So whether you have just ONE minute to spare, 10 minutes, or 45 minutes — please TAKE ADVANTAGE OF AT LEAST ONE OF THESE FREE SAFETY RESOURCES NOW:

• Have only a minute? Download our Safety Advisor! Many pilots get a weather briefing and have little or no idea how to determine where icing may occur. Tuck your Safety Advisor into your flight bag for quick reference.
• Have 10 minutes? Take our online quiz! Knowing what you don’t know will help you brush up on the winter hazards that can cause good pilots to make bad mistakes.
• Have 45 minutes? Take our FREE Interactive Course Weather Wise: Precipitation & Icing. (Recommended.) This course employs engaging graphics and practical, interactive exercises to teach you how to recognize hazards, develop avoidance strategies, and react appropriately when the weather takes an unexpected turn.

Or — Take advantage of all three! You can also help other pilots by forwarding a link to this postl to family and friends who fly.

Candidly, the entire industry was holding its breath this year to see what the turn out at Airventure would be and boy were they all surprised. Let’s face it, most industry folks expected the price of gas to cause alot of people in aircraft or in recreational vehicles to choose not to attend. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

You can read EAA’s review or its article claiming Airventure: A shot in the arm for aviation to get a feel for the exuberance around this year’s event. I’ve attending probably 10 years at Oshkosh and I can definitely tell you that the place was a busy as I’ve ever seen it. The RV camping areas were packed all the way to the gills and one of our group got turned away on Tuesday trying to fly in…they said they were out of aircraft partking at OSH, Appleton and Fond du lac! That’s busy!

So what to make of all this. Well, I can only offer my opinions and they are worth what you pay for them. I think that the convergence of technologies represented in “Glass Aircraft” has the industry really humming on several major fronts. First the Personal Jet and Very Light Jet space is booming. Clearly the combination of the type of technologies we highlight here on GlassPilot are pivotal to his area. Second Glass Avionics Technology is driving all other sectors from Light Sport to Certified to the retrofit market. Light Sport, after a slow start does appear to be gaining a bit of traction.

As I’ve said before it is going to be a very exciting time in aviation for the next five years. We look forward to bringing you more info, reviews and commentary as the market plays out.

I’ll make a prediction…I predict the second half of 2008 will be running strong in all sectors of the general aviation business. The factors driving sales will be the value of modern technologies, tax incentives and a more favorable oil price outlook that we’ve enjoyed in the first half of 2008.

Stay tuned…its time to fly!

GlassPilot.com

My wife drives a small four wheel drive wagon and she has short legs. Every time I jump in the vehicle I impale myself on the steering wheel and I can hardly get my long legs in because the seat is closer than I thought possible.

At that moment I always wish I had one of those buttons that makes the car automatically reconfigure itself for me.

Well, I may not have that in my car but I do have that in the G1000 and its a feature many G1000 pilots over look.

If you’ll go to the AUX chapter and then to page 4 the System Setup page you can configure individual configurations for each of the pilots that fly the plane. Obviously this is particularly handy if you have a partnership aircraft, you rent or you just want to have your own setting while leaving the default available.

Once you are at the System Setup Page you select CREATE PROFILE, give it a name and the specify from CURRENT SETTINGS and then CREATE and ACTIVATE.

Then you can scroll through the selections and pick and choose all the settings that are your favorite.

My CFI buddy joked and said, “The most important of course is to select female voice!” else ways you may have flashbacks to riding with your demanding CFI.

My two favorites to set are the alerts for airspace and the data fields for the MFD. You decide by type of airspace if you want to be notified. Because I fly in some

unfamiliar territory at times I usually turn on most of those alerts. I’d rather acknowledge airspace alerts than bust a restricted area.

You can then specify what you want to show up in the four fields at the top of the MFD. This will likely be a personal thing. I usually make sure I have Ground speed, ETE, and ETA.

Another favorite is the ability to select and specify which landing areas based on length and type for my nearest

page in case of an emergency.

After you set up your personal profile in the G1000 you can go and set the general

parameters that control other general aspects of the system.

Go to the main page of the MFD and press the Menu key. There you see a selection to update the Map Setup. Once in this selection you’ll notice it has several layers you can modify. For the most part I don’t modify things in these areas except the

orientation of the main map page you can of course select Track Up, North Up, DTK Up or HDG up. I usually fly with Track up for the main map…I find it makes it easier to stay clear on where I am. If I want a North Up and can quickly zip to the weather page (MAP Chapter page 3) and get a North Up when ever I need it.

So, the next time you are headed out to fly take a minute to explore the setup sections. It will help tweak it to fit your particular needs.