STOL videos are fun to watch. Seeing stripped-down Cessnas and homemade purpose-built tailwheel airplanes land and stop in mere feet brings out the airborne cowboy in all of us. There’s just one problem.
Toward the bottom of a list of concerns from the prepurchase report on a Piper Cub I was considering purchasing was a troubling line: “Engine data plate missing,” it said. So began a yearlong quest to get it back.
It’s rare that a technology comes along that’s so transformative it completely changes the way we think about training pilots. Virtual reality has that potential.
Of all the pain points in the aircraft purchasing process, the prepurchase evaluation is the most ouchy. It’s difficult to bring together, the results are sometimes not definitive, and it’s expensive. It’s also essential.
It’s rare that a technology comes along that’s so transformative it completely changes the way we think about training pilots. Virtual reality has that potential.
Bristell may market its new MOSAIC-ready 916M as a luxurious light sport aircraft with a Garmin G3X, a 51-inch-wide cabin, and great customer support, but the thing buyers will most brag about is how much of a beast it is on the runway.
The principle of the four-stroke engine is aptly described by how it takes in air and fuel, compresses it, ignites, and then expels it. But this description doesn’t really detail how that happens.
