Hello All,
As a new GA pilot in the United Kingdom and an individual who's been involved in the UK's automotive engineering community for the last 15 years, it's been a bit of a shock to uncover the levels of bureaucracy and barriers that prevent the adoption of even relatively basic modern upgrades to engines, power plants and avionics on certified aircraft.
Many schools, flying clubs and individuals are flying Cessna, Piper and other such aircraft using manual mixture controls, suffering from carb icing, distributed ignitions, not to mention vacuum based cockpit instruments.
In the spirit of safety, efficiency, cost and environmental impact - I could walk outside right now and make the Cessna 172 I fly significantly safer and more efficient to operate through basic off the shelf Electronic fuel injection systems and well-proven avionics suites that have flown countless hundreds of thousands of hours in Permit aircraft.
This would not only significantly increase situational awareness, reduce the risk of carb icing, increase the efficiency and significantly reduce the fuel burn (and cost) to operate while increasing the reliability and management of the engine to reduce pollution.
Given the current state of the regulatory framework around STC's, implementing common sense safety upgrades as a private pilot on certified airframes is nearly impossible. Regulatory frameworks are supposed to make people safer, not put them at risk through preventing the adoption of proven technology or innovation.
As any sort of 'normal' pilot in the UK. I'm not in a position to afford a new G1000 182, Cirrus SR20/22 or anything even remotely modern. Is there anything that is in the works to allow the easy upgrade of legacy GA aircraft and if so, can I help! or be a test case!
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General Aviation