Readers Poll – Where is light aviation’s leading edge now ?
The last decade saw many changes in light aviation: composite fuselage, class cockpits and diesel engines. New technologies like XM weather, TIS and e-HSIs are becoming common, not to mention GPS which is now almost a standard even in basic trainers. I was lucky enough to be an early adopter of these novelties and am now wondering what the next are.
My problem is that I can’t really name any. WAAS approaches are funny and creating a lot of opportunities, but they don’t requires special skills. Very Light Jets allowing for single pilot operation sound cool but I’m quite sure that they will stay out of (my) reach for at least one decade.
The question for this month is simple: where do you think is the leading edge of light aviation development ? What’s next for someone flying a composite, diesel engined, glass-cockpit equipped aircraft ?
3 Comments, Comment or Ping
Julien
Two words: electric plane. I saw a Sun’n Fun video recently demonstrating an electric LSA. It’s more reliable (TBO of electric engine is much higher than the expected lifetime of the airframe), less noisy, less polluting and it generates less vibration in the cockpit. And it also removes the dependency on a narrow-cut fuel such as AVGAS.
So far the power-to-weight ratio of the engine+battery is the limiting factor. That’s why it has only been tried on LSA airplanes and motorised gliders so far. But I have absolutely no doubt that the power-weight ratio of electric motorisation systems (engines + batteries) will improve over the next few year, both because of an increase in demand, but also because aviation will benefit from all the innovations made in electric cars.
This article sums up the state of the art quite well.
May 5th, 2009
Vincent
Electric planes are certainly an interesting way of development, but no one is available for training right now and I don’t expect any for the next two years. May be before in the US, but until one gets JAA / EASA certified… well, only time will tell.
May 5th, 2009
Tangozulu
Synthetic vision.
There are two kinds, the first is synthesized “highway in the sky” stuff from WAAS GPS. It’s not really synthetic vision but a synthetic picture of what should be there. It can (and should) have weather and traffic added for more of a real-time quality.
Or, combine that with FLIR. (Forward-Looking Infrared). That actually shows you what is in front of you. Add in highway-in-the-sky and you can basically fly VFR in hard IFR conditions. Of course, you still need to be capable IFR because you need to know the systems and what to do when the systems break, you get ice, etc, etc, etc.
May 5th, 2009
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