Vectors To Final

This post is the first in a series co-written with PlasticPilot, the editor of http://www.plasticpilot.net/ . This series compares flying light aircraft in Europe (his point of view) and in US (my point of view). This particular post focuses on filing flight plans, and getting an IFR clearance. It starts with the European view, the US way is in the second half. In Europe, there are four reasons to file flight plans: international flights (VFR or IFR) IFR flights require a flight plan Some commercially used airports require a flight plan Flight plan implies alerting service, which can be good when flying over hostile areas The content of the flight plan is always the same, according to the ICAO standard, but the way to file it varies from country to country. This can range from handing the form to someone at the airport to filing it for free over the internet. However, the “manual” way becomes an oddity. Most airports have free on-line systems, several countries have pay-sys...

Today I was flipping through the newest blog entries in my Google Reader and came across a few posts about the new Cirrus Perspective - a G1000 in the Cirrus ! I was fairly surprised by it, not because it was totally unexpected, but because I expected them to put out a full FADEC engine setup first. The ability to do a simple push button start to crank the engine and never having to make a mixture setting change seems right up Cirrus' alley. I have read about the Cirrus being used as a test bed for FADEC and expected them to announce it going into production before too long [ 1 ] [ 2 ]. Messing with the engine systems is probably a time consuming change though, as you don't want to screw that up. So what does this new Perspective package offer, beyond the $50,000 price premium? First off - the Garmin G1000. An incredibility capable glass panel setup that now includes virtual terrain graphics ( is that pointless? ) and HITS (highway in the sky) tech. Plus that terrific Garm...