No simple answer, but some points to consider.

Can you position it so that wires don’t interfere with anything, it gets a good signal (i.e the aerial has a good view of the sky) and you can read it easily?

If it has a moving map, does it easily translate to the map features on your chart? An aeronautical database helps a lot in that respect.

Can it use external power or has it the battery capacity for a day’s flying? Changing batteries in flight is an unwelcome distraction.

Is it easy to program a route and destination and does it then give good navigation guidance? i.e Off-track error, track required, track made good, time and distance to waypoint are all easily interpreted.

Bigger displays are easier to use, but may be more cumbersome.

I use a 296 with a permanently mounted bracket and external power and aerial connections. This works very well for me and the screen is only a bit difficult to read when in very bright sunlight and wearing sunglasses. Even then it is still usable.

Colour does help to assimilate the detail – airspace boundaries etc. but isn’t essential.

The declutter function is useful, have the minimum detail to give a good position fix.

The Garmin units are rightly very popular and do a good job, although almost any GPS if set up and used sensibly will be adequate.

My first GPS was a Sony Pixis about 15 years ago, with a 2 line display and 4-channel receiver, and even that was a revelation in nav capability compared to panel mount VOR/ADF (which I didn’t have anyway).

There isn’t a requirement for a qualification as a PPL ground instructor and no requirement for classroom instruction.

That said, a lot of students would like more than “guided self-study”.

The AOPA Ground Instructor Certificate is the nearest thing to an official qualification and is fairly widely recognized. It also gives course credits if upgrading to FI in the future (I think you escape about 60 hours of the classroom training).

Quite possibly your ATC experience may be creditted against the GIC course.

I did the GIC course over 20 years ago when Piers Smerdon was CFI at Leicester, and later upgraded to FI and CPL. On-Track at Wellesbourne offer the course and should have some info on their web-site.

Mark

Most GA fin and tail-plane designs are 2-spar arrangements. The forward spar reacts the aerodynamic forces and moments of the fixed surface and the rear spar usually carries the hinges that react the control surface forces. The hinge prevents moments being transmitted from the rudder to the fin (unless you hit the control stop), these are effectively reacted by the control horn and appear as stick and rudder forces.

The Mooney fin has a vertical forward spar, so minimising twisting forces and fairly neutral elastic stability. The forward sweep on the rudder hinge line doesn’t add any great twisting moment to the fin.

Rearward sweep has a slight performance advantage in moving the centre of pressure of the control surface further aft from the centre of gravity thus increasing control effectiveness or allowing a smaller surface area. Elastically the twisting forces will try to reduce the angle of attack making it more elastically stable, but reacting the twisting forces may incur a weight penalty as it requires a stiffer section.

In high speed designs, sweep also delays the onset of critical Mach number and shock-induced drag.

Torsional stiffness and aerodynamic/mass balance can also affect the onset of flutter.

Structural optimization tends to yield an unswept but tapered design which is typical of what has evolved in most GA aeroplanes.

It’s been along time since I studied all this as an undergrad, but that’s roughly how I remember it.

This is just the press picking up on the AAIB monthly bulletin, which has just been published – http://www.aaib.dft.gov.uk/publications/bulletins/july_2008.cfm

Also maybe of interest is the report on Tom Miller’s accident at Oxford (G-LENY).

Tom’s got his medical back and is flying again now, I’m sure many of you will be pleased to hear.

The XS29a has long since passed into history.

Documents to be carried is much as it always was: Crew licences, CofA, CofR, Radio licence, copy of interception procedures.

Customs and immigration: there are no requirements at this end for the outbound flight. France require that you land at a port of entry with any prior notice requirements complied with, Inbound, either go through a designated port of entry to the UK or supply a GAR form (Gendec) to both customs and immigration. (some links to the docs here.

Flight plan required for international flight.

Equipment: Lifejackets when out of gliding distance from land and ELT or PLB (new type with 121.5 and 406MHz) when more than 10 minutes flying time from land.

I don’t know quite the point of the question. Auto-land from a Cat 3B type instrument approach still involves a power reduction and a flare, just that it is controlled by a computer rather than pilot input.

It is possible to set an aircraft up such that no more control input is required before touch down. This is done for such-as glassy water landings in a sea-plane. That requires a low rate of descent and a low speed to give a slightly nose-high attitude. Similar is the wheel landing on a tailwheel aircraft which is stabilised at a low rate of descent shortly before landing.

In both cases it is necessary to put some down-elevator input almost at the moment of touchdown, in one case to get the aircraft ‘on the step’ and in the other case to stop the tail dropping and the aircraft re-launching itself into the air.

The rate of descent at touchdown is of the order of 100 ft/min or less and far too low to be set-up other than in the very last stages of an approach.

Quite a while back, I was involved in some contra-rotating propeller noise research.

Two candidates were chosen for flight measurements: the Fairey Gannet with its double Mamba engine configuration allowed pitch and RPM to be altered independently, and the Avro Shackleton (Mk2) which was contra-rotating props geared from a single RR Griffon engine (times four).

IIRC the Shackleton’s two props were equal and opposite RPM and pitch changed in combination. A horribly noisy set-up especially when the prop tips are a few inches from your ear when seated behind the pilot.

The advantage is that you recover the swirl from the front prop as extra thrust, but the efficiency gain from them is somewhat outweighed by the noise increase and extra weight/complexity.