New Aviation Products

New aviation products help you fly faster, smarter, better and faster. Read our reviews of new products for general aviation pilots and improve the functionality of your cockpit.

April 2009 Readback Surfing The Skies! On January 25, the extreme worlds of aerobatics and surfing were united in the skies over the break at Morro Bay, Calif. Kevin Eldredge, owner of SLO Air, the exclusive distributor of the new Sbach 300 and 342 Xtreme aerobatic aircraft from Germany, flew loops, rolls and hammerheads with world-class surfers Chris Ward and Gavin Sutherland. Also participating was Tutima Academy, going inverted with Ben Freelove in a Pitts S-2B. The first-of-its-kind event was sponsored by VedaloHD Performance Sunglasses, Azhiaziam American Aerial Wear and S.O. Productions to commemorate the launch of the new WardoHD signature line of sunglasses.

March 2009 Readback A Diamond In The Rough In spite of the difficult economy, Diamond Aircraft has announced large new orders. Saint Louis University’s Parks College of Engineering, Aviation & Technology has added nine new Diamond DA20-C1 aircraft to its flight-training department. Parks College, founded in 1927, was the first certified school of aviation in the United States.

January/February 2009 Readback Hannes Arch: 2008 Red Bull Champ! Paul Bonhomme of Britain scored a victory in the final race of the Red Bull Air Race World Series in Perth, Australia, on November 2, 2008, but Hannes Arch of Austria was crowned 2008 World Champion after finishing third.

November 2008 Readback Electric LSA Are Charging Up Randall Fishman’s ElectraFlyer-C monoplane can fly for 1.5 hours on 75 cents of lithium-polymer battery power. Fishman aims to wed one of his larger motor-battery power packs with a two-seat aircraft.

Nov-Dec 2008 On The Radar On July 30, 2008, a wave of excitement washed over the crowds at Oshkosh. Fifteen hundred miles away, in Vero Beach, Fla., the PiperJet had made its maiden flight, spending an hour aloft and reaching 10,000 feet. Since then (at this writing), the PiperJet has made 18 additional flights and spent about 34 hours in the air as test pilots Dave Schwartz and Buddy Sessoms focus on exploring stability, control and handling throughout the envelope.

December 2008 Readback Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority has granted CubCrafters’ CC18-180 Top Cub type certification, which allows new, certified, ready-to-fly Cubs to be delivered to customers in Australia for the first time. The Top Cub was certified in the States in December 2004; it received type certification from Transport Canada in early August, and has now been approved on floats and wheels in Canada and Australia. (On September 8, the first Canadian-registered Top Cub was delivered to owner Bernard Brossard in Montreal, Quebec.)

October 2008 Readback The PiperJet Takes Flight On July 30, 2008, the PiperJet made its first flight from Piper’s headquarters in Vero Beach, Fla. “Today marks the beginning of a new era for Piper Aircraft as the company literally takes flight into a whole new realm of performance, luxury and capability,” asserted Piper President and CEO James K. Bass.

September 2008 Readback When Vern Raburn talks, people listen. Recently, the visionary behind the Eclipse VLJ was talking about a new light-sport amphibian, the ICON A5. Raburn is an adviser for start-up ICON Aircraft, which aspires to create a sport aircraft that will “do for recreational flying what personal watercraft did for boating.”

Sept-Oct 2008 On The Radar The most highly anticipated aircraft in Cirrus Design Corporation’s history, “the-jet,” made its inaugural flight on July 3. The 45-minute flight was conducted from the company’s headquarters at Duluth International Airport in Duluth, Minn. The aircraft performed flawlessly. Designed with the Cirrus signature full-airframe parachute system, the aircraft looked beautiful in its red and white paint (the model and mock-up have been displayed in gold and white), and its roof-mounted Williams FJ33-4A-19 put a 1,900-pound blast through the “V” of the distinctive tail.

Synthetic Vision Flying by visual reference—regardless of the visibility Over the past decade, new technology that promises to make instrument flying almost as easy as (and arguably even safer than) flying visually has been introduced into the general aviation (GA) fleet. Synthetic vision takes the idea of an artificial horizon and expands it to an artificial view of the outside world, allowing pilots to fly by visual reference even in the clouds.

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