toto

It really depends on how much you fly. If you're flying daily, you can run any oil and be just fine. If you're letting the plane sit for long periods of time (say, more than a week between flights on a regular basis) then an anticorrosion additive package is your friend. Camguard is all about preventing corrosion in airplanes that sit.

In a pinch, the Garmin EIS will display on an iPad running Garmin Pilot. So even if the G500 display craps out, you should still be able to see engine gauges.

Probably depends on what he was flying previously. If he’s been flying a light sport with a 50mph base to final, he might revert to that when he’s behind the airplane.

FAA lists it as a J model, serial number above from @GMBrown

I believe the FAA requires a certain minimum amount of instruction time for a FIRC. Fifteen hours or something. So if it’s a self-paced online thing, they still have to be sure that it’s meeting the minimum threshold.

Out of curiosity, what made you decide to go with the G500txi versus the G3X Touch? Seems like most people choosing the G500 are interfacing with a legacy AP, but the G3X Touch and the GFC500 (nee G3X AP) were cut from the same cloth and play very happily together.

Could be wrong, but iirc all 406mhz ELTs still broadcast audio on 121.5.

The Aviation Seminars eFIRC is $25 for your first renewal - then it’s $125 for subsequent renewals. It feels old school, but not as dry as some of the self-paced online ones. Here’s the link to the “competitive discount” thingy. https://www.aviationseminars.com/online-firc-competitor-entry/

When you do these one-time payments, you get the course material, but you have to handle the renewal paperwork and filing yourself, right? One of the things that I always liked about AOPA (and about Aviation Seminars) is that they handle the paperwork for you. So you’ve got someone who does this stuff all day long making sure that it gets to the right place on time. Probably not a big deal, but it’s always been a factor for me.

I used to do the AOPA one every renewal year, but the quality started to vary quite a bit after they switched platforms a couple of times. I’ve been doing Aviation Seminars for the last two renewals, and even though it seems old school (they just show video replays of in-person classes), I actually found that I like the format better than the online content from AOPA. Their instructor, Kim Barnes, is really good. I did my renewal this year so I’m set till 23, but the Aviation Seminars product is worth checking out. If you did a different online FIRC last time, I believe they have a competitive offer for like $25 including filing. https://www.aviationseminars.com/online-firc/

So did you get the job?

Same. I used GP on a series of Android tablets but grew increasingly frustrated when I would see new feature announcements that were iPad-only. To their credit, when I contacted Garmin about the new features, they were always very responsive and very candid. But the feature roadmap for Android was clearly a low priority, with some features arriving 1-2 years late (if at all). I ended up just buying an iPad and stopped complaining about it

This could be a fun trip down memory lane My first EFB foray was with a Sony E-Reader that I bought specifically to use a product called Reader Plates. It was freaking amazing. After years of paying exorbitant prices for Jepp plates that took untold hours of filing and updating giant leather binders, having all of my approach plates on one little E-Ink device was unbelievable. I really preferred the Jepp plates to NOS until I could get them on my E-Reader. But once I had them there, I dropped Jepp like a bad habit. https://web.archive.org/web/20080906234849/http://www.readerplates.com/plates/description

I used FltPlan Go for many years, primarily because of the price, but I finally got tired of its instability. The app would crash at very inconvenient times, and went through update after update without fixing the crash problems. Had the same thing happen on multiple Android tablets and an iPad. I still use FltPlan as my primary software for flight planning, and I’m happy that plans transfer to GP pretty easily. But I have to wonder how long Garmin plans to keep FltPlan Go around. I suspect they will kill the product and come out with a GP Lite version at some point that’s free but has very limited features.

Oh, interesting. Thanks for that. I have never owned a Stratus, and wasn’t familiar with the model designations.

Yeah - this is an old blogspot site that hasn’t changed at all since 2010 or so when it launched. Someone probably figured out the password and the owner just rolled back the change after she noticed. It’s a strange site to deface, tbh - it’s highly technical and can’t possibly get much traffic.

Fwiw, here’s the post that was at the top of the page today … http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2021/12/this-aviation-blog-is-closed-permanently.html They’ve changed the text to say “open” instead of closed, but no comments from the admin.

Interestingly, I just saw today that the new GP release supports the Appareo Stratus device, which I always understood to be an exclusive product made under an agreement between Appareo and ForeFlight. Could be a shot in the arm for GP subscriptions.

Dunno, they had a big message on the home page saying the site had been shut down and would not be updated further.

I really really wanted to love WingX, especially because they have a free subscription for CFIs, but for some reason the interface just never made sense to me. I used it for a month or so, and always struggled to find what I was looking for.

That's definitely the cheapest option for US/NA data. For a regular US navdata subscription, it's $299/year.

It just depends on what data subscription you have. If you have a Jepp subscription, you'll need the Jepp writer, but if you have a Garmin subscription, you'll need the Garmin writer. For US/NA data, Garmin is quite a bit cheaper - but outside the US, Jepp is the clear winner.

The Jeppesen reader/writer will work for Jepp data, but you'll need a Garmin writer for Garmin data. You can use the same cards in either case.

http://www.kathrynsreport.com/

It is intended for the initial contact with ATC, but in this particular case I think the student could have used some unsolicited advice. If I heard a “student pilot, taxi for takeoff runway 3,” I would almost certainly get on the radio to point out the 20G30 tailwind and suggest that he back taxi 21.