AOPA says it expects new President Mark Baker to be a full-time leader even though he's agreed to act as a consultant for the new owners of the California-based chain of hardware stores he led until Tuesday. Taylor's consultancy was part of the deal for Lowes to buy 79 operating stores of Orchard Supply Hardware out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy for $205 million. A bankruptcy judge approved the deal on Tuesday within hours of AOPA's announcement that Baker would replace Craig Fuller as the president of AOPA. Read More

Witnesses who saw the crash of a B-1B Lancer Cold War-era swing-wing bomber in southeastern Montana Monday say it broke up in flight, RapidCityJournal.com reported Wednesday, but those accounts remain officially unconfirmed. Early reports are often unreliable; these state that witnesses described the jet coming apart and scattering debris across several miles. The bomber was flying a training route and crashed at about 9 a.m., roughly half an hour after departing from Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota. One witness, rancher Braden Garwood, has said he heard an explosion and saw a mushroom cloud rise from the site while a large mass of flaming metal was still falling to the ground. Read More

The FAA this week published its "final policy" regarding the procedures for aircraft owners and operators to ask the FAA to limit the dissemination of their Aircraft Situation Display to Industry data. This data can be used to show an aircraft's track in real time on websites such as FlightAware. NBAA had raised objections to the practice of releasing the data, citing concerns over security and competition. The FAA and the industry went back and forth over how the data could be treated -- at one point, the FAA said owners must document a "legitimate security concern" to justify the data-blocking -- but the final policy simplifies the process for operators, confirming that a written request asking for the data to be blocked will be sufficient. Read More

NASA is generally associated with space exploration, but the first "A" in NASA is for "Aeronautics," and last week Administrator Charles Bolden unveiled a new strategic vision for the agency's aeronautical research programs. The new plan will focus on key drivers that are expected to affect aviation over the next two to four decades, Bolden said. Those drivers include significant growth in global demand for air transportation, mounting concerns related to climate and energy, and the emergence of new technologies such as embedded sensors, advanced networking capabilities, and engineered materials. Among the agency's goals are to develop technology for commercial supersonic aircraft, promote a transition to low-carbon fuels, and expand the autonomous capabilities of aircraft. Read More

Airborne video from a revolving GoPro and scenes from a NASA Antarctic mission posted over the last week contribute some unique footage to the miles of airplane videos on the Internet. Blogger Ney Grant mounted his GoPro to the wing of a Cessna 210 and assembled three minutes of his best clips from touring around the western U.S. He designed and built a swiveling mount that uses a stepper motor for precise control of the camera. "For example, some of the shots were done using time-lapse photography, where it took 20 minutes to pan the camera 180 degrees," he told AVweb this week. On Friday, NASA published "truly stunning" views from the cockpit of a P-3B aircraft that flew above Greenland and the Arctic Ocean earlier this year. Read More

The passing of Leonard Maull roughly one year ago was remembered, Saturday, by an unannounced public event that carried out a last request contained in his will -- to dump $10,000 from the sky over a specific marina in Delaware, local news WBOC 16 reported. Read More

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In a letter sent to distributors last week (see link below), Continental Motors aimed to ease concerns about the FAA's recently proposed airworthiness directive for ECi cylinders, noting that "no Continental Motors factory-new/rebuilt engines or parts are affected." Continental said it has never used the ECi cylinders, so owners "can be confident that no AEC [Airmotive Engineering Corp., a sister company of ECI] or ECi cylinder(s) has ever shipped from Continental Motors on engines or aftermarket spare parts." However, if aftermarket cylinders were installed after engine shipment from the factory, verification with ECi should be made, the company said. The FAA said its proposed directive could affect up to 6,000 Continental engines. Read More

There's a need for affordable audio system upgrades for basic aircraft. PS Engineering attempts to answer the call with the PAR200 -- a three-in-one system that combines an advanced audio panel, a stereo intercom, and a remote comm radio. In this video, Aviation Consumer's Larry Anglisano takes a look at the unit during it's introduction at AirVenture 2013 at Oshkosh. Read More

Each week, we poll the savviest aviators on the World Wide Web (that's you) on a topic of interest to the flying community.

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As the quest for a replacement for 100LL drags into its third decade, our sister publication Aviation Consumer, is seeking opinions from owners, pilots and aircraft operators on how you think the process is going. The FAA has established a special office devoted to a replacement for 100LL and piston fuel in general. We would like to know if you've followed the process and if so, what you think of it. And how about mogas? We have some questions on that, too. Read More

One of our most-request features, "Picture of the Week," returns this week after a long hiatus. Before we resume regular submissions, we'll be working our way through a nice back catalogue of images sent to us by AVweb readers in recent months. If you have new photos to send us, please hang onto them for a couple of weeks while we we give those who've been waiting patiently for their moment in the sun to shine. Thanks! Read More

"Picture of the Week" returns after a long hiatus with images submitted over the last few months by AVweb readers. Over the next few weeks we'll be working through the backlog of eye-popping reader photos that have waited patiently for their moment in the sun -- starting with our current "POTW" winner, Jackie Black of Keller, Texas. Read More

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