About 15 years after the introduction of reliable inexpensive digital sources of attitude (is the aircraft pitched up or down?), a slew of new autopilots was announced at Oshkosh this year:
- S-TEC 3100, from the company that made all of the Cirrus autopilots for the first 10 (pre-Garmin) years. This includes envelope protection (nudge the plane back towards a reasonable attitude if crazily pitched or banked, even while the pilot is hand-flying) and “straight and level” panic button.
- King KFC 230 AeroCruze (they defrosted a marketing expert from the 1960s to name this thing?)
- Garmin GFC 500 and GFC 600, which might be the most innovative: “Both autopilot systems drive servos manipulated by brushless DC motors and a gear train that eliminates the need for a mechanical slip clutch, both of which reduce maintenance and improve reliability and longevity.” (An avionics installer/maintainer told me that previous generations of Garmin servos/clutches were notable for requiring substantial annual inspections/tests, so it is unclear whether these work better than competitors’ legacy actuators or if they are simply better than Garmin’s legacy actuators.)
Note that these folks are mostly playing catch-up to Avidyne, which certified its DFC90 in 2012.
The ADS-B IN capability that most $100 million airliners won’t get until 2025 (or ever?) due to certification hassles is now available in a mass-market $200 version to use with your iPhone: Scout.
Separately, in this Year of Avionics, Dynon is certifying its inexpensive glass panel that has been limited to experimental (home-built) aircraft. A Cessna 172 from the 1960s can have a better panel than a new one with a Garmin G1000!
If you like things that run off electricity, why not run the whole airplane? Aero Electric seems to have revoked the laws of physics with a four-seat 2700 lb. (Cessna 172 is 2,400 lb. gross weight) battery-powered airplane with “four-hour endurance.” (With the technology of 2012, “Gasoline [had] about 100 times the energy density of a lithium-ion battery” (APS).)
No Oshkosh report is complete without mentioning Icon. They’ve delivered 6 out of 1800 airplanes ordered.
Related:
- Aviation News from Oshkosh (2014)
- Oshkosh Wrap-Up (2010)
- Some news from Oshkosh (2007)
- NBAA 2015 wrap-up report (2015; bizjet world as a contrast)
- Sun n Fun report (2017)
- my own Icon A5 review from 2010
Wow, if those guys from Aero Electric do it, what a game-changer! Anywhere but Alaska, why bother with gas?
$250,000 for a fixed wing that costs $19/hour to fly? You could buy 8 & fly to work for the cost of living in a job center. If something that disruptive ever happened, the government would definitely impose severe taxes on flying to rescue the housing market.
Does anybody have the calcs to show this is possible. The Airbus demonstrator had one hour range with a smaller (60 kw) motor. Or maybe it was 2 x 60kw – it was a twin.