AOPA Pilot Magazine - August 2023 - 46

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No more guessing
Electronic tire pressure caps for cars, motorcycles,
and airplanes
BY DAVE HIRSCHMAN
YOU'RE TAKING OFF from a big-city
airport on the way to a remote vacation
spot, and one of your tires gets punctured
by a piece of debris on the takeoff
roll. The damaged tire goes flat on the
way to your destination but there's no
way for you to know that before touching
down. Had you been informed of
the problem, you would have
altered your destination and
modified your landing placement
and technique to deal with it.
Now, a new category of
Bluetooth-enabled, pressuresensing
valve caps gives pilots a
quick and accurate way of determining
tire pressure in the air or
on the ground.
These widely available products
made for motorcycles, trikes,
and cars simply screw on to each
valve stem in place of the original
cap, and they show tire pressure and
temperature through a smartphone app.
I recently installed a pair of Leepee
tire pressure caps ($60 on Amazon) on
the two main wheels of my Van's Aircraft
RV-4, and initial results are promising.
The app allows you to set upper
and lower tire pressure and heat limits,
and it gives warnings if they're
out of the acceptable range. The tire
pressure indications shown on the
app closely matched those from traditional,
mechanical pressure gauges,
so measurements from the new caps
seem accurate.
The main benefits are knowing the
actual tire pressure, not just eyeballing
the tires during preflight inspections
and guessing. Low tire pressure can be
difficult to recognize on light airplanes
because stiff sidewalls tend to keep
their form without much pressure from
46
AOPA PILOT / August 2023
the inner tube. The valve stems can be
difficult to reach when wheel fairings
cover them, and checking tire pressure
or filling them involves getting on the
ground and pushing the airplane fore
and aft to align the valve stems with
tiny doors on the outside of the fairings.
Not fun.
Drawbacks to the new technology
include the fact that the tire valve
must be constantly open for the sensors
to work, and the tiny battery in
each cap eventually will wear out and
need replacement. The Bluetooth caps
also are slightly larger in diameter than
the metal or plastic caps they replace,
so it's possible they could get in the way
of particularly tight wheel fairings.
Adrian Eichhorn, a corporate pilot
and aviation mechanic with inspection
authorization, said he installed pressure-sensing
valve caps on his Bonanza,
and they work flawlessly.
" They're the same weight as the
metal caps they replace, and they provide
a real safety benefit, " Eichhorn
said. " If I ever have a tire lose pressure
during flight, I'll know about it in
advance and plan accordingly. "
dave.hirschman@aopa.org
AOPA Pilot Magazine - August 2023

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