The round-up in our May 2020 issue includes a leather bomber jacket, Concorde cufflinks, a radial engine clock, and more items for pilots! Click through the gallery below to view all of the items. 

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Much of aviation changes slowly, if at all. After all, the most popular models in today’s fleet were built 40 or more years ago. It was nearly twice that long ago that the regulatory framework that governs light aviation was riveted in place. But thankfully, since then some things have changed for the better, and headsets are one of them.

It hasn’t always been that way. Many of our readers, myself included, began flying before headset use was encouraged. It wasn’t that anyone was ignorant of the risks, just that widespread use of headsets wasn’t yet a thing. Luckily, though, a couple of pioneers saw the future and dedicated themselves to building headsets that were light enough and comfortable enough to wear for long stretches. Today headsets are more than a curious pilot accessory. They are a preflight checklist item, and not just for the pilot but for everyone on board.

To get there from the earliest headsets, which dispensed as much pain as they did reduce noise, took some time and some doing. The chief advances were the introduction and use of better, more durable, quieter and more form-fitting cushioning materials for both the ear cups and the headband. The design of the headset structure, from headband to ear cups, has advanced in similar, often less-dramatic ways, though a few, including a couple we review here, use a headband design, a steel arch that sits atop the head with pads attached to each end, that is strong and durable but not particularly comfortable.

Today’s headsets cut noise in a variety of ways, though the most popular ones use a combination of passive and active noise attenuation, which you can mimic by sticking your ears with your fingers, as most of us do when a particularly loud plane pulls up to the front of the FBO ramp.

The other major advancement in comfort and noise reduction was the introduction more than 25 years ago of active noise-canceling technology, which electronically cuts down on the noise in the outside environment.

Regardless of how it is done, cutting down on noise is critical to pilot health…and performance. Stress and distraction are far more likely to compromise a pilot in a noisy environment. A good headset is a piece of safety equipment, and today’s pilots get that. 

It goes beyond safety, as well. We can’t stress enough the importance of wearing a good headset every time you switch on the mags. General aviation aircraft, especially piston singles and even those that are considered quieter than most, are way too loud for your ears. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) says that damage to your hearing will result from long-term exposure to levels above around 85 dBs For reference, a typical noise level in a legacy Cessna Skylane is around 92 dbs. So while few headset makers discuss the noise reduction specs behind their headsets, you can safely assume that every model in our lineup, if worn correctly, will cut noise to well below that OSHA reference point, which is any headset’s most important function.

The other big advances in headset design are in the realm of connectivity. Most of today’s models, even budget ones, can connect to your phone or tablet wirelessly. 

The headsets in our roundup are of three basic designs, over the ear, on the ear and in the ear. For most light plane flying, the on-the-ear designs are not quiet enough, but for some, not all, twins and light jets, they are just right. So keep that in mind as you peruse our lineup, and be sure to match your mission with the right model.

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The round-up in our April 2020 issue includes sunglasses from AO Original, embroidered aviation patches from the Aeroplane Apparel Co.and more gear for pilots! Click through the gallery below to view all of the items. 

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The round-up in our March 2020 issue includes a wooden cheese cutter, a multi-function survival hammer, Sporty’s deluxe Learn to Fly Kit, and more items for pilots! Click through the gallery below to view all of the items. 

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The round-up in our January/February 2020 issue includes an ADS-B Receiver, a flashlight from Smith & Wesson, a GoPro camera, and more. Click through the gallery below to view all of the items. 

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Learn more at pilotmall.com.

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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 

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The round-up in our November 2019 issue included a mount for iPad Pros, a good-value action camera, a bifold wallet made from aerospace aluminum, and more! Click through the slideshow below to see all of the items.

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Garmin announced earlier this week that it had earned FAA approval for the installation of its popular GFC 500 autopilot into four models of Piper aircraft. The approvals add to those already in the books for a number of popular Cherokee-branded planes. The latest batch of approvals are for the PA-28 201T and PA-28 236 models known as Dakota, among other monikers, and both major flavors of the iconic Cherokee Six, the 300 and 260 models.

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Introduced earlier this year, the GFC-500 is one of the new products from Garmin that adds great value to older airframes at an affordable price. A digital, two-axis autopilot with altitude hold, vertical speed and heading capabilities as well as available altitude pre-select and airspeed hold, approach coupling, and others, depending on the installed equipment, the GFC-500 is an extremely advanced unit. At the same time, because of its low price of $6,995 (or $10,000 with a G5 electronic flight instrument) it makes sense for many models of aircraft that before now had values too low for most owners to justify the purchase of an autopilot, let along an advanced one.

For more information on the GFC-500, visit Garmin’s website.

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Avionics giant Garmin and startup uAvionix have reached a settlement in a high-profile case we reported on last year. While terms of the case were not revealed—yes, we hate that too—the resolution does answer a couple of big questions many pilots and airplane owners had.

As we wrote previously in Plane & Pilot, Garmin last year sued uAvionix alleging that the Montana-based competitor had infringed upon one or more of its ADS-B patents.

The suit has been carefully watched in aviation circles, not only for the merits of the case but because it seems a test case for how Garmin, which owns an overwhelming market share of panel and remote mount avionics business in the light GA sector, would react to new competition.

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Over the past couple of years, uAvionix has introduced two hugely successful products, ADS-B units that mount remotely and allow owners to meet the ADS-B mandate with less out-of-pocket costs than arguably any other solution for all-new equipment. One of those products is a quick-mount wingtip beacon replacement that adds an ADS-B unit on the tip; the other is an ADS-B unit that takes the place of the tail-mounted position light. Either can be installed quickly and affordably, for around $2,000.

For owners with uAvionix gear already installed or for those with gear on order, the settlement comes as a relief, no doubt.

As is the case with so many lawsuits these days, the terms of the settlement weren’t disclosed, but for the time being, we do know that uAvionix will continue to produce and sell its ADS-B solutions. How much that resolution cost either party in terms of cash or concessions is unknown, but at least for now we do know that uAvionix is still in the game.

Which is good to know. The company recently acquired another cleverly named avionics startup, display maker AeroVonics. uAvionix plans to merge AeroVonics’ displays and sensors into its expanding lineup of affordable GA gear.

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The aviation electronics company uAvionix, which has made a name for itself with its low-cost ADS-B solutions, including wingtip light and tail beacon mounted units, has acquired AeroVonics, a marriage that has generated some excitement in GA.

The key products that led to the acquisition is AeroVonics’ AV-20-S AOA instrument and its AV-30 customizable primary display that packs a ton of info into a small, standard instrument-sized hole in the panel.

Included in the AV-30, shown here, is G-loading, the upcoming flight-planned GPS waypoint, airspeed, altitude and vertical speed, plus more, all integrated artfully around an attitude indicator display. It sounds like too much to take in on one small instrument, but the execution of the display is impressive.

In a post about the acquisition, uAvionix said that adding its first panel-mount products is part of a larger plan to create an extensive lineup of panel electronics, many of which will integrate with its ADS-B solutions. Chief among the new developments, it said, is an autopilot interface that will marry existing STEC autopilots with its displays.

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