20aAviation International News • June 2006 • www.ainonline.com

Synthetic-vision technology won’t be confined to the flightdecks of new airplanes. Thanks to the scalable architecture of thelatest flat-panel retrofit cockpit designs, avionics manufacturerswill one day be able to offer upgrades for SVS and other advancedtechnologies using the basic hardware they are selling today.

An area where that trend is coming to fruition right now isthe addition of cockpit file servers for display of checklists, elec-tronic charts and graphical weather. In the future, the samecompany that sold you your aftermarket cockpit and upgrade to e-charts will also provide add-on hardware and software toinstantly transform that bland blue-over-brown ADI into a virtualworld replete with mountains, lakes, runways, other airplanesand heaven knows what else.

It’s all part of the business plan. Avionics makers know buy-ers aren’t likely to replace the LCD-based cockpit they justbought, but they’re hoping operators will be willing to join theSVS upgrade parade in the future. Here is a brief look at some ofthe retrofit cockpit options that have made headlines of late.

Owners of Piaggio Avanti turbopropsgot some good news last month in the formof an announcement by Rockwell Collinsthat it will offer buyers the chance to up-grade to Pro Line 21 avionics, the samebaseline cockpit that is sold in new AvantiIIs rolling out of the factory.

For the older Avanti’s front office, Collinsis providing the Pro Line 21 IDS integrateddisplay system and AHS-3000 attitudeheading reference system. The retrofit willbring three 8- by 10-inch LCD flight displaysto the Avanti flight deck, integrated with ex-isting sensors, radios, flight-managementsystems and autopilot. The result is “cut-ting-edge technology for pilots” without the

high cost of a complete avionics overhaul,said David Wu, director of marketing forRockwell Collins. Jet Works in Denton,Texas, will perform the installations aftercertification is completed in September.

Rockwell Collins was named the avionicssupplier in the Avanti II around the time com-petitor Honeywell announced plans to offer aretrofit cockpit for the original Avanti basedon the Primus Epic avionics system. WithPro Line 21 IDS, Collins is now able to com-pete for the aftermarket business, whichcould lead to a nice windfall considering thatnearly 100 Avantis with older Pro Line IIavionics are flying today.

Collins has been marketing its Pro Line

Cockpit

This artist’s concept shows what Pro Line 21avionics will look like in the Piaggio Avanti.

Pro Line 21 IDS Coming to the AvantiMaking Old Panels New Again

Avionicshe earliest versions ofthe Internet and e-mail trace their exis-tence back to the1950s, when Rand re-

searchers first started thinkingabout ways to connect computersthrough a common network. Youmight be surprised to learn thatearly ideas for cockpit synthetic-vision systems (SVS) also origi-nated in the 1950s, as part of ajoint Army-Navy research project.

The goal at the time was totransform the familiar blue-over-brown artificial horizon ball intosomething pilots could use in poorvisibility or at night for navigation.But just like the Internet, a wholehost of technological advance-ments needed to emerge before theseemingly utopian promise ofSVS could be molded into a certi-fiable cockpit technology.

Researchers started thinkingseriously about SVS with the ad-vent of the modern EFIS. In the

mid 1990s NASA made note-worthy progress with researchrelated to the Aviation SafetyProgram. By that time, color ac-tive-matrix LCDs were allowingcompelling computer-generatedvisuals to be drawn on primaryflight displays; microprocessorsand graphics adapters werepaving the way for the creationof detailed views of the outsideworld; and global terrain and ob-stacle databases coupled withGPS and other nav sensors wereemerging to ensure that the im-ages presented on the displaysaccurately depicted the realworld. Fast-forward a decade andaviation is on the cusp of a cock-pit revolution, experts say.

“Flying with synthetic vision10 years from now is going to belike flying with an HSI today,”predicts Randy Robertson, vicepresident of engineering forHoneywell. “It’s going to becommonplace in general aviation

and second nature for tomor-row’s pilots.”

With the FAA’s recent releaseof Advisory Circular 23-26,“Synthetic Vision and PathwayDepictions on the Primary FlightDisplay,” all the pieces are in placeto bring SVS to civil aircraft, ob-servers say. Chelton Flight Sys-tems and Universal Avionics sofar are the first manufacturers to offer SVS, but they won’t bethe only ones.

Other players are about to jointhe fray with ever more capableand compelling concepts. ThisOctober’s NBAA Convention islikely to feature several importantSVS-related announcements from

avionics makers and OEMs, whoat last appear ready to pull backthe curtains from their secretiveprograms. Once that happens,other OEMs that have been on thefence about SVS are expected tofollow suit in the mad rush tooffer buyers the latest technology.

For the time being, though,avionics makers aren’t sayingmuch. Honeywell and RockwellCollins have demonstrated someinteresting SVS concepts, buteach company is remaining tight-lipped about precisely when andwhere its ideas will show up first.Honeywell’s Primus Epic inte-grated cockpit was developedfrom the very beginning to grow

and adapt as technology changed.The company’s Apex avionicssystem, designed for Part 23 air-planes (and selected for the GrobSPn light business jet), will alsolikely benefit from SVS treatment.

Likewise, Rockwell Collinshas said it is only a matter of timebefore SVS is added to Pro Line21’s baseline architecture, whichlike Primus Epic was designed togrow and expand through soft-ware upgrades.

SVS Market Heating UpUniversal Avionics obtained

FAA certification for its Vision 1SVS in the King Air 350 earlierthis year and was scheduled to

The promise of synthetic vision:turning ideas into (virtual) realityby Stephen Pope

T

special report

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21 IDS upgrade to owners of a variety of in-serv-ice business jets. The company recently gainedapproval to install the system in airplanes with AP-105 and APS-65 autopilots, a key to bringing theavionics to older King Airs, Falcon 20s and 50sand the Avanti. Pro Line 21 IDS also interfaceswith APS-85, APS-80 and SPZ-500 autopilots.

The version of Pro Line 21 installed in newairplanes is similar to the IDS upgrade, but it isintegrated slightly more deeply into the aircraftsystems. A main ingredient of Pro Line 21 in thenewest business jets and turboprops that carrythe system is the integrated flight informationsystem. This computer file server resides in theavionics bay and is capable of hosting a widerange of software.

In addition to the cockpit upgrade for thePiaggio Avanti announced last year, Honey-well recently teamed with Ruag AerospaceServices in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, tobring its Primus Epic Control Display Sys-tem/Retrofit (CDS/R) system to six Bom-bardier Challenger 601-1As operated by theGerman Ministry of Defence.

Primus Epic CDS/R is a derivative of Hon-eywell’s Primus 1000/2000 and Primus Epicintegrated avionics systems. It offers two,three or four 8- by 10-inch active matrix LCDflat-panel screens and is available for retrofitinstallation in a variety of business jets.

Ruag Aerospace is performing the instal-lations at its Ruag Aerospace Services sub-

sidiary in Wessling, Germany. The companyis taking the lead in the design, installationand certification of the four-screen PrimusEpic CDS/R installation, just as Canadianresearch firm Marinvent did for the Avantiprogram. Following certification, Ruag plansto make the modification available to otherChallenger 601-1A operators and modifica-tion centers.

In addition to the display system retrofit,Ruag is installing Honeywell Primus 880weather radars and EGPWS with the optionalRunway Awareness and Alerting Systemsoftware add-on. The existing Honeywellautopilot and non-Honeywell radios and FMSare being retained as part of the installation.

Primus Epic CDS/R for the CL601

complete flight-testing the systemin a Challenger 601-3A late lastmonth. The latter STC approvalwill be a big one, as it will makeUniversal the first manufacturerto certify SVS in a Part 25 air-plane. Chelton Flight Systemswas the first ever to certify thetechnology when it gained FAAapproval for the FlightLogic EFISthrough a blanket STC related tothe Alaska Capstone technologydemonstration program.

Coincidence or not, the FAAAdvisory Circular dealing withSVS seems to have been writtenwith Universal’s concept in mind.The document talks about usingterrain shading, depicting bodiesof water using dark shades of blueand displaying other informationin language that closely mirrorseven early versions of Vision 1.

Universal originally soughtapproval for a concept that pre-sented a 3-D view of its terrainawareness and warning system(TAWS) on the multifunction dis-play. The FAA balked and Uni-versal was forced to accept acompromise in which terrain

could be shown on the MFD inthree dimensions in shades of red,yellow and green, but the picturecouldn’t show the airplane bank-ing. The result was a view of theworld that is useful to pilots butstrangely unrealistic.

Universal went back to thedrawing board and re-emergedwith the full SVS version of Vi-sion 1 (see photo on page 24), aproduct company president andCEO Ted Naimer–who routinelyflies the company Challenger intomountain airports in Europe–saidhe’s been dreaming about for along time.

Now that Universal has ob-tained its first approval for Vision1, the company is accelerating re-search into other advanced-visiontechnologies. Naimer and CMCElectronics president and CEOJean-Pierre Mortreux signed amultiyear distributor agreementat the EBACE show in Genevalast month that clears a path forUniversal to market CMC’s M-Series infrared enhanced-visionsystem. The executives said thealliance is only the beginning of a

much closer relationship for thecompanies, which are jointly ex-ploring a broad range of areaswhere marketing and engineeringpartnerships could aid both.

But that doesn’t mean amerger is in the cards, Naimeremphasized. Instead, the compa-nies decided to form the allianceto leverage the largely comple-mentary technologies each sellsto business aircraft operators andOEMs. Naimer and Mortreuxhave even started discussionsabout developing a combinedenhanced- and synthetic-visionsystem that would mate CMC’sinfrared camera with Universal’sVision 1 SVS. (The M-SeriesEVS initially will be used with Universal’s UCD electronicflight bag computer and laterwill be shown on the nav displayin its EFI-890R retrofit cockpit.List price for the camera systemis $66,000.)

An early pioneer in the field of advanced-vision research isRockwell Collins, which has beentesting and demonstrating tech-nologies that redraw digitized

maps of the earth’s topographyand combine them with infraredEVS. Test pilots from NASA andGulfstream flew a GV last yearequipped with the experimentalRockwell Collins SVS and acombination of other sister tech-nologies, including head-up dis-plays, a new type of multi-scanweather radar, a voice-recognitionsystem and cockpit displays in-cluding 3-D computer-generatedviews of the terrain, obstacles,runways and flight path.

During the trials pilots shot aseries of instrument approachesto NASA’s Wallops Flight Facil-ity in Virginia using only SVSfor visual guidance. With thewindshield intentionally blockedby a screen, Gulfstream andNASA pilots flew approaches tominimums using the computer-generated graphical informationdisplayed on an LCD monitorand on the HUD without anytrouble, researchers said. (In thepast, Gulfstream executives havestated emphatically that SVS willbe included in their top models,probably an indication that rivals

Bombardier and Dassault aren’tfar behind in discussions withavionics makers on similar cock-pit offerings.) NASA and Rock-well Collins have tested similarSVS/EVS concepts in NASA’sBoeing 727 using infrared sen-sors from manufacturer Max-Vizof Portland, Ore.

NASA Pioneers Advanced-vision Research

NASA has long been testingSVS concepts, taking the re-search project a step further re-cently by using millimeter-waveradar to supplement infraredEVS. Although the image pro-duced by millimeter-wave radarisn’t nearly as well defined asinfrared, it has the advantage ofbeing able to see through clouds.Fusion of infrared sensors tunedto various wavelengths and mil-limeter-wave radar acting as athird, active sensor could providea more complete view of theworld ahead of the aircraft,NASA researchers believe.

Synthetic vision is fast evolving from the wire-mesh stickpresentation ofChelton’s FlightLogicEFIS (below left), intovirtual worlds repletewith shaded hills andmountains, bodies of water and even a subtle haze in the distance, asshown in this conceptfrom Honeywell.

Ruag Aerospace is installing this Primus Epic CDS/Ravionics system in six Challenger 601-1A twinjets for the German Ministry of Defence.

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A number of business aircraft have received EFI-890Rcockpit components and are now awaiting the STC ap-provals for hardware and software upgrades that will inte-grate Universal Avionics’ Vision 1 SVS on the PFDs.

Most recently, Universal and Kansas City Aviation Cen-ter teamed to develop a three-screen LCD upgrade for thePilatus PC-12. Designed as a replacement for the turbopropsingle’s Bendix/King EFIS 40 cockpit, the Universal EFI-890R avionics system includes a pair of PFDs and an MFD,each measuring 8.9 inches diagonally. Priced at about$300,000, the package will include provisions for Vision 1,electronic charts, datalink weather, TAWS, color video andother features. Flight testing is expected to conclude by theend of this month.

Other Vision 1 programs currently in the worksinclude the following: IFR Avionics of Van Nuys, Calif.,has been awarded a contract to complete and certify afour-display EFI-890R suite in a Gulfstream III; DuncanAviation of Battle Creek, Mich., has completed an STC fora three-display EFI-890R installation in a King Air B300;Stevens Aviation, an authorized Universal Avionics dealer,was also selected to perform the retrofit work on the KingAir B300, at its installation facility in Nashville; DuncanAviation last April gained an STC for the system in theChallenger 600, an approval that followed the STC in the 601-3A in 2004; and Premier Air Center gained an STC for the flight deck upgrade in a Falcon 20, whichincluded four EFI-890R displays.

EFI-890R Buyers Awaiting Vision 1 Upgrades

BAE Systems and NASAdemonstrated such a system lastyear in a NASA Boeing 757 atthe Wallops Test Center. Duringone of the flights by a pair ofuninitiated Air Force pilots, atruck was parked on the end ofthe runway while a screen placedin front of the windshield blockedthe view ahead.

The Air Force pilots com-plained about the view created bythe millimeter-wave radar on theHUD (describing it as reminis-cent of snow on a Tv screen), butboth agreed it was similar tomaking a landing on a dark nightand that they could easily see thetruck. When all three sensorswere combined into a single EVSimage, the pilots said the picturewas far better. Ideal was the com-bination of EVS views laid atopan SVS presentation of the terrain

on the PFD, a technique thatblended the virtual and real viewswith illusory depth and texture.

Honeywell researchers, mean-while, have been demonstratingan SVS using terrain and obstacledata taken from the company’senhanced ground proximitywarning system (EGPWS). It’s asimilar video-game-like presenta-tion, but Honeywell claims itsconcept is more advanced than itscompetitors’ and that it has un-dergone significant human-fac-tors vetting at the company’slaboratory in Minneapolis.

The Honeywell concept over-lays symbology borrowed fromits HUD designs on a com-pelling 3-D view of hills, moun-tains, obstacles and runways incolors reminiscent of a VFR sec-tional chart. Fly too close to ter-rain or an obstacle and theportion of the display the com-

puters deem the biggest dangercould turn red as the EGPWStriggers an aural warning, Hon-eywell researchers say.

Honeywell’s Robertson saidthe company’s strategic plan isto have a certified SVS forPrimus Epic and the Apex sys-tem within five years, whichwill become common to all plat-forms. “In the future, terrain ona PFD is going to be a standardADI presentation,” he said. “Alot of people are working on dif-ferent concepts and we certainlyhave ours. The open architecture

of our products was designedfrom the very beginning to allowfor this kind of growth.”

Innovative Solutions & Sup-port, a company best known for itsRVSM equipment and more re-cently retrofit cockpits, has alsolaunched a research project relatedto SVS. The company plans tobring the technology to its line ofaftermarket cockpits for businessairplanes once it has finished de-veloping the system. IS&S founderand CEO Geoffrey Hedrick saidthe graphics portion of the productis finished and that designers havenow turned their attention to refin-ing the database, which will alsoinclude a class-A TAWS the com-pany is developing.

“The display graphics are wellalong in development,” Hedricksaid. “We are now in the databaseprocess, optimizing the compres-sion algorithms for the graphicalportion. Our interest is primarilyin improving the view in the ap-proach phase. We’re focusing on avery high-resolution database on

approach because you don’t reallyneed that precise a view whenyou’re flying along at 35,000 feet.”

IS&S’s synthetic-vision data-base and graphical engine will behosted on a file server that alsocontains Jeppesen electronic chartsand the TAWS. Hedrick said theFAA has yet to see the company’sSVS firsthand, but he added thatofficials have reviewed the con-cept as well as an electronic flightbag the company is designing. Asis the trend lately, this class-3device will be integrated with the displays, eliminating the needfor a separate handheld computer.The EFB would show a plan viewof terrain that pilots would use inconjunction with the SVS viewfor situational awareness.

Garmin and Avidyne have re-mained quiet about developmentwork related to SVS, but withthe first very light jets fromEclipse and Cessna nearing theiranticipated certification dates

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This Challenger 601-3A owned by Universal Avionics is undergoing final flighttesting for the Vision 1 SVS portion of the airplane’s EFI-890R cockpit.

STE

PH

EN

PO

PE

Rockwell Collins and NASA have been testing various SVS designs using highway-in-the-sky guidance cues and infrared EVS to aid situational awareness. Top right, IS&S of Exton, Pa., is currently refining the database for its developmental SVS.

Innovative Solutions & Support haslaunched upgrade programs for the Pilatus PC-12, a number of Cessna Citation models, Lear-

jet 35/36 and King Air, each of which calls forpulling out nearly all of the existing avionics inthe panel, installing the new IS&S-designed

panel and hooking up the wiring.The company claims the entireprocess, including training, manualrevisions and returning the aircraftto service, will take less than fourdays. Price for the complete cockpitpackage, including installation, istargeted at less than $250,000.

IS&S is in the process of ob-taining its first STC in the PC-12.

The full package can be integrated with RVSMhardware and includes four of the company’s6- by 8-inch flat-panel primary flight and navi-gation displays as replacements for the air-plane’s original EFIS gear. Next in line for theupgrades are Citations and Learjets, for whichthe company has already received orders.IS&S is also planning upgrade certificationprograms for the Learjet 20 series, theHawker 700 and a number of other models,although the timing will depend on ordersreceived. Each of the programs is plannedaround IS&S’s 8-, 10- and 15-inch displays.Authorized installers of the equipment areEpps Aviation in Atlanta and Western Aircraftin Boise, Idaho.

The majority of the avionics–such as FMS,radios, weather radar and so on–is retainedduring the upgrade, although adding new air-data computers and AHRS would likely bepart of the package for older airplanes. Duringthe installation, avionics shops would replaceexisting symbol generators with data concen-trator units and slide in the color displays (upto four total), consisting of PFDs and naviga-tion displays on the left and right. Otherequipment included in the retrofit comprisestwo main control panels and two aux panelsand new standby instruments produced byIS&S. The new control panels go exactlywhere the old panels went, and they even usethe same wiring.

Innovative Solutions & Support Targets Bizav

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experts are predicting cockpit-related announcements won’t belong in coming.

Chelton Flight Systems, mean-while, has targeted the businessturboprop and helicopter marketswith its FlightLogic SVS and hasobtained approval to install thesystem in the Citation 501, thefirst business jet to fly with a certified SVS.

The FAA’s TakeEven the scientists who

worked on the Army-Navy instru-mentation research project 50years ago realized that the per-spective-type instruments theyhad in mind would require a so-phisticated electronic display. Itwasn’t until many years later–in1994, when NASA, the FAA andprivate industry began extensiveexploration of ideas related toSVS–that people started takingthe technology seriously.

Part of the forward-thinking

Agate (Advanced General AviationTechnology Experiment) program,the research sought to reduce thefatal GA accident rate by usingartificial views of the world cou-pled with highway-in-the-sky(Hits) guidance tunnels to makeflying at night or in poor visibilityjust as safe as a day-VFR trip aloft.

NASA has been working onsynthetic vision for a lot longer(in the 1980s it studied ideas forSVS proposed for a supersoniccivil transport), but like e-mailand the World Wide Web it hastaken a while for the technologyto mature to the point that theconcept could make the leap fromsimple curiosity to everyday use.While SVS isn’t quite common-place in the cockpits of business

airplanes yet, the FAA’s increasingrecognition of the safety benefitsof the technology could mean thata synthetic cockpit view will soonbe as ubiquitous as e-mail.

That’s not to say FAA officialsdon’t have concerns about SVS.Chief among their worries is thatSVS as a background image on aPFD could detract from the read-ability of other symbology on thedisplay or provide misleadingterrain and orientation cues. Withthe release of AC 23-26 the FAAaddresses each of the concerns ina straightforward, logical waythat makes it clear to the readerthat the agency has thought aboutthe issue a lot.

From all the positive and con-structive comments about SVScontained in the document it’sclear that the FAA also under-stands what an important poten-tial safety innovation SVS reallyis and has grown eager to see itimplemented in general aviation.

In its advisory circular theFAA states its chief complaintsearly. The argument has longbeen that SVS would be so com-pelling that pilots might try touse it in ways that would putthem and their passengers in dan-gerous predicaments, such asscud-running through a mountainvalley. The FAA noted that cur-rent systems might not alwaysoffer the depth/distance cueingnecessary for safe terrain avoid-ance. Further raising the riskwould be a “compressed” displayproviding misleading altitude andrange estimations coupled witherrors from GPS, terrain data-bases and/or baro altimeters. Inother words, a pilot flying at lowaltitude in low visibility with anSVS that is not properly cali-brated is an accident waiting tohappen, the FAA said.

The AC points out the potentialdangers not merely because they

are seen as limitations of SVStechnology, but also to providemanufacturers with guidelines fordesigning systems that meet mini-mum safety criteria. For example,the AC states that if terrain is dis-played on the same screen as theprimary attitude indicator, pilotsshould be able to distinguish be-tween terrain above and below theairplane. Put another way, terrainabove the aircraft should appearabove the zero-pitch line and ter-rain below should be below theline; if the display shows the air-craft as clearing the terrain, itmust actually do so.

The zero-pitch line should behighly contrasted against mostpossible backgrounds, the docu-ment goes on to say. This isn’t aproblem with a traditional elec-tronic ADI, but because SVS terrain will incorporate variousshading and textures the zero-pitch line could be hard to see.

Also, because sloping terrainmight appear to the pilot as the

horizon line, the FAA wants mak-ers to employ a solid, bold zero-pitch line extending across theentire display. Other symbologyon the PFD, including the pitchladder, obstacles and traffic,should always be viewable with-out washing out against the ter-rain background.

Realism the GoalNoting that the view on the dis-

play has a limited left-to-right fieldof view, the FAA recommendsSVS be developed with a second,plan-view display. Normally thiswould be the nav display showingTAWS views, but it also could bea thumbnail map view on the PFD.The top-down TAWS presentationwould show elevation in sectional-chart colors or the red, yellow andgreen the TAWS uses.

Likewise, the FAA wantsavionics manufacturers to use col-oring and shading techniques onthe PFD that help the pilot under-stand what he is seeing. Shaded

Universal Avionics’ Vision 1 SVS is poisedto become the first certified in a Part 25business jet following anticipated approvalin the Challenger 601-3A. Right, NASAthinks the basic SVS presentation can beimproved with special guidance cues.

Shown here in the Pilatus PC-12, IS&S is developing a low-cost glass cockpitretrofit for business airplanes.

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brown terrain can be used effec-tively, the FAA said, especiallywhen color bands depict the heightof terrain relative to the aircraft.

In addition to sectional-chart-like colors, the FAA also recom-mends that SVS employ featuresand information that reproduce aclear, daytime picture that corre-lates directly to approach charts,including terrain, obstacles andrunway orientation. Such depic-tions are not mandatory, but they

are desirable and, if used, shouldbe evaluated by the manufacturerfor accuracy, with particular em-phasis on the database and itsupdate cycle, the FAA noted.Additionally, all certified SVSconcepts should incorporate aTSO’d TAWS or terrain warningsystem similar to TAWS includ-ing a “minimums” callout.

The FAA noted that bodies ofwater, including oceans, majorrivers and lakes, should be dis-

played, writing that differentshades and texture of blue can beused to differentiate between thesky and water. As noted earlier,Universal Avionics was the firstto seek certification for use ofwater on the PFD. The resultlooked so good that it is not un-reasonable to assume that Vision1 helped convince the FAA thatpilots won’t mistake a blue oceanfor the sky and accidentally try tofly upside-down.

Addressing the issue of terraindatabase integrity, the FAA notedthat 30-arc-second resolution(providing “round offs” of terrainpeaks and valleys) should be con-sidered the minimum, and thathigher resolution is desirable.(NASA found that pilots prefer tofly with databases portraying ter-rain in the highly realistic one- tothree-arc-second range).

Interestingly, this is but anotherinstance where the FAA wants the

view on the display to be as realis-tic as possible. The better the ter-rain resolution, the more hazardousthe terrain looks to the pilot andthe more likely he will be to steerclear. In fact, despite the earlierstated concerns about SVS dis-plays potentially being too com-pelling, the agency appears to havemade a 180 by pressing for sys-tems that are true to the real world.

FlightLogic for the Citation 501

Chelton Flight Systems has gained a blanketSTC for its FlightLogic EFIS covering hundreds ofsmall Part 23 airplanes, in addition to obtaining anadditional STC for the Citation 501 and offering thesystem in a variety of helicopters. Next in line forthe upgrade is the Citation 550.

The approvals include installation of Chelton’s6.25-inch-diagonal color LCD PFD and navigationdisplay, WAAS-certified GPS receiver and TAWS ina package that sells for less than $100,000 unin-stalled. So far the cockpit has proved most popularwith operators of turboprops and helicopters, butChelton has a plan to tackle the business jet market.

Bell has selected the FlightLogic system as stan-dard in the new 417 light single and plans to uselarger 6- by 8-inch displays that Chelton introducedrecently. The flat-panel screens will be the futurebaseline for cockpits targeted at larger Part 23 busi-ness jets, possibly to include older Learjets, Falconsand other Citation models.

Chelton hasn’t said which models will come first,but the larger displays should be enticing for bizjetoperators looking for a less costly option than theretrofit systems from Honeywell and RockwellCollins, which cost several hundred thousands ofdollars to buy and install. –S.P.

The first SVS certified for civil airplanes, Chelton’s FlightLogic EFIS has found a niche in businessaviation, recently with a STC for installation in the Cessna Citation 501.

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The FAA developed its SVSAdvisory Circular on the lessonslearned through trials with NASAand industry partners. One of thebig questions researchers grap-pled with was how the systemshould react during an upset.

Some within the agency saidthe SVS should automaticallyrevert to a traditional ADI, but

in its latest guidance the FAAsaid the SVS view should be re-tained during unusual attituderecovery, but that some indica-tion of the sky and groundshould always be visible on thePFD regardless of attitude.

The FAA writes that the ter-rain database should be devel-oped and maintained in a mannersimilar to TAWS and FMS data-

bases, adding that the view on thescreen should show a smooth de-piction of motion. The loss of ter-rain update (for example, a frozenscreen) is unacceptable.

SVS/EVS Blending Next?The combination of SVS and

EVS to create next-generationadvanced vision systems will de-pend heavily on future EVS tech-

nology. There are two primarytypes of EVS sensor, cooled anduncooled. Cryogenically cooledsensors provide a higher-resolu-tion image than microbolometer-type uncooled sensors but theyalso carry much higher prices. Asan example, whereas the CMCinfrared sensor selected by Uni-versal Avionics for the EFI-890Rcockpit carries a list price of less

than $70,000, top-of-the-linecryogenically cooled systems runin the range of $500,000.

Kollsman has introduced anext-generation cryogenicallycooled EVS as a follow-on to theAll Weather Window product cer-tified in 2001 and flying todayaboard more than 300 Gulf-streams. (The highest-time air-craft in the fleet has flown morethan 5,000 hours with EVS,Kollsman noted.)

The EVS II product will be astandard feature in the largerGulfstreams and has been se-lected by FedEx for its fleet ofwidebodies. This new-generationsensor is claimed to offer thehighest sensitivity available,measured in NETD (noise equiv-alent temperature delta) of lessthan five millikelvins. By con-trast, Kollsman’s original EVS istuned to what had been an indus-try-best 16 millikelvins NETD.The new detector has a farsharper picture than the original,said Roy Gentry, Kollsman exec-utive director for commercial avi-ation systems marketing.

Also announced is a lower-cost microbolometer EVS fromKollsman called Gavis (GeneralAviation Vision System), with anNETD of about 50 millikelvins.Grob has selected Gavis for theSPn utility jet, both companiesannounced at EBACE last month.Designed around an aerodynamicteardrop-shaped fairing, the Gaviscamera system weighs less thanfour pounds and can be installedin a variety of locations, includ-ing the top or bottom of thenose, the top of the fuselage oratop the tail.

In the Grob jet Gavis will befitted in a special fairing on topof the nose. The camera has a30-degree field of view, provid-ing a realistic view ahead of theairplane. Price for Gavis is tar-geted at $92,500.

At last November’s NBAAConvention Kollsman announcedthat it had formally launched anSVS program, and Gentry saidthe company is currently seekinga partner whereby Kollsmanwould develop the synthetic-vi-sion software portion of the prod-uct and then perhaps license it toan avionics manufacturer. Gentryadded that it could be only amatter of time before syntheticdisplays mix with enhanced in-frared views to create a futureadvanced-vision system.

“There are some interestingdiscussions going on within theFAA right now about how far youcan go with just synthetic visionbefore you need to put the E inSVS,” he said. When the timecomes, he promised, Kollsmanwill be ready with a product. o

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