Cary Robins – American Aeronautics
Today we’re talking weight and balance. Often something that us pilots of light aircraft forget to do before every flight but obviously a very important component of safe flight.
Cary Robins is the owner of American Aeronautics and his company markets weight and balance calculators. I wanted to find out why weight and balance is so important, about his company’s products and about his flying career too.
The Flying Show – NEC – 2012
For today’s episode of Flying Podcast I went down to the Flying Show at Birmingham’s NEC. I had interviews lined up with Breezer UK, The Light Aircraft Company, Dave Sykes, GASCo and the Airspace & Safety Initiative. An interesting cross section of the people attending the show I think.
The show was pretty much as it had been in previous years, not overly busy but there were plenty of interesting folk to chat to. So all-in-all probably worth going down to if you’re into aviation. We arrived at 11.30 on the Sunday and the traffic into the NEC wasn’t too bad. The £10 parking fee is a bit steep but they have a bit of a monopoly going on there so we have to stump up the cash.
BE-2C ‘Biggles Biplane’
For today’s episode I travelled down to AeroExpo 2012 at Sywell Aerodrome in Northamptonshire. I had a wander round to see which exhibitors had something interesting on offer and got chatting to a fair few of them. I went down on the Friday and although there were a fair few people in attendance most exhibitors had plenty of time to spend with anyone with an interest in their products.
Andy Draper – Design Engineer – LAA
For this episode of Flying Podcast I was off down to Turweston Aerodrome to meet Andy Draper of the Light Aircraft Association. Andy is the Design Engineer with the LAA and having joined from kitplane company, Europa, he now looks after the modification work for LAA aircraft but also oversees the ongoing airworthiness of all the approved types.
I was interested in finding out what the process was for building your own aircraft so who better to ask than Andy.
If you recognize Andy’s photo on the web site that’s because he was involved in the TV show `A Plane Is Born’ some years ago, helping Mark Evans build his Europa kit plane.
Sky Demon Mobile GPS
Today I’m talking to Rob Hart from Sky Demon.
Sky Demon started out by developing VFR flight planning software and have since brought out their own aviation GPS unit.
The flight planning software first caught my eye due to the quality of their charts which, I’m told, are built using adaptive vectors. That means that the detail on the map is always extremely clear no matter what level of zoom you are using.
The main driver behind the product’s development is to present all relevant data to the pilot in as clear a way as possible and this they have accomplished well. Even NOTAM and weather briefing information is presented both in text form and graphically on the charts in a simple straightforward fashion.
Aware airspace warning GPS
During my visit to the Flying Show at the end of 2010 I caught up with William Moore from Airbox Aerospace who make the Airbox Aware and Airbox Aware Plus aviation GPS’s.
Designed in association with NATS, the National Air Traffic Services, The Airbox Aware is designed to tell you where you are and to warn you about controlled and restricted airspace in a really simple way.
It’s been around for about a year now and the makers, Airbox, claim that they’ve seen the first fall in airspace busts since record keeping began in 2003.