Ryan ORL

To me it's purely academic whether the FAA can do things on their own without Congress because they have shown next to zero willingness to do anything major on their own. Haven't virtually all of the major reforms recently been effectively mandated by Congress via the various FAA Reauthorization bills? BasicMED, the CFI renewal stuff, etc? If a group like AOPA got onboard, you could easily see the necessary language sneak into one of these bills.

There is a local Cirrus guy here that has been pioneering a ton of the in-flight Starlink stuff (they have a nice rear/top window to use) and I've heard similar about the forthcoming plans. Apparently some Cirrus owners are also working on a mount inside of the wingtip on the Cirrus, and one such example is already flying. edit: To clarify, it is inside the wingtip i.e. through the composite fairing!

Right, that is why the law needs to change. This is why BasicMed exists, among other things. Congress can just decide how this all works.

Feels like this whole STC requirement paperwork mess could go away if there was the political will to do so. It isn't like some natural law of physics that it has to be done this way. Like has been done with many of the recent FAR changes, Congress could effectively force the FAA to bless G100UL (or any suitable fuel) as a blanket addition to all type certificates or whatever other regulatory remedy was most expedient. But I think to get to that point, G100UL or another unleaded replacement are going to need to get a critical mass of adoption first. It's just too bad there isn't some better carrot/stick situation here like there was with the ADS-B mandate. (FIS-B weather, traffic, etc) Ultimately I think California is probably (inadvertently) doing GA a service with their mandates that are forcing this along. Certainly it was going nowhere fast otherwise.

So I got a Starlink mini (mainly for Hurricane Preparation here in Florida) and I decided to temporarily upgrade to the $250 plan and throw it on the glareshield of my Mooney. Heading north (Orlando to Charleston), it worked perfectly. Over 100 Mbps at times. I didn’t find it to be in the way at all. Heading south, this evidently didn’t provide enough northern sky view so it would get stuck and refuse to initialize fully (“Calculating orientation”). I decided for fun just to hand hold it up to a side window and point it as north and east as possible. And it finally connected. But the interesting thing was, once it connected, I was able to throw it back on the glareshield and use it just fine! It held connection that way with no noticeable drop in speed for close to another hour, including a few course changes. If anyone else decides to try this, try that if it gives you trouble. I sure wish the mini had been available when I went to Alaska. Wasted $600 on a used Iridium satphone and $500 or so on 200 (very slow) data minutes to get in-flight weather in Northern Canada. I’m willing to bet Starlink would have worked much better!

I have a warranty on my overhauled engine (early this year) that covers a narrow set of potential failure modes, so I guess this counts in some way. Probably anyone who gets an overhaul from an actual engine shop has something similar that usually runs up to a few hundred hours and probably runs out in far less calendar time than that would ordinarily require to fly. (I believe my warranty assumes a 25 hour per month utilization rate)

Yes, afaik it is required currently only in Class B which in Canada is basically everywhere above 12,500 MSL. The Class C mandate is a few years off I think.

Yep still no BasicMed for Canada. Another lesser-known requirement is that Canada requires your N-registered airplane to equip a 406 MHz ELT. (It isn't fully mandatory for their own airplanes yet but technically any foreign aircraft needs it)

Moab (CNY) is one of my all-time favorite airports for nearby scenery! My wife and I completed our Lower 48 in May. Next you need to go to Alaska! Very doable in the Mooney.

Orlando Executive (ORL) is all good! Very glad, since I wasn't able to evac my plane!

Highly recommend that owners group list. I loved my GNS480 but I never had the GMX200, so don't know anything about those databases. Flew a few rentals that had that MFD, but I don't think I've ever seen one with an up-to-date database

We stopped at Springbank to visit Banff on the way to Alaska. They arranged a rental car for me… was a very easy experience. I think it was like $40CAD a night and they took some off for buying fuel, which wasn’t terribly overpriced. These prices are pretty typical in my experience for Canadian FBOs at busy airports, if maybe on the lower end. It’s only about an hour drive to Banff from there, but it’s closer than from Calgary anyway.

Wow, small world! I remember the previous owner telling me about his ferry flight from Idaho. My plane used to live in the Portland, Oregon area at one point also.

Yeah, it was a great unit. I loved mine. Did airways, holds, all the departure and arrival leg types, including less common stuff like heading to baro alt to direct, etc... (many of which the 430/530 units just shorthand as 'VECTORS'). I would take it over a 430/530 any day.

Yeah, the version they're requiring is already quite old. I already have a compliant version installed from back in January 2023 when the fixes came out.