around 25 years after it began to gain popularity with pilots of light planes.

The reason? The DoD’s Global Positioning System. GPS makes use of a known constellation of satellites to determine very precise points of location on the earth and in the atmosphere. As its name says, it really is a global system, too. When paired with a database, a GPS receiver can provide extremely accurate guidance from point to point. And when aided by additional ground and space-based systems to enhance accuracy, GPS receivers can provide pinpoint location capability, allowing approach courses with none of the angular uncertainty or radio infidelity that even ILS systems are liable to suffer.

While ubiquitous, GPS has its weaknesses. Because its signal is very low power, it can be jammed quite easily, and because it relies on satellites and associated systems, it is staggeringly expensive to field and maintain. But the impact it has had on aviation is unparalleled. And that impact pales in comparison to the beneficial impact it has had on our lives in thousands of other areas of life.

Moving Map Navigation

The idea of an electronic moving map that knows our precise position in the air and can keep track of and display an ever-changing picture of the world below is a fantasy that every pilot who ever struggled with folding paper charts entertained often. And when a few enabling technologies—GPS, low-cost displays and high-powered small processors—came along, the moving map was born. The moving map revolution, which is sometimes erroneously dismissed as an accessory to aviation, has been foundational to the advancement of situational awareness and the elimination of one of the deadliest types of crashes, controlled flight into terrain (CFIT), where an aircraft is flown by its crew into the ground by mistake. CFIT crashes are almost always catastrophic. With moving map, you get automatic situational awareness in four dimensions (time being the fourth), graphical and dynamic mapping of weather systems, airway and airport data, and so much more. Those who grew up with moving map applications are sometimes derided as “children of the magenta,” a phrase that refers to the magenta-colored course line on moving maps. I’d argue that proponents of moving maps’ benefits are merely taking advantage of far superior technologies to keep themselves and their passengers safe from situational awareness errors that were commonplace before moving maps came along. 

Today’s Electronic Flight Displays

Weather Intelligence

There is no shortage of things for pilots to be concerned about, and at or near the top of the list are a handful of serious weather phenomena. There’s inflight icing, fog, high winds, turbulence, mountain wave and garden-variety cloud obstruction, to name most of the biggies. But by far, the most hazardous weather phenomenon is convective activity, which most often manifests itself as thunderstorms, which can grow in size to otherworldly proportions and pack a punch so big it can take a small or not-so-small airplane apart.

The development of weather-gathering technologies has progressed steadily since before the advent of powered flight, but without much debate, the most significant has been the development of next-generation weather radar, which in the United States is known as NexRad. Introduced in 1988, NexRad is a powerful doppler radar that can sensitively detect storm shape, intensity, movement, convective activity and precipitation. The network of 160 radar sites in the United States provides a coast-to-coast system of weather surveillance. It is one of the crown jewels of U.S. technological achievement, providing life-saving early warnings of severe thunderstorms, tornados and hurricanes. The continued improvement of forecasting technologies and intelligence have provided aviation with tools today that were unimaginable 50 years ago, intelligence that saves billions of dollars and untold lives every year.

On top of that, aviation has enjoyed a revolution in in-cockpit weather information availability, with services like ADS-B’s TIS-B weather services and Sirius-XM’s up-to-the-minute weather information for pilots of everything from PA-28s to bizjets, allowing pilots to make solid mission-planning decisions based on real intelligence and not guesswork based on hours-old reports.

Autopilots

To many pilots, an autopilot is a dumb mechanical aid, something you can use to take a look at the chart without going off course or busting altitude. And they are that. But today’s digital autopilots are so much more, too.

Autopilots work on one common principle. The system uses navigation, heading and attitude inputs to activate servos to keep the plane going where the pilot has programmed it to go. In its simplest form, an autopilot keeps the wings level while ignoring all other parameters—this is more helpful than one might imagine; the loss-of-control chain in instrument conditions is typically begun by an uncommanded, steep bank, causing the plane to enter a spiral dive, building airspeed and making a recovery, especially when the plane is still in IMC, a dicey proposition.

Autopilots have inspired aviation dreamers to imagine what it might be able to do. Could it keep the plane on altitude, too? Tie it into the baro system, and of course it could. Could it follow a pre-programmed nav course? Yup. Just couple it to the nav receiver. Could it fly an approach? Ditto. Yup, that too. Keep the tail from wagging. Even that.

From there, engineers have gone to fantastic places. Today’s autopilots can work in the background, providing protection from surprise deviations in pitch, bank angle and airspeed, keeping the plane from getting either too slow or too fast. And several models today feature a single button the pilot can push to return the plane to straight and level flight in case of accidental loss of control (upset).

Autopilots have gone from being an expensive luxury to an indispensable tool for helping pilots keep the plane under control and assisting in flying very precise approaches, as well.

Plane & Pilot Snap Quiz: Autopilots

Active Noise-Canceling Headsets

The inclusion of headsets in a list of critical aviation technologies might seem off target, but it is not. Especially in small planes, which are almost universally too loud for our hearing health, a good noise-canceling headset is a critical pilot tool. 

Headsets have been around for a long time, and early models were heavy, clunky and not particularly effective. But they were better than nothing. A lot better. And because they early on incorporated earcup speakers and boom-mounted microphones, they helped ease communications difficulties, something pilots who never flew in the pre-headset days, when staticky ceiling-mounted speakers and handheld mics caused communications havoc on nearly every flight, are blissfully unaware of. 

New models, of course, feature electronic noise-canceling features, which work by sampling the exterior noise and creating an out-of-phase counterpart to it, effectively electronically canceling the exterior noise, at least a large part of it. 

Today, pilots take not good but excellent noise-canceling headsets for granted, but we all know the difference between the noise levels before we put them on and then after, when we don them and hit that switch to activate the sweet quiet that ingeniously designed electronics can bring. 

Plane Facts: Headsets

Traffic Avoidance

It’s rare for planes to run into each other in the vast skies above, but when they do, it’s almost always catastrophic. And it often inspires regulatory change. It was the 1956 collision between a Douglas DC-7 and a Lockheed Constellation over the Grand Canyon, killing all 128 aboard the two planes, that launched the creation of a nationwide radar network and the Federal Aviation Administration. In subsequent years, mid-air collisions in the skies above Cerritos and San Diego, California, drove additional layers of regulation, including mandatory equipment installation for planes that fly in busy airspace. 

For most of these advancements, larger military and commercial aircraft were the first to get robust anti-collision technologies. But in this case, the adoption by the FAA of mandatory transponder equipage went from the bottom to the top of the aviation food chain. The Mode C transponders sent regular, individually identifiable signals to help controllers keep track of where planes were, so they could issue heading clearances to keep the potentially conflicting traffic targets from merging in the worst way.  

Later, the FAA mandated collision avoidance systems, TCAS and TCAS II, for airliners and other large planes, the latter taking emergency, last-ditch collision avoidance out of the hands of the controllers and issuing direct clearances to the two planes involved to keep them from colliding. In recent years, even smaller planes got collision-avoidance gear, including the early TCAD system from Ryan and, later, more capable active traffic systems from companies like Avidyne and Garmin.  

Finally, the introduction of mandatory ADS-B in 2020 gave controllers and pilots new tools to individually identify and route traffic to keep potential conflict to a minimum while using satellite tracking to provide extremely accurate, up-to-the-second position information, including altitude, to all involved. 

5 Barriers Aviation Innovators Busted

The post Top 8 Aircraft Electronics Innovations Of All Time appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

What has changed, though, is how we operate these airplanes. Engine monitors offer an all-in-one solution to owners. With old instruments, adjusting the mixture to a lean of peak setting required guesswork and guaranteed nothing; modern instrumentation made it practical. With modern instruments, diagnosing a stuck valve or dead cylinder went from sticking the butt end of a writing pen onto exhaust stacks to see which ones melted the plastic to simply seeing which cylinder’s temperatures are out of whack. A USB thumb drive can now download the data mechanics used to get from pilots trying to explain things that just didn’t seem right.

The JPI EDM900 is JP Instruments’ baseline engine monitor with primary certification, meaning it can replace your existing engine gauges. Other engine monitors with secondary certification are significantly cheaper, but they legally require your existing gauges to remain installed and operational.

For most installations, the EDM900 can replace an aircraft’s entire array of engine gauges—in our evaluation, it replaced the tachometer, manifold pressure and fuel pressure gauges as well as a cluster gauge with fuel quantity, oil temp and pressure, ammeter and single-cylinder CHT. It also replaced an aging JPI EDM700. All the senders are included—and they live firewall-forward. This means that old lines for direct-reading fuel and oil pressure gauges no longer exist behind your instrument panel, where they present a threat of leaks or fire if a line ruptures.

We opted for fuel flow and carburetor temperature indications for use on a Lycoming 0-360-A1D. Our install was fairly straightforward; installation on more complex engines includes allowances for turbochargers, fuel injection and the like. You’ll need your aircraft POH and possibly a copy of the aircraft Type Certificate Data Sheet as you fill in the ranges and limits for your instrumentation—get it right the first time to avoid shipping it back to JPI for reprogramming.

Once installed, the display is easily reconfigurable for gauge placement, so the values you need are where you want them to be. The layout was mostly intuitive as delivered, although we did swap the placement of manifold pressure and tachometer.

The high-resolution color display makes your engine data easy to read, and those who’ve used an older EDM, such as the 700, will find the interface much more user-friendly, having a few more buttons and an on-screen legend. Temperatures for cylinder head temperature and exhaust gas temperature are displayed constantly for all cylinders. Leaning is a breeze with settings for operating lean of peak or rich of peak available. Data downloaded to a USB drive can help your mechanic troubleshoot when something isn’t quite right. Savvy Aviation offers SavvyAnalysis, a free service for you to upload engine data for basic troubleshooting.

In an instrument roughly the size of a cluster gauge it replaced, our EDM900 displays RPM, manifold pressure, all CHT and EGT values, outside air temperature, percentage of horsepower, oil temperature and pressure, fuel pressure, carburetor temperature, fuel levels, volts and amps, fuel used, fuel remaining, time to empty, Hobbs meter and cylinder cool-down rate. That’s a lot of data, but the clarity of the display makes it easy to process—and a remote alarm light draws your attention to any value out of limits.

With optional fuel flow installed, the unit couples nicely to GPS navigators to calculate fuel required and fuel reserve at your destination or next waypoint. When coupled with CIES fuel-level senders, your airplane can become an exception to the old saying about never trusting fuel gauges. You’ll find yourself often knowing within a gallon or 2 what it’ll take to top off as you pull up to the pump, but disclaimers abound about trusting the fuel indications.

The price of the unit is half the battle. The installation can cost as much as the unit itself, leading to quoted installs nearing $10,000. The wiring is not complex, just plentiful, and most A&P mechanics should be able to handle it rather than sending it to an avionics installer. If you’re handy and have a good relationship with an A&P to supervise your work, this is an opportunity to save thousands of dollars as a do-it-yourselfer. The price of the instrument itself is $4,195 and up, depending on the options selected.

Read more Avionics stories here.

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This year’s Plane & Pilot Plane of the Year is the Diamond DA50, the big single from the Austrian plane maker that has been more than a decade in development, which makes its certification by EASA last year even more meaningful, seeing that it was so hard fought. It’s one of the most unusual and, in some ways, compelling piston singles to emerge in decades. 

If the year 2020 was a hard one for general aviation, and it was, for manufacturers, 2021 was even tougher. Plane builders were hardly immune to the kind of global pressures we’ve heard so much about, including scarce materials, supply chain disruptions, worker shortages and reduced FAA availability, all of which have conspired to make it hard to build existing designs, let alone develop and certify new ones.  

But there were a couple of real gems, one that we’ve known about for more than a decade, and one we were just introduced to. Both enter the arena as real players in markets dominated for years by planes from other makers. We expect both to make inroads.

Plane of the Year: Diamond DA50 RG

It’s often said, but it’s not often true, that this plane is different than any plane that’s come before it. This is true for the DA50. To understand what it is, imagine if Cirrus were to build a diesel piston engine-powered plane based on the Cirrus Jet and all that implies.

The DA50 has some built-in weaknesses that many would have presumed would have made it questionably interesting to potential buyers. Such is apparently not the case. The airplane is, based on our observation, the single most intriguing design on planeandpilotmag.com for the past couple of years. 

Like so many forward-thinking designs, the DA50 was for years a great airframe in search of the right engine. It had to be powerful enough, at least 300 hp, stingy with the fuel burn, easy on pilots in terms of noise and engine management, and capable of flying on fuel you can get anywhere in the world. Of course, that’s a diesel, but that correct diesel didn’t appear on the scene until the emergence of Continental’s CD-300, six-cylinder 300-max hp/270 hp continuous turbodiesel, which combines good power with a quieter noise profile than competing piston sixes while tacking on single-lever power. It’s a compelling package.

The power demands are very real, as the DA50 RG, despite its carbon-fiber frame and wings, is a substantial airplane, with an empty weight of 3,175 pounds and a max takeoff weight of 4,407 pounds. It’s a big and roomy airplane. There’s seating for five, and not seating for four/five but actually five. The seating layout is the same as the DA62 diesel twin, save the two smaller seats in the back, which the DA50 RG lacks, though the space is there and is great for bags, a better use of the space, in our view. Headroom, shoulder room and window area are all unsurpassed. The cabin environment is spectacular. 

The rough spots: It’s not as fast as many would like it to be, with a max speed at 16,000 feet—it is not pressurized—at max continuous of 180 knots. Its max range, at a power setting we presume was a good deal less than max continuous power, is 750 nm. That isn’t a lot of range compared to the Cirrus SR22, which one would assume is its primary competitor, though it is enough, apparently, for many pilots, who have expressed interest in or put their money down for this airplane that isn’t even FAA certified yet. And remember: All that travel will be done in a great space. The culprit isn’t a thirsty engine—Diamond says the CD-300 consumes just 9 gph at 270 hp, about half of Continental’s 315 hp TSIO-550 gas piston engine, which powers the Cirrus SR22—but rather a lack of fuel capacity. It holds just 50 gallons of Jet A, and finding space to put more is problematic, as there are no wing nacelle fuel tanks available for this single-engine model. 

It’s also not an easy airplane to hangar. With a wingspan of around 44 feet and a tail height of nearly 10 feet, few tee hangars would be a fit. 

How successful will the DA50 be, sales wise? Time will tell. Diamond expects certification for it later this year or early next year. We’ll fly it first chance we get, too. 

Read “Will The Diamond DA50 Redefine Personal Flying” to learn more about the plane.

Plane of The Year 2: The Sling High Wing

Our other honoree for a Plane & Pilot Plane of the Year award is Sling Aircraft’s new High Wing, which should start showing up on U.S. shores soon. The High Wing takes all of the goodness of Sling’s four-seat long-wing model, the Sling 4, and translates it into a high-wing form factor, with the remarkable 141 hp Rotax 915-iS supplying the motive force. With a comfortable four-place cabin, Garmin G3X Touch flatscreen avionics, including a capable integrated autoflight system with envelope protection built in, sharp and easy flying manners, and downward visibility to beat any low winger, the Sling High Wing is a powerful competitor to the most popular four-seat amateur-built plane on the block, the much-lauded (and rightfully so) Van’s RV-10. But you can put big tires on this one if you want, and we’re guaranteeing you right now that that will happen. 

Garmin Smart Glide

With the unveiling of its new Smart Glide utility, Garmin has created yet another capability that would have seemed like science fiction 20 years ago but that today can seamlessly and in the background always be ready to help you glide to a safe landing if your plane’s engine were to quit. It is, granted, a capability you hope you’ll never have to rely upon, but if you do, it could be a lifesaver. A Smart Glide description could fit in a fortune cookie: “Lost engine power? Smart Glide shows you where to go.” But the more you look into what that calculation really involves, the more complicated and intriguing it becomes. 

Smart Glide works in concert with a compatible Garmin display and navigator. The utility, which is all software and is very low or no cost in addition to the hardware it teams with, does this: You lose engine power, you activate Smart Glide (either by a three-second push of the Direct To button or the dedicated guarded panel button, if there is one), and Smart Glide puts a ring of where your glide range is, based on the plane you’re flying, obviously—the setup is done by the installer. It nominates the best airport for you to go for, offers alternate choices, gives you frequencies, and shows you your inflight situation in a colorful and easy-to-interpret manner. You do the flying. 

With Smart Glide, Garmin has once again advanced aviation safety in a way that requires little of pilots in an emergency situation while helping them make the quick and smart call and getting the most distance out of their airplane’s glide range. 

Read “4 Questions About Garmin Smart Glide You Hadn’t Thought About” to learn more about the technology.

SkyDisplay HUD

There is nothing simple or easy about creating a head-up display, but the folks at SkyDisplay have pulled off something really big in bringing to market a low-cost, high-performance display that essentially does what even the most advanced HUDs do, blend the airplane’s flight instruments (and then some) with the pilot’s view of the outside world so that the focus can be on what matters, the outside environment. 

A HUD enhances the view of the outside world by projecting an image on a transparent window sitting right in front of the pilot’s eyes. It is most useful as a landing aid, though it can be used throughout the flight. Without a pilot taking their eyes off of the runway, the HUD shows a wealth of information, like runway location and flight path and velocity vector, all features we’ve come to know and love on flat-panel flight displays. But the HUD places all of that information right in front of the pilot’s eyes and not on a screen below the pilot’s sightline to the outside world, where the stuff you don’t want to run into lies. The value in allowing pilots to focus all of their attention on the outside world makes for more precise approaches, always valuable but especially when flying low-weather precision approaches. 

A true HUD is conformal, and the SmartDisplay is. What that means is, the view the head-up display shows you using its additional enhanced vision technology matches what’s actually out there in the real world. If it displays the runway end, well, that runway end had better be exactly where the HUD says it is. The pilot has to do nothing but fly. The scan is right in front of their eyes. The data on the glass is focused at infinity, so it seems to just float upon the glass, so the pilot doesn’t have to focus and then refocus over and over to see the outside world and then the HUD data and back again. Instead, the data is just there, in focus as the pilot peers out at the world. 

SkyDisplay’s HUD is a huge advance in light aircraft safety, and, at its price of around $30,000 without installation, it is a tool that serious transportation flyers can put in their serious transportation plane and fly safer and better. 

Read “FAA Approves First Small-Plane HUD. How It Happened And What It Means.” to learn more about the safety system.

The post 2021 Plane Of The Year & Innovation Awards appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

Years ago, I flew an autoland in a Boeing 777 simulator. It was at the end of a two-plus-hour session in what was then a cutting-edge plane—it’s still pretty remarkable. In the dark, we flew toward a landing at Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C.  Well, to be specific, we watched the airplane fly itself. Now, the idea of monitoring a plane while it’s on autopilot is no big deal to pilots. We don’t even think twice about it. But keeping an eye on a plane that’s landing itself? Well, that’s a whole different story.

So Garmin’s Autoland isn’t breaking new ground in being able to land the plane, though there are very few planes that can do it. But those planes are much more limited in what they can do. The 777, for instance, needs a Cat II ILS to do it—not to mention two ATPs and two of everything else, for that matter, including autopilots and ILS receivers.

The Piper M600 SLS with Autoland can do it with no pilot at all. And it can autoland at any airport with a GPS approach with vertical and lateral nav, of which there are many thousands in the United States alone.

Still, when it comes to the science, one of the most fascinating elements of Autoland is how the system figures out where to land.

The logic is no secret. It’s looking for an airport that’s got the aforementioned type of approach, that’s long and wide enough to land the M600 on (with some fudge factor), and that’s quick to get to, and with good weather. The fact that it can make this call in three-tenths of a second, about the time it takes a world-class sprinter to react to the starter’s gun, is hard for me to fathom.

While I was in Olathe at Garmin, I met with program manager Bailey Scheel, senior software engineer Eric Tran and aviation systems team leader Ben Patel and got to talk about how they made Autoland think like pilots think. The process involved creating algorithms that weigh different factors, such as weather en route and at the airport, differently. Remember that the system integrates with Emergency Descent Mode (EDM) and ESP envelope protection before it even gets started. So there are complex decision trees built into the system before it even activates.

Once it does start doing its thing and begins the search for a diversion airport, it factors in all of the same factors human pilots do when making that same decision.

So the question becomes, how does Garmin get Autoland to perform like a pilot operating at light speed (literally) and with immediate sources of data for every question that springs to mind, like what do I do now that the one runway with a suitable approach at this nearby airport has a tailwind component? We’d fret about it, even if just for a moment. (There is, for the record, no fretting algorithm built into Autoland.) The engineers started by asking themselves how pilots do it. In the process, they came to some remarkable realizations about how aeronautical decision-making works. The results speak for themselves.  

And while it wasn’t specifically relevant to my flight that day, we did discuss the lessons learned in undertaking such an ambitious project. I asked if, at some point, we might want to teach new pilots to think through such processes the same way Garmin’s software does.

Then again, we already do, in a way. It’s just that our teaching of it in most cases isn’t well structured. The process, which we call “experience,” pretty much leaves such learning up to the pilot and spreads the lessons out over the course of years or even decades. Maybe we can do better than that.

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Read More About the Piper M600 SLS & Garmin Autoland: 

Piper M600 SLS: The First Production Plane That Lands Itself
The Garmin Autoland Activation Sequence
Why The Piper M600 SLS Is Remarkable 

The post Teaching Garmin Autoland To Think Like A Pilot appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

Advanced Flight Systems

Engine analyzers and monitors have changed how we operate our general aviation (GA) aircraft. The technology was originally used on military and airline aircraft, but advances in sensors and microchips have enabled the proliferation of these devices in our GA aircraft for little cost. The situational awareness these devices give you is amazing, giving a detailed and intimate look at what your engine is doing at any time.

Research has proven that many—if not most—engine failures telegraph themselves far in advance of the failure. It’s rare that an engine just fails mechanically for no reason and without warning. In addition to an oil analysis at each oil change, which is cheap insurance when it comes to engine issues, an engine analyzer can catch problems before they become catastrophic. Conditions such as oil starvation (and subsequent heat damage), pre-ignition or destructive detonation can be detected with engine monitors so pilots can take corrective action with their mechanics before heat damage is done.

From a failure point of view, the components in the engine that will most likely fail and cause a serious power loss are: the crankshaft, main bearings, pistons and cylinders, magnetos and connecting rods. Much of the bottom end of the engine is quite robust, and many people don’t realize that even during an overhaul, many of these components (like the crankshaft, for example) aren’t replaced and go on to endure many TBOs. Research tells us that if these components do fail, they usually do so early in their lives—what the industry calls “infant-mortality”—from either defective manufacturing or heat distress.

The top end of the engine (pistons, cylinders, valves, gears, etc.) is much less robust. It’s here that engine analyzers are worth their weight in gold. Problems with these components can be caught early through careful monitoring of engine conditions. An entire article could be written about how to read these indications (and there are entire books devoted to this subject), but the bottom line is that knowing what indications are normal—and knowing when they become abnormal—is the key to preventing engine failures in flight. Like small cavities that eventually require a painful root canal because they were ignored, engine problems should be caught early.

At minimum, engine analyzers should monitor a few crucial parameters. The basic data you need is cylinder head temperature (CHT) and exhaust gas temperature (EGT). While many of the lower-priced models give you that, the problem is they only read that data from one cylinder (usually the “hottest” one near the firewall). A better choice is an analyzer that displays CHT and EGT on all cylinders. If one cylinder begins showing anomalous indications, it can be caught quickly.

Next up is fuel flow (FF). This is useful in diagnosing mixture issues, fuel pump health, dirty fuel nozzles, excessive consumption, etc. Continuing in order of priority, manifold pressure (MAP) and engine speed (RPM) are extremely useful in catching problems with the propeller governor and ensuring that the pilot is operating the throttle, prop and mixture controls properly for a given altitude and performance combination. Especially if that data is logged, it’s highly useful in troubleshooting engine problems.

Finally, electrical voltage (VOLTS) and current (AMPS) are useful in monitoring the health of your electrical system. These are also key to determining battery and alternator condition, especially in multi-bus systems. In some engine analyzers, engine vibration is measured, as well as data like outside air temperature (OAT), true airspeed (TAS), pressure altitude (PA), and other parameters useful in getting a complete and detailed look at your engine’s health. For turbo-charged aircraft, a turbine inlet temperature (TIT) is also essential.

The best analyzers log performance data long-term and allow downloads of that data. Maintenance technicians can put this raw data into reports that are extremely useful to look at and can provide a graphical look at your engine’s condition. These reports are also useful if something goes wrong and an accident occurs. Engine analyzer data helped determine that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 flew for a long period even after it disappeared from radar.

The final thing to consider is how the information is displayed. Is it a standalone analyzer or does it integrate into your other cockpit displays? For those of us with simple engine monitors that don’t archive log data, the choice is simpler. Also, does the unit offer alarms for certain indications like runaway CHT or excessive drops in voltage? With so many models to choose from, here are a few of our favorites.

Advanced Flight Systems
Acquired by Dynon Avionics in 2013, Advanced Flight Systems was an entrepreneurial startup that successfully made engine monitor displays for the light-sport aircraft (LSA) and experimental market. It has an excellent line of electronic flight information system (EFIS) displays including their impressive AF-5000 series touch-screen integrated flight deck.

In addition to a clear and intuitive engine monitor display, the AFS-5000 series includes data logging of oil changes, annual inspections, ELT batteries, filters, brakes, etc. The unit calculates weight and balance, and includes little details like gear warnings and voice alerts. www.advanced-flight-systems.com

Alcor

Alcor
If you prefer round-dial analog gauges for basic engine monitoring, Alcor makes the best. Owners of vintage aircraft sometimes like to use round gauges because it keeps the look of the original aircraft, and owners with very limited panel space can get great benefits from Alcor’s units. They’re available for single- and multi-engine aircraft.

Alcor made its reputation from more than 50 years of being installed in demanding environments. Their units are renowned for their reliability, durability and affordable price. Alcor probes are some of the most robust in the industry and also can power sophisticated glass systems. The blanket supplemental type certificate (STC) held by Alcor allows the installation of their probes in any reciprocating-engine aircraft without additional paperwork. www.alcorinc.com

Avidyne

Avidyne
Avidyne’s Entegra Release 9 integrated flight deck is one of the most feature-rich and gorgeous displays in aviation. The large displays and well-designed graphics create an intuitive, useful whole. It’s pretty to look at, but useful and crucial at the same time. The Release 9 flight deck includes the EMax Engine Monitoring system as its integrated engine analyzer, though it’s much more than that. EMax is a dedicated engine page with an avalanche of performance data including a handy graphical fuel totalizer, a lean assist mode, and a percent power display to take the guesswork out of fuel and power management.

EMax monitors fuel flow and computes nautical miles per gallon, fuel remaining, fuel to waypoint and fuel to destination. Temperatures, pressures, RPM, fuel flow, OAT and electrical bus voltages are also monitored and displayed. The integrated fuel totalizer monitors fuel flow and computes nautical miles per gallon, fuel remaining, fuel-to-waypoint and fuel-to-destination. All cylinder head (CHT) and exhaust gas temperatures (EGT), RPM, manifold pressure, oil temperature, oil pressure, fuel flow, outside air temperature (OAT) and electrical bus voltages are monitored and displayed. www.avidyne.com

Dynon

Dynon
EMS-D120 and EMS-D10. Dynon’s engine monitoring systems (EMS) replace and integrate 16 different functions into one highly compact design. The EMS-D120 is a large-screen engine monitoring presentation that blends traditional analog gauges with digital technology. The sunlight-readable color display and soft-key menu system monitors 27 different parameters and displays them on a seven-inch color screen. It’s configurable in several ways including split-screen, allowing pilots to set up their displays how they like them. The unit monitors engine, fuel and other miscellaneous systems and annunciations, covering the entire spectrum of performance analysis.

Pilots with less panel real estate can opt for the EMS-D10 that fits into a standard three- to 18-inch-panel hole and consolidates all engine instruments into one nice compact panel-space-saving device. Much more than a single round display, the EMS-D10 is a full-panel display that includes many of the features of the larger EMS-D120. In addition to its configurable, soft-key menu system, the bright display features a wealth of engine and fuel information on an easy-to-read rectangular screen. One of the unique features of the EMS-D10 is the “Info Bars.” These are designed to afford greater flexibility in accommodating a wide variety of engine types and pilot preferences. Info Bars are represented by colored vertical bars, each with an identifying label, sliding bar and digital value. www.dynonavionics.com

Electronics International

Electronics International
Electronics International manufactures an impressive line of engine analyzers, gauges and engine monitor instruments. Engine monitor instruments are all it does, and it excels in every sense. Its line includes everything from single-hole gauges to its impressive MVP-50P dedicated engine monitor and analyzer panel. It has something for every aircraft and every budget.

The MVP-50P is an impressive unit and certainly one of the best out there today. STC’d and TSO’d, the 5-½-inch panel-mount glass display offers 15 screens of information and more than 50 functions—almost all of them customizable. The MVP-50 allows pilots to accurately monitor dozens of engine and system parameters, create limits and alarms, set up custom inputs, create interactive checklists, record and review pertinent data from every flight, track an engine’s health and more. The digital display provides accurate detection of small trends. The analog display provides field-of-vision, allowing the pilot to determine a function’s position in its operating range.

The company’s newest CGR-30P is an STC’d and TSO’d engine monitor designed to fit into a single 3-1/8-inch instrument hole—usually replacing the tachometer. In exchange, it provides a detailed view of performance in a beautiful and graphical interface, and replaces your tachometer, manifold pressure, fuel flow totalizer, EGT/CHT bar graph analyzer and more. It’s hard to believe something this compact displays all that information so intuitively and clearly. http://buy-ei.com

Garmin G1000

Garmin G3000

Garmin
Garmin has become an industry leader when it comes to performance monitoring. In advance of legislation that will likely require recording and retention of flight data in our little GA aircraft, Garmin offers monitoring of 64 different performance parameters, all built into its nearly ubiquitous G1000 integrated flight deck (as well as the G2000, G3000, G5000, etc.). Most of the performance data is available on the suite’s “System” panel and includes an all-cylinder graphical EGT with a lean assist function, as well as an all-cylinder CHT. Electrical system health (alternator and battery information), along with fuel flow, fuel quantity, oil pressure, oil temperature and manifold pressure are displayed. Fuel totalizers track fuel consumption and remaining fuel.

Garmin’s flight decks offer the capability of recording the data and downloading it later for reporting or tracking use. The data sits on an SD card in the flight deck’s MFD, so it’s easily accessible. For experimental aircraft and LSA, Garmin offers engine monitors in their G3X glass display, as well as their G900X flight deck for noncertified aircraft. Garmin’s selection of integrated flight decks is constantly evolving, and it should be noted that most of its displays integrate engine-monitoring features. www.garmin.com

Insight G1, G2, G3, G4

Insight Avionics
You have to love a company that makes a special engine analyzer just for radial-engine birds. Insight only makes engine analyzers, so it knows a thing or two about them. It recently introduced the new GX-MFT tachometer replacement, which is a whole lot more than that. The big differentiator is that the unit is self-powered through the engine. Insight calls it “energy-harvesting,” and it means the unit will continue to work even after your entire electrical system is gone and the battery is dead. As long as the engine turns, the GX-MFT works!

The GX-MFT displays tachometer (RPM), manifold pressure, fuel flow, battery voltage, alternator amperes and a complete electrical analysis. The unit conforms to any aircraft, with the display changing to match. The GX-MFT is designed to work with Insight’s G4, which is its newest complete engine analyzer and monitor. With the two instruments, all performance bases are covered. Information from every flight is stored on an SD card for tracking, trend analysis and reporting. www.insightavionics.com

JP Instruments

JP Instruments
When it comes to engine analyzers, JP Instruments (or “JPI”) has become something of an industry standard. Based in Huntington Beach, Calif., JP Instruments helped pioneer the digital engine instrument market when founder, Joseph Polizzotto—an engineer for Pratt & Whitney—made his own engine temperature scanner for his Cessna 172. Demand for the instrument was so big that Polizzotto started a company in 1986 to sell them, and JPI was born. The company has a wide array of single- and multi-engine analyzers, with everything from fuel flow-only to full-featured performance displays, so it’s tough to pick just one.

JPI’s most advanced monitor, the EDM-930, is certified as a primary flight instrument. With the 930 on board, you can remove your old engine gauges and open up valuable space in your panel. It does just about everything you can think of, including tracking, recording and storing all engine data (CHT, EGT, FF, MAP, TIT, oil temps and pressures, fuel quantities and range, etc.). The unit includes an interface to popular GPS models, as well as programmable alarms, an accurate Hobbs meter, fuel totalizers and detailed quantity indicators, and a slew of other features. Think of it as your personal flight engineer—a really good one too. www.jpinstruments.com

MGL Avionics
MGL is a California-based company that sources many of its parts and programming expertise in South Africa. It specializes in the LSA and experimental market, and its avionics suite is installed in the impressive and much-lauded Sling LSA, also built in South Africa. In business since 2000, its line of EFIS displays and digital instruments is impressive, and it has shipped tens of thousands of instruments all over the world.

The company’s flagship system is the iEFIS, a comprehensive flight, engine and navigation display designed for experimental and light-sport aircraft. In addition to navigation functions, it contains a comprehensive systems page, all displayed on a custom-developed, pressure-sensitive, sunlight-readable touchscreen that can also be operated using gloves. MGL’s XTreme EFIS display is a dedicated engine monitor that can also be configured as a PFD. It displays engine parameters, fuel, range and electrical system health, as well as maintenance alerts and alarms. www.mglavionics.com

Ultra Electronics
Ultra’s “AuRACLE” line of engine management systems are STC’d as primary instruments. They’re made to be compatible with 95% of all single- and twin-engine general aviation aircraft. In addition to common monitoring parameters like fuel data, EGT and CHT, voltage and ammeter, OAT, manifold pressure, and oil information, the AuRACLE line offers a useful “percent horsepower” (%HP) display.

The company’s CRM 2101 is a single-box unit that provides all the performance monitoring you can imagine and then some. It will log and keep 150 hours of performance data and allows transfer via USB. The unit’s SmartLean intuitive leaning process feature makes correct leaning to LOP or ROP a snap. EGView software (included) allows you to download your archived engine data and examine it using colorful graphs and data displays, and track countless performance parameters. Designed to replace JPI monitors, the CRM 2101 fits into the JPI’s wiring harness without modification. www.ultra-fei.com

The post Engine Analyzers: Information Is Power appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

I was introduced to an angle-of-attack indicator back in the early ’80s. I was ferrying a V35B Bonanza from Atlanta, Ga., to Palo Alto, Calif., where it was to be fitted with one of Victor Aviation’s balanced, blueprinted, Black Edition engines. When I climbed aboard at Charlie Brown Airport in Atlanta, that particular Bonanza was an impressive machine. It seemed to have every piece of avionics there was. It also had 2,050 hours since engine overhaul, 350 past TBO.

The AOA indicator (or in this case a Lift Reserve Indicator, same instrument, different name) was a tiny, two-inch gauge tucked away on the far-right panel—and it looked to be the oldest instrument in the airplane, a tired, circular gauge with an area marked in faded red, presumably meaning, “Danger, Will Robinson,” a small, yellow/white region in the center and the main space marked in green.

To be honest, I wasn’t impressed with AOA on my two-day trip across the country to California. I wasn’t flying the V-tail anywhere near the bottom of the envelope, where an AOA does its best work. (A few years later, I was again faced with an AOA, this time on a new 36 Bonanza headed across the Atlantic and Mediterranean to Israel. I came to know it slightly better and gained a greater appreciation for its several talents.)

The state of the angle-of-attack art has come a long way since then. The instruments have improved dramatically, and AOA devices of all descriptions have become more and more common on the aftermarket.

Perhaps of greater significance, aircraft and avionics manufacturers have begun to realize that AOA indicators could help improve the safety record of new general aviation aircraft right out of the box. By definition, experimental aircraft are usually built on a budget, and that often excludes such semi-exotica as AOA instruments. Forgive the selective statistic, but some 45% of all experimental-aircraft accidents are the result of the dreaded stall/spin syndrome. The numbers aren’t so bad for certified aircraft, partially a result of more docile airfoils, less enthusiastic stall response and more conservative pilots who probably don’t fly so close to the edge.

Mark Korin of Alpha Systems (www.alphasystemsaoa.com) in Ramsey, Minn., has long been an evangelist for angle-of-attack indicators, not just because his company makes some of the best systems on the market, but because he’s convinced the devices could help reduce the incidence of stall-spin accidents.

As Korin will be happy to explain to anyone willing to listen, tracking angle of attack is a far superior method of measuring proximity to a stall than is an airspeed indicator. We’re all introduced to airspeed indicators as student pilots, but what we’re sometimes not told is that, perhaps ironically, ASIs are least accurate in the range where they’re needed most.

An airspeed indicator assumes a cumulative error that’s inversely proportional to speed. In other words, error increases as speed decreases. Finally, when an airplane is flying very close to stall, an ASI may be practically useless, a quivering needle bobbing near the bottom of the gauge, reading anywhere from five to 30 knots slow. Conversely, angle-of-attack indicators provide a continuous readout of margin above stall right down to the actual event.

Technically, AOA is the angle between the airfoil chord line and the wing’s direction of motion relative to the air. In simpler terms, you could say AOA is the angle between where the wing is pointed and where it’s actually going.

Contrary to what you might imagine, AOA instruments go back about as far as possible in aviation history. The original 1903 Wright Flyer had only one “flight instrument,” if you want to call it that. It was a primitive form of angle-of-attack indicator, little more than a stick with a piece of yarn attached, mounted on the “aeroplane’s” nose.

The men generally credited with the first powered flight used this device to determine the Flyer’s attitude with reference to the relative wind. There was no airspeed indicator. Wilbur and Orville referred to their primitive AOA indicator to monitor the airplane’s proximity to stall. This was essentially pure flight, little more than modestly powered hang gliding, so instruments were an unnecessary redundancy.

Alpha Systems offers a variety of displays to track angle of attack.

Considering what the Wrights went through to achieve their goal, pure flight was a worthwhile accomplishment in 1903, but it’s hardly good enough if you’re trying to operate an airplane a century later. Even modern airspeed indicators don’t tell the whole story.

Angle of attack does, and it’s pretty much immutable. Whether you’re flying right side up, upside down, straight up, straight down or any attitude in between, angle of attack ignores airspeed altogether—true, calibrated, indicated, groundspeed or any other kind—and precisely defines the wings’ margin above stall. An angle-of-attack indicator is a virtually foolproof device for determining your attitude with reference to the critical stall angle of attack.

Higher angles of attack result in higher lift but also generate more drag. Airplanes trimmed for cruise flight present their lowest angle of attack to the relative wind and therefore their lowest drag profile. All other factors being equal (which almost never happens), this results in the best possible cruise speed.

Pull the airplane into a climb, and speed bleeds off as AOA and drag increase. When the wing reaches the critical AOA, about 15-18 degrees on most general aviation airfoils, the airflow detaches from the wing’s top surface, and the wing stalls. On aircraft designed with positive stability, the wing will typically pitch forward in an attempt to continue flying.

An angle-of-attack indicator simply (or not so simply) monitors the wing’s pitch with reference to the relative wind and reports that angle to the pilot, often in the form of a graphical, color readout on a horizontal or vertical instrument in the cockpit. The AOA can therefore accurately predict when the aircraft is approaching stall, regardless of airspeed, attitude or weight. (There’s one instance where the AOA range of a given wing will change, and that’s with the application of flaps. Lowering flaps modifies the configuration of the airfoil and produces a corresponding change in the chord line.)

Fortunately, the instrument can do much more than predict stall for those willing to study its capabilities. Properly used, an AOA can identify the exact pitch attitude for best angle or rate of climb. It also can indicate the optimum long-range cruise pitch attitude. It can serve as an instantaneous wind-shear detector, immediately suggesting a solution for any dramatic increase or decrease in wind velocity or direction. An angle-of-attack instrument will indicate the proper approach speed under all conditions of weight, CG, flap position, air density, turbulence or angle of bank.

Everyone can benefit from use of AOA rather than airspeed. The military adopted AOA early on to compensate for the demands of constantly changing weight. Military jets not only burn huge amounts of fuel, many of them depart on their missions with heavy weights of ordinance, then drop their loads and return at half their original weight, introducing major variations in stall speed and CG.

Navy and Marine pilots coming aboard a carrier use AOA religiously to maintain the proper attitude so they can snag one of the ship’s four arresting cables. In fact, the Navy found the switch to using angle of attack rather than airspeed saved lives. When Navy aircraft were fitted with AOA indicators in 1957 and pilots were taught how to use the gauge, the fatality rate plummeted 50% in one year. Today, all military fighter aircraft use AOA in one form or another.

Similarly, bush pilots often fly on the ragged edge of stall during approaches to abbreviated runways. Without an AOA on the panel, the only method of monitoring approach speed is exactly that, watching airspeed and maintaining the proper number. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s a little imprecise.

Imprecise can work well in the right hands. Bush pilots often fly their aircraft strictly by feel, sensing when the wing is on the ragged edge of stall and adjusting power to keep the airplane flying to the threshold. (Back in the ’80s when I used to deliver Maules to the West Coast, the late Dan Spader of Maule Aircraft in Moultrie, Ga., demonstrated this technique, flying the Maule in a constant nose-high attitude actually in the stall, and adding a blast of power to cushion the touchdown. We stopped in less than 100 feet.)

Mark Korin of Alpha Systems believes that his company’s angle-of-attack indicators, seen here installed on a Cirrus SR22, can help to reduce the incidence of stall-spin accidents.

Most of the rest of us mere mortals need help in identifying minimum approach speed. Many general aviation pilots with a need to land short or on a precise point use a formula approach speed of 1.1-1.2 Vso. Through long hours of experience with a specific airplane, a pilot may know that his aircraft stalls at 50 knots IAS in full dirty configuration. This usually means an approach at 55-60 knots.

Trouble is, if conditions aren’t exactly as planned at 1.1 and circumstances have raised the airplane’s stall by only two knots, they may be flying as slow as 1.05 Vso without knowing it, operating with essentially no margin above stall. For that reason, some pilots mount an AOA indicator on the top left panel, so it’s practically in their line of sight during the approach. No matter what the load, the temperature, the wind or the CG, pilots can monitor the AOA indication during approach and maintain a proper margin between approach speed and stall. They can adjust the needle or light position during the approach and move higher or lower on the scale depending upon conditions.

If angle-of-attack indicators are basically foolproof, they lack glamour. Prior to the advent of light displays, they were typically small, innocuous gauges with no or few numbers. AOAs suffered from not showing us what pilots live by, numbers. They lacked the excitement of airspeed indicators that informed us of the magical speed with which we were traversing the planet.

It has taken a while for Mark Korin’s message to catch on, but the advent of the glass cockpit has made a color display of angle of attack the most logical of instruments. Prior to the advent of flat-panel displays, AOA indicators were separate gauges, often mounted in the panel itself or on top of it. That situation may be about to change big time.

At least three major aircraft manufacturers and the world’s largest glass-panel company have contacted Korin regarding the possibility of incorporating an AOA readout as part of the airplane’s PFD. These displays already include colorful representations of attitude, altitude, airspeed, groundspeed, vertical and horizontal position with reference to a GPS or VOR, the phase of the moon and Vegas odds on the World Series, so AOA could only improve positional awareness.

The plan would be to make the Alpha AOA system standard equipment, presenting visual warnings in the pilot’s peripheral field of view, plus audio advisories, so pilots would have the benefit of angle of attack, regardless of their knowledge of its operating principles.

Korin’s Alpha Systems presents AOA information in a variety of visual and audio formats, offering military chevron displays, horizontal or vertical light displays or a needle on a sliding scale. Perhaps best of all in this age of avionics that can easily cost $50,000 or more, Alpha’s instruments are relatively inexpensive, typically costing under $1,500 plus installation. The system utilizes an independent, nonmovable probe that requires virtually no maintenance and should last as long as you do.

Glass panels such as the Garmin G1000 and Avidyne R9 have dramatically revised the way pilots fly both VFR and IFR. Scan problems have diminished exponentially, since so much information is now available on a single screen. In the near future, a pilot may be able to monitor his aircraft’s precise margin of stall on the same instrument.

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