In Terms of Performance Or Safety, These Retrofittable Upgrades Offer Much

E-I-C Note: Sorry that the last of the these evals (the very best of them, no less) dragged out so long, but the holidays were shorter than we expected in terms of available work time and the workload has only accelerated since then. Thankfully, the end of the tunnel is in sight, there is no train whistle attached and we are pleased to complete this carefully-thought-out series this week.

Our congrats to all those who impressed us... and 'for shame' on all those that didn't... -- Jim Campbell, ANN's Overworked Editor-In-Chief.

We don't have to tell you that aviation is a constantly changing industry... and for those of us who have made great investments in any number of exceptional airframes, we usually don't have to wait long before some improvement or upgrade comes along that makes us wish we'd waited a little before making our last purchase... unless, of course, that upgrade is retrofittable.

Two upgrades top our list for the year just past... one for the inestimable safety improvements it can offer to any airplane, and the other to a company that is truly revolutionising the concept of turbo-charged performance -- and it ain't done yet.

CO Guardian

Ash Vij's CO Guardian is the undisputed leader in carbon monoxide detectors for General Aviation, and are now included as standard safety equipment on all new Cessna 172, 182, 206, Columbia Aircraft, Diamond DA40 and Skycrane helicopters, and all Cirrus Aircraft. The CO Guardian product does one thing... monitor CO in the cockpit.

This data is important... because ignorance of CO can produce astonishingly harmful effects. Carbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless, tasteless and toxic gas produced as a by-product of combustion. In other words, its hard to detect... unless you let the CO Guardian help. 

Ash explains that, "Carbon monoxide inhibits the blood's ability to carry oxygen to body tissues including vital organs such as the heart and brain. When CO is inhaled, it combines with the oxygen carrying hemoglobin of the blood to form carboxyhemoglobin (COHb). Once combined with the hemoglobin, that hemoglobin is no longer available for transporting oxygen."

No cockpit should be complete without such a safety device and we assure you that one is going in our aircraft ASAP. We recommend it highly.

Tornado Alley Turbos' Turbo-Normalization Retrofit Program

We are almost as blown away by TAT's TN upgrade capabilities as we were with Avidyne's R9. We've put over 300 hours on the SR-22 version, listened to the many plaudits for the Bonanza and Cessna upgrades and have been particularly impressed with the service and support reports we get from very impressed owners.

The TAT installation in our aircraft is a sewing machine... it just runs... smoothly and reliably... and we are looking forward to the future since TAT is not remotely done with the development of these powerful retrofit packages.

A new Turbo Density-Normalized (TDN) Controller is in development, just part of a more comprehensive upgrade that will allow this program to offer significant performance improvements over previous installations. In the case of the SR22, these performance improvements include more than 7 knots of speed increase during warm and hot weather operation, and as much as a 33% improvement in ROC in the popular LOP climb mode of flight. The updated system allows the removal of multiple heavy, complex and maintenance intensive components from under the cowl in the traditional turbo system. A weight savings of approximately 3 pounds is achieved with the TDN system.

The new TDN system employs an electrically-actuated wastegate and an electronic control with significant new capabilities. It works equally well on all turbocharged piston aircraft as well as the turbonormalized TDN SR-22. The system is the first part of a series of new, modular, electronic engine controls being developed for TAT by General Aviation Modifications, Inc. (GAMI) for use on a wide range of aircraft, including the SR-22, the Cessna T-210, the Cessna 400 series, and many other aircraft in the general aviation fleet.

We can't wait to upgrade...  

FMI: www.coguardian.com, www.taturbo.com