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Holiday Gift Guide
by Sean Fulton
 OAKLEY COCKPIT-FRIENDLY RACING BOOTS
The folks who brought you one of the most stylish names in eyewear are now making footwear—fire-proof racing footwear, no less. Spotted by our friends at AvShop as an ideal and necessary piece of cockpit equipment, these slick-looking, highly engineered racing boots come in a variety of colors and sizes for both men and women, and are priced at about $250 per pair. The mid-height boots feature a patented, CarbonX® flame-resistant lining for fire protection, coupled with what Oakley calls “self-extinguishing suede” and a high-grip, vulcanized rubber sole for good rudder pedal response. You’d like to think you won’t need this much fire protection on you next cross-country, and you probably won’t. But you’ll look really cool in these boots, and that’s what counts. For more information, visit avshop.com.
 PELTOR 7000 SPORT LE
This is a great starter headset for the budding aviator in your family. Offering 24db of passive noise protection, comfy gel ear seals and a lightweight headband, the Sport LE looks great with its midnight blue finish and will be a pleasure to wear. Just $260 from your local online retailer.
 VENTING AIRCRAFT HEAT
The inside of your airplane on a hot summer day can reach over 200 degrees, damaging everything from seat covers to delicate electronics. Now there’s a clever solution that will keep the inside of your airplane cool without having to rent a hangar to put it in. The Solar Powered Ventilator, or SPV, from Solar Skies is a small fan that fits into the pilot window of an airplane and pulls the warm air out, allowing cooler, outside air to circulate in through your airplane’s air vents. The brushless, DC-powered fan is driven by a solar panel that can be stuck up on the dash or laid across an airplane wing. The fan exchanges the air in most airplane cabins completely in two to three minutes, exhausting heat from the window while pulling fresh air in through the airplane’s air vents. The manufacturer says the solar panel can also be used to power cell phones and other electronic devices in a pinch. Available as a complete system for $169 from planeplastic.com.
 PALM TREO™ 650
Whoever said you can’t take it with you never got wind of the PalmOne Treo™ 650, a hybrid device that combines Palm OS-based applications with a digital cell phone.
This handheld is ideal for the busy business traveler, who may find it difficult to stay in touch and productive when weather delays and FBOs with no Internet access seem to team up just to take you out of the loop. With the Treo™ 650, you can surf the web, check your e-mail, or run any of the hundreds of popular personal organizer applications written for the Palm platform. There are a number of good aviation applications written for the Palm platform as well, including calculators, airport directories and the like. But that’s not all. The Treo™ 650 is also a powerful cell phone, featuring up to six hours of talk time on a fully-charged battery, and a built-in speakerphone and camera. The Treo™ 650 costs between $299 and $399 when purchased with a wireless plan from your favorite wireless dealer. For more information, visit palmone.com or your local wireless dealer.
 TELEX STRATUS 50-D HEADSET
his headset has some sense-Smart Sense, that is-and you will love the way it cuddles your ears. Only Telex has the Smart Sense digital signal processing technology that listens to the noise in your cockpit and automatically adjusts its active noise cancellation to target those frequencies and reduce more noise. Plus its sooo comfortable to wear, you’ll forget you have it on. This just in—the 50-D has an integrated cell-phone/MP3 adapter so you can listen to tunes or chat with your friends while enjoying the unparalleled noise cancellation of this awesome headset. Just $875 from telex.com or your favorite online retailer.
 ICOM A24 HANDHELD TRANSCEIVER
This powerful new handheld features a number of ease-of-use features that are sure to make it required equipment in every flight bag. Duplex operation means you can use the VOR CDI capabilities for navigation while communicating on the COM channel, a must-have for instrument flying with an on-board radio failure. Other neat features include a big, easy-to-read back-lit display, and a back-lit number keypad that stays lit until you shut it off, ideal for use at night. The A24 also features a “flip-flop“ last channel recall, allowing you to scroll forward and backward through up to 10 channels for easy,
one-hand operation while flying. Available for about $400 from pilotmart.net.
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