CEO Patrick Horgan expresses confidence in the innovation, stating, “This is the most robust landing gear configuration ever put on a Cub type aircraft.” He highlights its strength and braking power, emphasizing its potential to revolutionize safety in backcountry aviation.

• READ MORE: CubCrafters Takes Center Stage as Title Sponsor for Valdez STOL Celebration

The company plans to merge certified nosewheel and tailwheel landing gear into one configuration, anticipating swift FAA approval under a performance-based safety continuum doctrine.

Retrofitting options for existing X and NX Cubs are available, with anticipated reductions in insurance premiums.

Brad Damm, vice president, notes the advantages of the new quincycle landing gear, emphasizing its versatility for both off-airport and pavement landings. Despite challenges in ground taxiing, the company remains optimistic, citing the overall benefits.

The post No Foolin’? CubCrafters Gear to Help Nix Ground Loops appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

The fully equipped GFC 500 autopilot offers a straightforward, lightweight, and cost-effective upgrade path for a wide range of existing GA aircraft. With solid-state attitude and robust self-monitoring capabilities, the GFC 500 provides superior autopilot performance, enhanced reliability, and safety tools similar to those found in the popular GFC 700 autopilot.

• READ MORE: Bargain Buys on AircraftForSale: 1958 Beechcraft J35 Bonanza

Featuring a user-friendly autopilot mode controller with large, dedicated keys and knobs, as well as a control wheel for easy adjustments to aircraft pitch, airspeed, and vertical speed, the GFC 500 stands out with its Level Mode. This feature returns the aircraft to straight-and-level flight with the push of a dedicated button. Additionally, GFC 500-equipped aircraft may benefit from Garmin Smart Glide, an innovative safety tool automating tasks to reduce pilot workload in the event of engine power loss.

In addition to traditional autopilot features such as altitude hold, vertical speed, and heading modes, the GFC 500 includes advanced capabilities like altitude preselect, VNAV2, underspeed and overspeed protection, allowing pilots to execute various coupled instrument approaches, including LPV, GPS, ILS, VOR, and missed approaches when paired with a compatible Garmin GPS navigator.

As a standard feature, the GFC 500 comes with Garmin Electronic Stability and Protection (ESP), functioning independently of the autopilot. ESP assists the pilot in maintaining a stable flight condition by subtly nudging the aircraft to avoid inadvertent flight attitudes or bank angles while hand-flying.

The GFC 500 autopilot seamlessly integrates with Garmin’s GI 275 or G5 electronic flight instruments. It offers versatility by combining with either a standby GI 275 or G5 electronic flight instrument interfaced to a G500 TXi flight display or a G3X Touch flight display.

Garmin continues to expand its aircraft compatibility list for the GFC 500 autopilot.

The post Garmin GFC 500 Autopilot Receives FAA STC for Beechcraft A35 and B35 Aircraft appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

What if I told you it was ahead of schedule? Is that an unbelievable claim? Perhaps, but the proof is right here, right now. 

Consider the following communication from the ASTM committee working on LSA standards. In case you don’t know what that is, ASTM is an industry standards group that operates privately, creating and getting agreement on standards used by the FAA to accept light sport aircraft into the aviation fleet (this is different than conventional FAA certification.)

Big MOSAIC News

From almost the beginning, the FAA has moved faster than most of us imagined. At EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2022 the FAA announced it would remove the drone portion of MOSAIC, which was delaying the overall regulation as that community works out its issues. FAA officials said removing all that language could take some months. In fact, it was done in a few weeks. That told me something. Once the internal or procedural impediments to progress are removed, the MOSAIC team can move swiftly.

The FAA official I videoed last year at AirVenture claimed that the regulation would be ready by August 2023. Days later, still at AirVenture, other FAA officials said about him, “Oh, he’s usually rather optimistic.” They were implying it might not happen by that date. Maybe they were trying to allow some wiggle room.

Later, when I reported the official’s August 2023 statement and gave talks referencing it, I would estimate a third of all those listening or reading doubted the FAA would meet its own deadline. The belief isn’t all wrong; the FAA has missed deadlines before.

One thing no one thought: that the FAA would complete the thing ahead of schedule.

Now, Hear This…

“[ASTM] received this communication this morning—Wednesday, July 19, 2023—from Jim Newberger, who is the FAA lead for the MOSAIC rule development (officially his position is: production & airworthiness section; AIR-632; aircraft certification service). This is exciting news and will definitely impact, positively, our discussions,” stated leaders of the ASTM committee for LSA, Rian Johnson and Adam Morrison.

Leaders encouraged F37 committee members (more than 200 people around the world), “Once the NPRM is posted, if you have available time, please try to review as much as you can and capture your questions/comments for group discussion next week [at AirVenture 2023 meetings]. These are generally pretty lengthy documents. We’ll all be freshly digesting the NPRM, so everyone’s perspectives and interpretations will be important to help bring clarity as quickly as possible.”

From the FAA’s official lead:

“I wanted to let you know that the office of the federal register is scheduled to:

• Post the related MOSAIC notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) for display today at approximately 11:15 ET.
• Publish this NPRM in the Federal Register on Monday (July 24, 2023).

“After the above milestones, you may use the following info to search/locate the NPRM on Regulations.gov:

• Document 2023-14425, category PROPOSED RULES
• Docket ID is docket no.: FAA-2023-1377; notice no. 23-10
• Rulemaking identification number (RIN) is 2120-AL50
• The subject of this document is modernization of special airworthiness certification
• The submitting agency is (FAA) Federal Aviation Administration

Feel free to share this information with the F37 committee and take advantage of opportunities explained in Monday’s publication for providing comments.”

Message for Readers

I know this material will not digest easily but it affects the future of flying. I hope many of you will read the NPRM, discuss it among your pilot friends, and think about how you will offer responses to this rule. You should have at least 90 days to comment.

Thanks to longtime F37 committee member Anna Mracek Dietrich, checking this out got much easier. Here you go…

https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2023-14425.pdf

Happy reading! It runs 318 pages.

The post FAA Ahead of Schedule on MOSAIC appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.