Kitplanes

Builders share their successes.

Charlie Taylor, the Wright brothers trusted right-hand man and machinist, made their early powered flight experiments possible. And he built the engine using only a drill press, a lathe, a simple scale and more than a little ingenuity; by Bob Fritz.

Bob FritzWe may have created a monster. At the time he submitted this months Home Machinist installment detailing the challenges facing Charlie Taylor in...

A Life SavedThe article in the August issue, Fire in the Hole, about fire extinguisher systems was good about the history and where to...

Aspen Avionics, the little EFIS company that has taken aviation by storm with its modular PFD/MFD designed for a low cost retrofit in aircraft with traditional analog instruments, announced the availability of a NEXRAD weather enhancement for its products.The EFD 1000 Pro is currently shipping and has been installed in Experimental aircraft as large as a P-51 Mustang, to date. Pascal Gosselin, of Aero Teknic, in St. Cyhu, Quebec, an aircraft maintenance and installation shop,…

Walking around EAA AirVenture this year, I saw the next generation of airplane enthusiasts being brought up. There are some who are concerned that the population of the aviation faithful is increasingly getting older with fewer young people joining the fold. However, for some aviation has been part of their lives since birth. Coming to airshows like AirVenture helps start a lifetime of interest. …

Garmin's subsidiary Digital Cyclone has upgraded its cellphone-based weather delivery system, Pilot My-Cast, expanding both the types of cellphones supported, and the weather products it delivers.Pilot My-Cast allows you to access a complete weather-briefing product, including Nexrad radar, satellite loops, Metars, TAFs, SIGMETS, AIRMETS and PIREPS via a cellphone with a web browser, and this now includes both RIM Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices. There is also a beta-release of software for the iPhone.…

The internal MP3 player functions of the Experimental-aircraft-only PMA9000EX have been so popular that PS Engineering has embedded the same technology into the TSO'd PMA8000B audio panel/intercom to create the PMA8000B-MP3.Using the same chassis and front-panel layout as the popular 8000B, the new MP3 version adds a 1-gigabyte chip to hold the music contents. The front-panel jack now also acts as a USB portal for uploading the music; a converter cable is provided. Unlike the…

In a strong suggestion that Honeywell is serious about Bendix/King's return to form in general aviation, the company introduced three new handhelds at a press function last night. In addition to reminding us that its KSN 770, a WAAS-LPV-capable GPS/nav/com panel-mount in the general format of the Garmin GPS 530, will be available in the first quarter of 2009, Honeywell execs trotted out a new line of product called AV8OR.…