If you didn’t get to see EAA Sport Aviation technology columnist Max Trescott at AirVenture 2011, here’s your chance. Max produced 55 videos reporting all the new and exciting products featured at AirVenture 2011 and his reports are must-see. (We’ll be posting more in the coming days) Follow Max as he discusses things like hybrid engines, iPad products, and anything from what’s in today’s aircraft panel to what’s under the cowling.
What ideas do you propose for 1) Improving General Aviation Safety and 2) Improving the Pilot Training Process so that more people become pilots. Those are the two central themes of next week’s 2011 Pilot Training Reform Symposium being held by SAFE, the Society of Aviation and Flight Educators. Hats off to SAFE for having the vision to take on this challenge. By bringing industry leaders together, including senior members of the FAA, they’re providing a forum for getting the best ideas in front of the people who can implement them. What ideas do you have that this group should hear next week?
It’s the worst kind of rescue one can imagine—one where the weather is so bad the rescuers crash and need rescuing. You’ll find the details in a well-written, 3-part feature story by Craig Medred in the Alaska Dispatch about a little reported plane crash last summer. The story is as compelling as a novel, but is virtually unknown because it was shadowed by a plane crash that killed Senator Ted Stevens the following day. Buried in the story are lessons that all pilots should heed.
Men and women are different. But knowing how they are different when it comes to flight training is not well known. A review of FAA Airman statistics showed that over the prior ten years, women consistently comprised 6% of total pilots and 6% of CFIs, yet were 11% of student pilots. That suggested to me that women may drop out of flight training at a higher rate than men. Also, as an active flight instructor, I realized that I have had relatively few women clients, but that female CFIs seem to have a relatively large number of female clients. Thus I wondered, are women student pilots more likely to complete flight training and earn a certificate if they have a female CFI versus a male CFI? My mail survey was design to test that hypothesis and identify barriers to completing flight training.
The BrightLine flight bag for pilots is clearly the most well thought out design for a flight bag. It absolutely reeks with creativity and innovation. The bag has seemingly dozens of zipper pockets, all of them with color-coded zipper pulls so you can instantly open the right pocket, assuming of course that you remember the colors. It has room for two headsets, but if you only want to carry one, half of the bag can be unzipped and left at home. So you could conceivable divide up the two half bags into one for IFR and one for VFR, or one for the stuff you need when flying at night versus in the day.
There are separate pockets for your sunglasses, a cell phone, a VFR radio, flashlights, a Leatherman tool, charts and more. Coincidentally, the charts pocket is the perfect size for my Apple iPad, which I generally carry instead of paper charts.
Enflight is a weather briefing product that provides a front end user interface to DUATs so that you get a legal FAA briefing. It’s unique in that it lets you enter your personal minimums and then analyzes your briefing according to those minimums. Color codes are used that let you quickly spot conditions that approach or exceed your minimums.
PHOTO: Used with permission of Jim Pitman. Jim after being detained in Wichita. N50545 in background. 9/7/10 Story has now gone mainstream in Jeff Stein's Washington Post blog SpyTalk. 8/31/10 See UPDATE at bottom. You may have heard that John and Martha King were detained over the weekend at gunpoint after they landed in Santa … Read more
Facebook Places is a major new geo-location product from Facebook that, starting tomorrow, lets U.S. iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users “check in” to a business location so that friends can see where they are. Further, users can tag friends with them when they check in, which cross posts the location to the friend’s Facebook account. Users can also see a list of people who’ve checked into the same location, even if they’re not a friend.
Here’s a list of the Day #5 new product videos shot at EAA AirVenture 2010. Bose A20 headset, Sennheiser HMEC 461 headset, Aspen Avionics, ElectroAir Electronic Ignition, Jeppesen iPad app, ASA iphone applications.
New product Videos from Day #2 or AirVenture 2010