Re:Aviation is stuck in World War II (Score 1)

It's only a $20,000 - $40,000+ option, depending on your engine and airframe. This assumes you're in the market for a retrofit. You can imagine owners are jumping right on that. ;)

Yeah, that's the unfortunate thing about aviation engines currently. Everything is stupidly expensive. The EFI retrofit costs more than most modern fuel injected cars. Hell for that money you can get a mid level luxury auto with drive by wire and other nifty technologies.

More and more modern aircraft are getting this feature but it has its downside. A DA-42's accident, which is a twin, was traced back to ignition failure

That's why it's a good idea to have mags as a backup. A flip of a switch and they can be active powering the engine. I've seen setups like this on homebuilt engines and they work amazingly well.

Liquid cooling adds weight and load on the engine. A coolant leak means a scrubbed flight. A water pump is yet one more component which can fail.

True, but modern liquid cooling designs are much more reliable than those of yesteryear. And for the increased load the increased power output would more than make up for it. Most LSA's have a Rotax wich is air/liquid cooled. The cylinder heads are liquid cooled for even cooling, and they seem to be pretty reliable.

Also, shock cooling is a myth. If it were real, it would be a noteworthy statics for twins and especially for twins used for primary training

Shock cooling is more of a maintenance item than a failure item. It reduces the usable life of the cylinders and can lead to early formation of cracking or scoring of the cylinders. Most high performance twins have cowl flaps to help prevent this. I'm not sure why/if there aren't any statistics on this. But my A&P buddies can personally attest to having seen the effects on cylinder bores.