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April 2011

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www.avionicstoday.com April 2011 Avionics Magazine 3

The editors welcome articles, engineering and technical reports, new product information, and other industry news. All editorial inquiries should be directed to Avionics Magazine, 4 Choke Cherry Rd., Second Floor, Rockville, MD 20850–4024; 301-354-1820; fax: 301-340-8741. email: [email protected]. Avionics Magazine (ISSN-1085-9284) is published monthly by Access Intelligence, LLC, 4 Choke Cherry Rd., Second Floor, Rockville, MD 20850. Periodicals Postage Paid at Rockville, MD, and additional mailing offices. Subscriptions: Free to qualified individuals directly involved in the avionics industry. All other subscriptions, U.S.: one year $99; two years $188. Canada: one year $129; two years $228. Foreign: one year $149; two years $278. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Avionics Magazine, P.O. Box 3092, Northbrook, IL 60065-3092. Change of address two to eight weeks notice requested. Send both new and old address, including mailing label to Attn: Avionics Magazine, Customer services, P.O. Box 3092, Northbrook, IL 60065-3092, or call 847-559-7314. Email: [email protected]. Canada Post PM40063731. Return Undeliverable Canadian Addresses to: Station A, PO Box 54, Windsor, ON N9A 6J5 ©2011 by Access Intelligence, LLC Contents may not be reproduced in any form without written permission.

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April 2011 • Vol. 35, No. 4


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■E-Letters• Review of top developments in the civil

and military aircraft electronics industry

■Webinars www.aviationtoday.com/webinars

• UAS Civil Airspace Integration: Progress and Challenges

• Issues in Air Traffic Management

• Business Jet Connections: In-Flight Connectivity Services and Solutions for

Business Aircraft

• Airborne RFID: Radio Frequency Identification Takes Off

• ADS-B: Progress and Implementation

• Airport Surface Management: Enhancing Safety, Situational Awareness on Runways

■Online Resources• Aerospace Acronym Guide

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Cover: FedEx Express Aircraft Maintenance Technician at work below aircraft. This month, we profile FedEx’s avionics maintenance test and repair capabilities. Photo courtesy FedEx.

Editor’s NoteCost Conundrum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

DepartmentsScan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16Ad Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26New Products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34

FedEx Delivers Maintenance ....................... 18Cargo carrier and host airline of this year’s AMC, AEEC annual meetings in Memphis,

FedEx balances technological advances in avionics with maintaining a varied fleet

by Frances Fiorino

Airborne RFID .............................................. 27Application of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags for component tracking on aircraft

is upon us, at least for tags that are “passive” or without an integral power supply

by Bill Carey

CH-53 Kilo Cockpit ...................................... 22The new cockpit of the U.S. Marine Corps CH-53K Heavy Lift Replacement helicopter will

feature “best pieces” from avionics updates developed for other military programs

by Frank Colucci

22

ef0ciently and reliably

product focus

Aircraft Lighting ............................................ 31The adoption of light-emitting diode (LED) technology in interior and exterior applications

in commercial and business aircraft is growing, but some challenges remain

by Ed McKenna

4 Avionics Magazine April 2011 www.avionicstoday.com

editor’s noteb y B i l l C a r e y

Cost Conundrum

When JetBlue Airways and FAA announced their partnership to equip JetBlue A320s for ADS-B Out capability, subsidized by $4.2

million in federal dollars, the reporters in the peanut gallery wanted to know how FAA — or anybody — planned to outfit the rest of the United States fleet.

It’s a troubling question that overshadows all discussions of NextGen. By FAA’s own calculation, industry’s cost to equip for ADS-B Out will range from $2.5 billion to $6.2 billion, making the laudable program with JetBlue, a similar partnership with US Airways and other efforts seem like the proverbial drop-in-the-bucket. Estimates of the overall cost of NextGen to airlines and other airspace users range from $12 billion to $20 billion.

There are still other challenges of stan-dardization, integration, harmonization and, ominously, allocation of spectrum for pieces like GPS and data communications. But for now, cost intrudes upon every waking thought of NextGen. And the prospect of a National Infrastructure Bank notwithstanding, sub-stantial federal government support seems remote with the country $14 trillion in debt and Congress in a cost-cutting mood.

It’s a similar situation in Europe, where 18 “pioneer” airlines have proven ADS-B for air-traffic services, and the SESAR Joint Undertaking has embarked on 29 validation projects this year to further prime the pump. But inevitably cost clouds the vision of the Single European Sky.

Since my last dispatch, I’ve heard the cost conundrum discussed on both sides of the Atlantic. Here’s some perspectives:

Sharing his thoughts at the FAA Forecast Conference in mid-February, Will Ris, senior vice president of government affairs for AMR Corp. and American Airlines, said, “I’ll tell you how we think we should get there. It’s not working so well, but I’ll give you the argu-ment at any rate. We have an air-traffic control system today that is largely ground based. All we’re doing when we’re talking about NextGen is we’re taking a known technology — GPS technology — and moving part of the equipment in the air and part of the equip-ment will be on the ground.

“It is our view that that air-traffic control system should continue to be financed and supported by the federal government because that’s after all, where all the ticket taxes are

going and that’s the format we’ve had for all these years,” Ris argued. “We’re just chang-ing the location of some of the equipment. That is not a position that anybody is saluting because that would mean the federal govern-ment would be paying for equipage in the airplanes. But that would be what we think would be the right public policy.”

In a keynote speech at the conference, Alaska Airlines CEO William Ayer cited his company’s participation in the “Greener Skies Over Seattle” project to implement Required Navigation Performance (RNP) approaches to each runway end at Seattle-Tacoma Inter-national Airport. “The Greener Skies project represents a microcosm of the various ele-ments that must be met in order to truly mod-ernize the National Airspace System,” Ayer said. “We believe that what we’re doing in Seattle can serve as a template for advancing NextGen in other parts of the country. One of the keys to this is the FAA shifting to a ‘best equipped, best served’ standard, and we very much applaud that philosophical shift.

“But to be candid, there are many skeptics who aren’t sure the FAA can implement the major overhaul that NextGen represents,” he added. “So we’ve got a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem with the funding and the equi-page side. We’re advocates for doing more of these demonstration projects, proving the ben-efits and making the case that a substantial long-term investment is going to be required.”

The cost to industry of NextGen and SESAR came up weeks later in a panel discussion at ATC Global in Amsterdam. “I’m not the customer; I’m just paying the enroute charges,” argued Capt. Michiel Van Dorst, executive vice president, Flight Opera-tions, with KLM. “This is a burden which the airlines cannot take on by themselves, pre-financing.” But Van Dorst said a best equipped, best served approach is an incentive for airlines to equip, because “we are fighting for every 20 seconds (of) throughput time.”

An interesting reverse argument was offered by Steve Fulton, technical fellow with GE Aviation. “We’re grossly underestimating what the cost of the current system is in its underperformance,” said Fulton.

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www.avionicstoday.com February 2011 Avionics Magazine 7

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COMMERCIAL

SESAR Validation The public-private entity charged with developing the Single European Sky vision will conduct 29 validation projects in Europe this year with the aim of intro-ducing “pre-industrial” procedures, poli-cies and products of the future European air-traffic management (ATM) system.

Executives of the Single European Sky ATM Research Joint Undertaking (SESAR JU) described the SESAR “first release” March 8 at the ATC Global conference in Amsterdam. The valida-tion projects will span the broad areas of “green” terminal airspace operations; four-dimensional (4D) trajectories; end-to-end traffic synchronization and collab-orative network management.

The first-release grouping resulted from a review of the status of 300 active SESAR work projects, to determine where early results could be achieved.

“The aim of the release really is to put together the final results of research and development, to bring to the community the results in terms of pre-industrializa-tion solutions,” said Florian Guillermet, SESAR JU chief program officer.

“Then a decision has to be made (as to) whether they are going to be deployed or not. … We have to control the expecta-tions to a certain extent. We have, as well, to remain humble with this first release. It’s the very first time we are doing an activity like this in Europe.”

There will be 16 specific operational focus areas addressed by the 29 projects, such as Optimized Required Navigation Performance Structures; Point Merge in Complex Terminal Control Area; and initial 4D capability plus Controlled Time of Arrival. A second release in 2012 will be more aggressive in terms of the number and types of activities, Guillermet said.

“This delivery activity is something that we intend not only to start this year, but to continue on a yearly basis in the program, and that’s how the R&D activi-ties are going to deliver the results in the future,” he said.

FAA NGIP UpdateDirection on the use of Automatic Depen-dent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) In and Data Communications will be forth-coming this year and in 2012, according

to FAA’s latest NextGen Implementation Plan (NGIP) update, released in March.

The initial recommendations of an Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC) formed last year to look into the applica-tion of ADS-B In are due to FAA this fall, according to the NGIP.

“Those findings are expected to pro-vide a clear definition on how the aviation community should proceed with ADS-B In, while ensuring compatibility with the ADS-B Out avionics standards detailed in the ADS-B Out final rule published in May 2010,” FAA said. The latter rule mandates ADS-B Out capability by 2020.

Feedback to the ARC recommenda-tions will be incorporated in an ARC final report due by June 2012, FAA said.

“The ARC’s work will set the stage for future ADS-B In applications, such as spacing and merging aircraft using flight deck interval management,” the agency said. “This capability provides more precise aircraft-to-aircraft position information to the flight deck, enabling flight crews to line up their aircraft more efficiently on final approach, saving fuel and maximizing runway capacity.”

FAA said it is “moving ahead” with Data Communications development that will enable the exchange of digital air-traf-fic control information between control-lers and pilots, and direct auto-load into

aircraft flight management systems.The agency said a final investment

decision slated for 2012 will enable it to contract with a vendor to provide the VHF radio network that will carry Data Comm messages.

Airport towers are expected to begin offering departure clearances with revi-sions to Future Air Navigation System (FANS) 1/A+ equipped aircraft by 2015, according to FAA. Enroute centers are expected to be capable of issuing airborne reroutes via Data Comm in 2018.

“This planning date has been adjusted out two years as we continue to weigh the complexity of integrating enhancements into the National Airspace System as well as budget adjustments,” FAA said.

FAA, EU Accord The European Union and FAA signed

a memorandum of cooperation March 3 in the field of civil aviation research and development, and a first annex covering “cooperative activities and interoperabil-ity aspects” of the SESAR and NextGen air-traffic modernization programs.

The agreement was signed during a high-level conference in Budapest orga-nized by the Hungarian Presidency and European Commission.

“The conference focused on identifying tangible measures to finalize implementa-

Florian Guillermet, SESAR JU chief program officer, speaks March 8 at ATC Global conference in Amsterdam. He described a ‘first-release’ program of 29 projects.

Bill C

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to


tion of the Single European Sky,” accord-ing to a summary. “Substantial benefits are expected from enhanced cooperation between the European bodies involved in air-traffic management as well as from the extension of the Single European Sky to non-EU states.”

Carey Fagan, FAA executive director for international affairs, signed the memo-randum of cooperation for the U.S. Pal Volner, state secretary for transport for Hungary, and Siim Kallas, EU vice presi-dent and commissioner for transport and mobility, signed on behalf of the EU.

The agreement calls for both sides to research the interoperability of avionics, communication protocols and procedures, as well as operational methods under SESAR and NextGen.

ADS-B Second Supplier Selex Systems Integration Inc., Overland Park, Kan., announced the award of a contract from ITT Corp., as the second source radio supplier for ITT’s Auto-matic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) system rollout.

Under the contract, Selex will deliver more than 400 radios during a three-year performance period. The radio is intended for use in both ADS-B and multilatera-tion (MLAT) applications. The contract includes options for additional units and for extended depot maintenance support over the service life of the radios.

ITT in August 2007 was selected by FAA to provide a nationwide ADS-B ground infrastructure consisting of 794 ground-based transceivers. As part of the ITT industry team, Thales North America’s Air Traffic Management busi-ness in Shawnee, Kan., was selected as the first supplier of dual-link 1090 MHz and UAT transceivers under a three-year, $40 million contract.

Last October, ITT said it successfully completed the first segment of the ADS-B contract following the implementation of “critical services,” including the display of down-linked ADS-B targets on controller displays, at key sites in Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico, Louisville and Philadelphia. The company also installed 300 of the ground-based terminals, clearing the way for the segment 2 phase of the contract.

Selex Systems Integration is a wholly owned subsidiary of Selex Sistemi Inte-grati, SpA, of Italy. The ADS-B radios will be manufactured in Overland Park.

‘Save GPS’ CoalitionAviation industry associations and manu-facturers were among initial members of the “Coalition to Save Our GPS,” formed to oppose the application by Light-Squared LLC to use L-band spectrum for a new nationwide broadband service.

Joining the coalition, announced March 10 in Washington, D.C., were the

Aeronautical Repair Stations Association, Air Transport Association, Aircraft Own-ers and Pilots Association, Garmin and General Aviation Manufacturers Associa-tion, among companies and organizations from other industries.

The coalition cites the “highly unusual decision” by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in January to issue

industry scan


a conditional waiver to LightSquared to use L-Band spectrum adjacent to that of GPS, potentially interfering with millions of GPS receivers.

The FCC waiver allows LightSquared to use spectrum in the 1525-1559 MHz band for broadband transmissions if the company can demonstrate that harmful interference will be avoided. The GPS sys-tem operates in the 1559-1610 MHz band.

“The usual FCC process of conducting extensive testing followed by approvals was not followed in this instance. Instead, the process was approve first, then test,” the GPS coalition stated.

It calls for FCC and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to ensure LightSquared’s license modification is contingent on the outcome of a mandated study that is “comprehensive, objective and based on correct assumptions about existing GPS uses rather than theoretical possibilities.”

VDL Mode 2 Air transport communications provider SITA announced March 7 that its VHF Digital Link Mode 2 (VDL Mode 2) service is now available to airlines in the United States.

SITA said it has added VDL radios to 50 of the 300 VHF ACARS station sites in the United States already used by some U.S. airlines. The VDL coverage expansion provides SITA customer air-lines that have installed VDL radios with a 20-fold increase in link capacity for ACARS, the company said.

SITA has been FAA’s Oceanic data communications service provider since 1999. Its service supports air-traffic con-trol systems based at Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCCs) at Oakland, Anchorage and Ronkonkoma, N.Y. as part of the Advanced Technologies and Oceanic Procedures (ATOP) and Flight Data Processing-2000 systems.

VDL Mode 2 communications will be required under FAA’s NextGen Data Comm program, SITA said.

“SITA has been working on the VDL services the FAA requires since ICAO VDL standardization was first launched,” said Philip Clinch, SITA Vice President Aircraft Services. “The VDL definition took advantage of emerging digital radio technology to increase link capacity by a factor of 20 compared to the VHF ACARS link which has been available up to now. Our VDL investment

U.S.-wide shows the FAA and the air-craft operators that SITA has the VDL network in place and ready for when air-craft are equipped to use the FAA Data Comm services.”

Flight TrackingAvailable avionics used in flight-tracking applications, coupled with new proce-dures, would provide improved aircraft tracking in oceanic and remote airspace.

These are recommendations of the Oceanic Position Tracking Improvement & Monitoring (OPTIMI) project, con-ducted in the aftermath of the loss of Air France Flight 447 in the Atlantic Ocean in June 2009. The project was conducted under the auspices of the Single Euro-pean Sky ATM Research Joint Under-taking (SESAR JU), the public-private entity overseeing Europe’s SESAR air-traffic modernization program.

According to the SESAR JU, the project included in-flight demonstra-tions involving commercial flights in the North Atlantic, European and African regions of the Atlantic Ocean. The objective was to assess the value of using existing Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Contract (ADS-C) services and Controller-Pilot Datalink Com-munications (CPDLC), in combination with new procedures and protocols, to improve flight tracking. Products of the Future Air Navigation System (FANS) concept developed by Boeing and Airbus for long-haul aircraft, ADS-C involves the downlink of aircraft position reports controlled by a ground station; CPDLC is the exchange of data messages between pilots and controllers.

“The consortium carrying out the project on behalf of the SJU recom-mended on a technological level to encourage the equipage and use of Future Air Navigation System products for Oceanic Area Control Centers and aircraft flying oceanic areas; this will cover in particular ADS-C and CPDLC,” the SESAR JU reported.

“At the same time, improvements of procedures should be envisaged with the automatic transmission of the aircraft position in oceanic and remote areas in an interval of 15 minutes. An automatic transmission of the position should be triggered whenever a deviation from the planned route is detected.”

Stated Jose Calvo Fresno, SESAR JU chief of Regulatory Affairs, “The

OPTIMI study shows that the technical elements to improve aircraft tracking are already available. It is now important to make full use of this technology by pro-posing the necessary regulatory changes.”

Based on the final report of the con-sortium, the SESAR JU will propose regulatory “initiatives” to the European Commission in the first half of 2011. “There are several possibilities, from a purely prescriptive approach, in line with datalink regulation, to the use of incen-tive mechanisms exploring the perfor-mance scheme,” the organization said.

ATM

ANSP CommunicationsMembers of Functional Airspace Block-Europe Central (FABEC), consisting of the Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) of France, Belgium, Luxem-bourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland, signed a 10-year framework agreement with SITA to provide an air/ground com-munication infrastructure.

The agreement, announced March 8 at the ATC Global conference in Amsterdam, will enable FABEC to meet the European Union’s 2013 deadline for implementation of controller-pilot datalink communications (CPDLC) across Europe, SITA said. The airspace controlled by the FABEC ANSPs covers 55 percent of European air traffic.

SITA said the communication infra-structure will support Aeronautical Telecommunications Network (ATN) protocol and VHF Digital Link Mode 2 (VDL Mode 2). The scope of agreement includes VHF ground stations, SITA’s Aircom Monitoring System (AMOS) to supervise the equipment and test tools.

SITA said it is teaming with EGIS Avia of France to provide ProATN routers to FABEC. The agreement also includes the sharing of the air/ground infrastructure, allowing SITA to provide operational communications to airlines.

The FABEC agreement adds to exist-ing relationships between SITA and ANSPs in Germany, Portugal and Spain for ATN and VDL Mode 2.


O N L I N E


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New U.S. Departures Terminal Dedicated At Bahamas Gateway Airport

NASSAU, The Bahamas – Bahamian government and airport officials on Feb. 26 celebrated the completion of a new United States Departures Terminal at Nassau’s Lynden Pindling International Airport (LPIA), describing the facility as key to the economic revitalization of The Bahamas.

Completion of the 247,000-square-foot U.S. Departures Terminal is the signature achievement of the first phase of a planned, three-phase redevelop-ment costing $409.5 million. The termi-nal provides customs preclearance for outbound flights to the United States, allowing them to operate as domestic flights upon arrival at their destinations. It began operations in March.

With the completion of second and third phases of the redevelopment in 2012-2013, the airport will have capacity to serve 5 million passengers annually; it served 3.2 million in 2008.

“Today, we are definitely on our way to realizing the long-deferred national aspiration for an attractive, modern and efficient principal air gateway to The Bahamas,” Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham told a crowd of 2,000 gath-ered for the opening ceremony. “This is befitting of our status as the premier destination in our region.”

In an interview after the ceremony,

Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace, Minister of Tourism and Aviation, said LPIA serves as the hub for other major islands of The Bahamas. “If Nassau/Paradise Island in The Bahamas was a country by itself, it would be No. 4 in terms of total air arrivals, it would be No. 2 in terms of total visitors, and it’s No. 1 in cruise passengers,” he said. “But Nas-sau/Paradise Island is only 2 percent of The Bahamas. So 98 percent of the country has not been developed as yet.”

The plan is to grow intra-Bahamas

air travel, Vanderpool-Wallace said. “What you will be shocked to hear is we have on the order of eight scheduled air-lines operating in The Bahamas today,” he said. “The problem is that a lot of them are not connected to the global distribution system, so people from else-where cannot book them directly, and we’re working to fix that.”

Stage 2 of the LPIA redevelop-ment will see renovation of the existing U.S. departures terminal, which will serve as a new International Arriv-als Terminal opening in 2012. Stage 3 involves the design and construction of a 112,000-square-foot domestic arrivals and departures terminal, as well as an International Departures Terminal. The last facilities will open in 2013.

The Nassau Airport Development Company is overseeing the LPIA proj-ect, which is managed by Vancouver Airport Services of Canada. Among other projects, the latter company man-aged a $120 million expansion of Sang-ster International Airport in Montego Bay, Jamaica, completed in 2009.

The LPIA redevelopment will result in 585,000 square feet of terminal space, a 21 percent increase over the current footprint. The project includes 34 new gates, with one capable of handling the Airbus A380. — Bill Carey

Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace Minister of Tourism and Aviation

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BUSINESS/GA

G1000H Cockpit Garmin International on March 6 unveiled the G1000H integrated glass cockpit for VFR Part 27 helicopters carry-ing up to nine passengers. Bell Helicopter, launch customer for the avionics suite, will install the G1000H on its Bell 407GX.

Leveraging features of its G1000 fixed-wing counterpart, the G1000H integrates control and presentation of most flight data, sensor and instrument functions on large, high-resolution displays.

Optional features include Garmin’s Helicopter Synthetic Vision Technology (HSVT), Helicopter Terrain Awareness and Warning System (HTAWS), GDL 69AH weather display and GSR 56H Iridium datalink, the company said.

Garmin also announced that it has ini-tiated work to obtain a supplemental type certificate for installation of the Garmin G500H glass cockpit in the Robinson R44 four-place, piston-engine helicopter.

MILITARY

Multispectral SensorNorthrop Grumman completed installa-tion and testing of a multispectral intel-ligence sensor housed in a new keel beam accessory (KAB) bay on a modified E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS) aircraft.

The installation and test examined the use of the 500-pound MS-177 mul-tispectral camera, to see how the sensor enhances combat identification in support of Joint STARS’ battle management role.

While in test flights off the coast of Florida, Joint STARS operators tasked the MS-177 sensor to collect information and streamed data into the battle man-agement system already in place. Joint STARS operators were able to simultane-ously exploit ground moving target indica-tion (GMTI) and high-resolution imagery. Images also were transmitted to off-board SIPRNET elements using beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS) satellite communications.

“Flight tests on the Joint STARS testbed aircraft proved the KAB, located directly behind the APY-7 radar, can sup-port an additional large sensor, or multiple small sensors with no impact to the sys-tem’s current battle management com-mand and control and intelligence, surveil-lance and reconnaissance capability,” said Mike Mos, Northrop Grumman director of Joint STARS architectures and concept demonstrations.

Engineering CenterBoeing started hiring engineers and other staff for its new engineering design cen-ter in Oklahoma City that will produce upgrades of the C-130 Hercules and B-1 Lancer aircraft, including new cockpits.

The company announced last August that programs will begin to transition from Long Beach, Calif., to Oklahoma City. The transition will shift 550 jobs to Okla-homa City by the end of 2012 and create 150 open positions this year, Boeing said.

Recruiting is targeted at engineering disciplines, including embedded software, structural, design and analysis; wire design and installation; and systems. Business support jobs for the C-130 and B-1 pro-

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The Oklahoma City center includes 50,000 square feet of space that is being remodeled to accommodate the C-130 workers who will begin arriving in April.

UNMANNED SYSTEMS

UAS Refueling A “major step forward” in demonstrat-

ing autonomous refueling between two unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) at high altitude has been accomplished.

Northrop Grumman announced March 9 that its Proteus test aircraft and a NASA Global Hawk flew as close as 40 feet apart at an altitude of 45,000 feet dur-ing a risk-reduction test flight Jan. 21. Par-ticipating with Northrop Grumman in the demonstration were the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, located in Edwards, Calif.

DARPA’s $33 million KQ-X program will demonstrate autonomous fuel trans-fer between two Global Hawks, enabling flights of up to one-week endurance. KQ-X follows the 2006 DARPA Autono-mous Aerial Refueling Demonstration (AARD), a joint effort with NASA Dryden that used an F-18 fighter as a surrogate unmanned aircraft to autono-mously refuel through a probe and drogue from a Boeing 707 tanker.

Northrop Grumman said the January demonstration flight was key to reducing risks as the program prepares for autono-mous aerial refueling of two Global Hawks in the spring of 2012.

Wake turbulence between the Proteus and Global Hawk aircraft as well as engine performance and flight control responsive-ness in the stratosphere were evaluated. Simulated breakaway maneuvers were also conducted, the company said.

BAMS Design ReviewNorthrop Grumman said it conducted

a critical design review of the MQ-4C Broad Area Maritime Surveillance Unmanned Aircraft System (BAMS) with the U.S. Navy in February.

The MQ-4C system CDR, which was preceded by 10 subsystem and segment CDRs, sets the initial product baseline for the MQ-4C, a marinized version of the U.S. Air Force RQ-4B Global Hawk. Changes to the RQ-4B include a stronger

wing, an ice protection system and a sen-sor suite based on components or entire systems already fielded in the Department of Defense inventory.

The program’s next major milestone, Test Readiness Review, is planned this fall.

The first two fuselages of the BAMS System Development and Demonstration phase are under construction at Northrop Grumman’s Moss Point, Miss., facility.

The first fuselage was slated to ship in April to the company’s Palmdale, Calif., manufacturing center for final assembly and first flight in 2012.

The BAMS program is managed by the Navy’s Program Executive Office, Unmanned Aviation and Strike Weapons Persistent Maritime Unmanned Aircraft Systems Program Office (PMA-262) at NAS Patuxent River, Md.

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peopleDon EmbtCSSI, an engineering, IT and applied research company based in Washington, D.C., promoted Don Embt to program manager for the company’s System Engineering 2020 (SE2020) contract.

Embt has more than 20 years of experience in engineering and project management. For more than 15 years, he has supported FAA technically and as a manager and supervisor of various projects and contracts.

CSSI was awarded a SE2020 prime contract in 2010 to pro-vide systems engineering and program management of several Next Generation Air Transportation System projects.

Doug MurriDoug Murri has joined inflight entertainment supplier Row 44, of Westlake Village, Calif., as director, Airline Solutions.

Murri was most recently with Southwest Airlines. In his 16 years with the airline, Murri designed, led and implemented several key business-system and technology initiatives, includ-ing the airline’s implementation of mission critical aircraft messaging for both airborne and ground systems. He designed and deployed Southwest’s first remote server infrastructure at airport locations.

Murri also was instrumental in developing Southwest’s Onboard Performance Computer, an early electronic flight bag.

Jerry BemisNextant Aerospace, of Cleveland, appointed Jerry Bemis vice president of manufacturing. Bemis has more than 25 years of aviation experience. He has led worldwide maintenance efforts for commercial carriers United and Delta Air Lines in addition to the fractional aircraft provider Flight Options.

Capt. Jaime EngdahlCapt. Jaime W. Engdahl was named head of the Naval Air Systems Command Unmanned Combat Air System Demon-stration Program, UCAS-D (PMA-268). Engdahl, who was previously the deputy program manager for the E-6B Mercury Block I/IA program, succeeded Capt. Jeffrey R. Penfield, who was recently selected for promotion to rear admiral.

Engdahl completed flight training in Pensacola, Fla., and was designated a Naval Flight Officer in 1984. His operational assignments include Electronic Attack Squadrons 129 and 130. He has flown more than 80 combat sorties and logged 250 flight hours over Iraq and Bosnia. Engdahl also served as an acquisition professional in PMA-265 and in the E-6B program.

Mark AndrewsMetron Aviation, of Dulles, Va., appointed Mark Andrews weather principal subject matter expert.

Andrews has more than 30 years of experience in meteoro-logical activities, including planning, budgeting and operation-al execution and improvement of U.S. aviation-related services.

Andrews joins Metron Aviation from the National Oceanic

Don Embt


and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), where he was the assistant director, Department of Commerce, NextGen Joint Planning and Development Office. He facilitated the creation and evolution of all foundational weather documents related to NextGen, including a weather concept of operations, integrated work plans and policy development.

Moshe TalAitech Rugged Group, based in Chats-worth, Calif., named Moshe Tal as CEO, succeeding Roger Rowe, who retired in 2010.

Tal has been with the company since 2009 working in several departments, including business development, engi-neering and and marketing. He has more than 25 years of product design and engi-neering experience, principally associated with analog and digital signal processing technologies.

Previously, Tal was vice president of AudioCodes USA, a Voice over Internet protocol company. He joined AudioCodes USA in 2004 in connection with the acquisition of Ai-Logix.

Alan NormanAlan Norman was named chief test pilot for the F-35 Lightning II program. Prior to joining Lockheed Martin in 1999, Norman served in the U.S. Air Force for 23 years as a fighter pilot and test pilot. In 1999, he left active duty and became an experimen-

tal test pilot for Lockheed Martin on the F-22 program. He is also Lockheed Martin’s chief pilot for the T-50 program.

Stuart HarveyIntegrated Microwave Technologies, of Mount Olive, N.J., appointed Stuart Harvey international sales director.

Harvey was most recently divisional director for Synetics Surveillance Technology, a U.K. provider of security systems. He previously worked for L-3 Communications TRL Technol-ogy, Zener Designs and Motorola GSM Systems, Swindon.

Rick StineStandardAero named Rick Stine senior vice president of its Components Sector in Cincinnati. Stine comes to StandardAero from HEICO, where he was senior vice president, Technical Operations.

Previously, Stine worked for GE Aircraft Engines, where he served as team leader and design engineer for advanced exhaust systems and hot section components for the Advanced Tactical Fighter demonstrator program and civil aviation programs.

Jeff MillerLandmark Aviation named Jeff Miller general manager of its Dallas, Addison and Wichita Falls, Texas, locations.

Miller started his aviation career in the U.S. Air Force. He spent time with Miller Aviation and Trajen Flight Support before making the move to Atlantic Aviation in 2007, where he was general manager of its El Paso, Texas, location.

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April

5-7 Aircraft Interiors Expo, Hamburg Messe, Hamburg, Germany. For infor-

mation, phone +44 (0)208 271 2174 or visit www.aircraftinteriorsexpo.com.

11-14 Navy League Sea-Air-Space Exposition, Gaylord National Resort &

Convention Center, National Harbor, Md. Visit www.seaairspace.org.

17-20 Quad A Annual Convention, Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention

Center, Nashville, Tenn. Visit www.quad-a.org.

18-21 AMC/AEEC Joint Meetings, Marriott Downtown, Memphis, Tenn.

Contact ARINC Industry Activities, phone 410-266-2008 or visit

www.aviation-ia.com/amc.

May

2-5 16th Annual International Symposium on Aviation Psychology, Wright

State University and Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio. Visit

www.wright.edu/isap.

10-12 Integrated Communications Navigation and Surveillance (ICNS)

Conference, Westin Washington Dulles Airport, Dulles, Va. Visit http://i-cns.org.

17-19 European Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition (EBACE),

Geneva PALEXPO and Geneva International Airport, Geneva, Switzerland.

Visit www.ebace.aero.

17-19 Air Traffic Control Association/FAA/NASA Technical Symposium,

Resorts Hotel and Casino, Atlantic City, N.J. For information, contact ATCA at

703-299-2430 or visit www.atca.org/techsymposium.

June

15-16 RTCA 2011 Annual Symposium: Accelerating NextGen Through

Public-Private Partnership, Walter E. Washington Convention Center,

Washington, D.C. Visit www.aviationtoday.com/rtca.

20-26 Paris Air Show, Le Bourget, Paris. Visit www.paris-air-show.com.

July

20-23 Airborne Law Enforcement Association (ALEA) Annual Conference

and Exhibition, Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, New Orleans. Contact

ALEA, phone 301- 631-2406 or visit www.alea.org.

August

16-19 Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International

Unmanned Systems North America, Walter E. Washington Convention

Center, Washington, D.C. Visit www.auvsi.org.

16-21 MAKS 2011 International Aviation & Space Salon, Zhukovsky,

Moscow Region, Russia. Visit www.aviasalon.com.

September

11-15 Airline Passenger Experience Association (APEX) Conference &

Exhibition, Washington State Convention Center, Seattle. Visit http://apex.aero.

12-15 Autotestcon 2011, Baltimore Convention Center, Baltimore.

Visit http://autotestcon.com.

October

3-5 Air Traffic Control Association (ATCA) Annual Conference &

Exposition, Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, National Harbor,

Md. Contact ATCA, phone 703-299-2430 or visit www.atca.org.

10-12 National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) Annual Meeting &

Convention, Las Vegas. Contact NBAA, phone 202-783-9000 or visit

www.nbaa.com.

10-12 Association of the U.S. Army (AUSA) Annual Meeting & Exposition,

Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington, D.C. Contact AUSA,

phone 703-841-4300 or visit www.ausa.org.

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commercial

FedEx Delivers Maintenance

By Frances Fiorino

Cargo carrier FedEx Express operates a fleet of hundreds of aircraft across a global network, employs thousands of pilots and maintenance

professionals and is responsible for making sure packages arrive safely and on-time. Keeping that fleet operating efficiently and safely, and with the latest avionics, is a mammoth job.

A look at the FedEx Express avion-ics maintenance operation reflects the

overall trends and challenges facing the industry — keeping pace with increasingly sophisticated technologies and maintain-ing a skilled workforce. These challenges likely will be among topics discussed at this year’s AMC/AEEC annual meetings, April 18-21 in Memphis, Tenn. FedEx Express is host airline of the event, which brings together maintenance and engi-neering personnel from more than 70 air-lines, 200 suppliers and five airframers to discuss and resolve technical solutions for avionics maintenance and standards.

“Avionics” is described by the AMC as

“anything with a wire in it,” and FedEx Express avionics maintenance person-nel handle countless miles of wires. The largest all-cargo airline’s 4,500 pilots fly 684 aircraft, from large jet transports to turboprops at 375 airports worldwide. The fleet includes Airbus A300-600s, A310-200/300s, Boeing 727-200s, 757-200s, 777Fs, and MD10s, Cessna 208A/B and ATR-72/42 aircaft.

Maintaining this varied fleet requires a broad portfolio of avionics bench capabilities, said FedEx Vice President of Aircraft Engineering and Technical

Cargo carrier and host airline of this year’s AMC/AEEC balances new

technological advances in avionics with maintaining its varied fleet

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FedEx Express aircraft fleet awaits freight at company’s Memphis, Tenn., hub. FedEx operates a fleet of 684 aircraft, including Airbus, Boeing, Cessna and ATR models. It handles about 3.5 million packages and 11 million pounds of freight on a daily basis.


Planning Mark D. Yerger, ranging from simple components, such as a small rud-der trim indicator, to sophisticated boxes such as Thales flight control computers on the carrier’s Airbus fleet. FedEx’s test equipment includes the Avitron UnivATE to support the Boeing 727, MD-10 and MD-11 and Airbus electrical power com-ponents, and the Ametek aircraft interface test unit (AIU) Test Station to support MD-10 and MD-11 autopilot and flight deck instrumentation.

Where avionics maintenance is conducted is “pretty much a balance” between internal and external sources, said Yerger, and what percentage goes where fluctuates with market availability and system changes.

Internally, for example, the Mem-phis Avionics Component Shop is a 40,000-square-foot facility where mainly B or intermediate level checks are con-ducted. It employs about 36 full-time Avi-onics Maintenance Technicians (AMT) plus support staff. The Memphis Avionics Line operation employs 54 AMTs plus support staff. The instrument shop at the company’s Los Angeles facility, where C checks are conducted, employs about 10 full-time AMTs.

Externally, FedEx Express has rela-tionships with numerous partners around the world performing component main-tenance for avionics, as well as airframe, engine and heavy maintenance services.

Five years ago, with a goal of ensur-ing uniform workflow and quality results, FedEx Express adopted the Kaizen tech-nique, a lean processing philosophy, in its maintenance organization. Kaizen is Japanese for “continuous improvement.”

“We are working smarter, faster and the AMTs are more empowered,” Yerger said. Here, “‘empowered’ means the tech-nicians, the parts organization staff that supports them and engineers meet daily to discuss where to eliminate waste in the maintenance process. The workspace was reorganized by looking at process flow from receiving through dispatch out of the facility. And they have been able to radically improve productivity as well as the quality of the product coming out of the shop.”

As avionics systems and inventory age, it becomes more obvious that every box is making more and more trips to the shop, said Yerger. The Memphis and Los Angeles avionics and instrument shops, for example, average 1,168 units returned to service each month. Determined to bet-ter identify failure conditions and prevent

FedEx Express Avionics Bench Capabilities

Make System System System

HoneywellMD10 Versatile Integrated Avionics

MD10 Display Unit Air Data Module

MD11 Ancillary Fuel Sys-tem Controller

MD11 Centralized Fault Display Interface Unit

Airbus Digital Air Data Com-puter

MD11 Digital Air Data Computer

MD11 Display Electronics Unit

MD11 Environmental Sys-tems Controller

MD10 Flight Control Com-puter

MD11 Flight Control Com-puter

MD10 Fuel System Control-ler

MD11 Glareshield Control Panel

MD11 Hydraulic Systems Controller

MD11 Miscellaneous Sys-tems Controller

Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System

Digital Flight Data Acquisi-tion Unit

Digital Flight Data Recorder

ThalesCenter of Gravity Control Computer

Electronic Flight Control Unit

Flight Augmentation

Flight Control Computer Feel Limitation Computer Maintenance Test Panel

Thrust Control Computer Thrust Rating Panel Display Unit

Aerospatiale Flight Warning Computer Indicator Light DimmerJamming Detection Control Unit

Remote Annunciator Light Test Dimmer

Rudder Trim Indicator

Aircraft Braking Systems

Anti-Skid Control Unit

Messier Bugatti Brake System Control Unit

ABG Semca Cabin Pressure Computer

Diehl ECAM Control PanelECAM Symbol Generator Unit

EFIS Control Panel

EFIS Symbol Generator Unit

Thompson–CSFSystem Data Analog Con-troller

Marconi Slat Flap Control Computer

Rockwell Collins VHF Communications VOR/ILS/MB Navigation GPS Navigation

DME/Transponder HF Radio Radio Altimeter

Doppler/Windshear Radar TX/RX

Radar Antennas 727 Radar Indicators

ACSS TCAS/Mode S

AMETEKMD10 Aircraft Interface Unit

Hamilton Sund-strand

MD11 Generator Control Unit

MD11 Electrical Power Control Unit

727 Generator Control

727 Bus Control Unit 727 Voltage Regulator 727 Load Controller

MD11 APU Generator Control Unit

Airbus Generator Control Unit

Airbus Ground Power Control Unit

Gables/Team/Thales/ Honeywell

Control Heads for the above systems

them from occurring in aging systems, the FedEx Avionics Bench in 2010 adopted a predictive maintenance process. It replaces the traditional test-fix-test method where the time required to test a line replace-able unit (LRU) might be one hour or eight hours, depending on how far the test procedure progresses before it isolates the failure, Yerger said. A traditional repair may involve finding the failed component, replacing and testing it and returning it to service. The new process tries to identify the precursor condition and repair or improve it before it is returned to service.

For example, the carrier will examine the electronic circuit that degrades over time. As components age, connectors wear and solder joints are subjected to

the stresses of their operational environ-ment. Yerger said the aging process can cause “unreliable, intermittent and often repeated failures on the same circuit.”

“The predictive process identifies components that have been degraded with time or are at risk of becoming obsolete. They are then replaced with exact or direct equivalents. Solder joints, for exam-ple, are reworked and worn connectors are replaced. This effectively means that the life of the circuit is extended and the reli-ability improved,” Yerger said.

“Undertaking a proactive analysis and refurbishment of the circuit can provide compelling results and improvements in the circuit performance,” he said.

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NextGen EquipageFedEx, like most carriers around the world, is considering ways to adapt to the avalanche of sophisticated technologies entering the marketplace, particularly with regard to the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) in the United States and Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) program in Europe. The transition is likely to be a key topic at the AMC Open Forum.

As NextGen and its requirement for Performance-Based Navigation technolo-gies on aircraft advances, FedEx Express is looking at preparing its pilots and air-craft for Required Navigation Procedures (RNP) approaches. “We have our eyes on the prize and are making sure that we are

able to operate in an advanced RNP envi-ronment,” Yerger said.

FedEx Express is retrofitting and upgrading equipment on aircraft “as we bring them in” to help position the fleet for RNP capability, Yerger said. The 757s the company is acquiring and convert-ing to freighter service, for example, are being configured for 0.15 nautical mile RNP capability, meaning an aircraft on approach must remain within 0.15 nm to the right or left of center line 95 percent of the time within a containment area. The company is also taking delivery of Boeing 777s that will be RNP-capable.

FedEx Express also has been proactive in the development of new technologies, executives advise. It was an early adopter

of computers in the cockpit, according to Yerger, and one of the leaders in advanc-ing both head-up display (HUD) and Enhanced Flight Vision System (EFVS) technologies. The company has equipped a number of its large aircraft with EFVS portrayed through the HUD system to provide flight crews with the best possible situational awareness as well as improve safety of operations, says Yerger.

The company is also uses the Hon-eywell-developed Runway Advisory and Awareness System (RAAS), which pro-vides pilots with aural and graphical advi-sories of aircraft position on and near the airport surface. In addition, certain FedEx Express Boeing 777F international flights are operating in a Future Air Naviga-

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Boeing 777 Freighter in livery of FedEx Express. Boeing in February celebrated two years in service of the freighter, which can fly 4,900 nautical miles with payload of 225,200 pounds. FedEx is the largest user, with 12 in service and 13 on backlog with Boeing.

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Ex


tion System (FANS) environment to take advantage of oceanic datalink services. This includes operations using the terres-trial L888 Western China Route.

Yerger added that FedEx Express is working with industry and government to speed the process of getting moving map technologies better defined and into its aircraft. Most of FedEx’s trunk aircraft are equipped with primarily Class 2 elec-tronic flight bags (EFB).

“As we look at enhanced GPS-based navigation,” said Yerger, “Aircraft will continue to become more sophisticated and more integrated; that is, each piece of avionics or component on the aircraft spends more time communicating with other systems on the aircraft in order to improve reliability and safety.”

As always, safety remains paramount to the carrier. Yerger said FedEx Express-supports a Safety Management System (SMS) culture and hopes that environ-ment will continue to flourish as the program moves forward. The company is moving from Level 2 SMS to Level 3.

In addition, valuable safety informa-tion is now available and downloadable from aircraft “faster than ever before,” Yerger noted. “This gives FedEx’s flight safety organization a much bigger pool of data with which to identify precur-sors and eliminate safety risks, as well as learn more about how we operate our air-planes,” he said.

“Twenty years ago, such information was not available until it was pulled from the (flight data recorder) after an acci-dent,” Yerger added. “Today, a broader

range of information is stored digitally in aircraft flight data acquisition units. And the data from a flight can be downloaded automatically into our system from our MD-11s as the aircraft taxis to the gate.”

Cognizant of the increasing level of sophistication in avionics packages it works with, FedEx Express is taking the necessary steps to make sure its mainte-nance staff is well prepared and has “the best tools, the best training to address those higher expectations (of safety) and manage very sophisticated pieces of test equipment,” Yerger said.

FedEx Express offers technician train-ing in-house and at various manufactur-ers, including ATE manufacturers, for specific types of equipment. The company also wants to make certain the best avail-able flow of information is available to technicians around the world — “whether the aircraft is in Memphis, where the com-pany has lots of resources, or in Kuala

Lumpur, where there are fewer people and parts to rely on, but where expecta-tions for high performance are the same,” Yerger said.

The carrier works with leading service and technology providers to collect the latest available information from OEMs, previous operators of used aircraft, ATE and component manufacturers and FedEx’s own in-house engineering team. That data is combined and loaded on the company’s technical information manage-ment and distribution system, which is accessible to the maintenance workforce.

“Members of this industry — com-ponent manufacturers, the airlines and suppliers, OEMs — although bitter com-petitors at certain levels, have overlapping and very complex relationships,” Yerger said. “And we have got to figure out how to manage those relationships while rec-ognizing that safety is the No. 1 priority across all of our portfolios.”

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The Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) considers the Marine Corps CH-53K Heavy Lift Replacement helicopter a deriv-ative of the hard-flown CH-53E

in operation today. In fact, new avionics, engines, transmission, structures, rotor blades and fly-by-wire (FBW) controls make the Sikorsky ’53 Kilo an ambitious stretch of existing technology.

The Kilo integrated cockpit and open system architecture build on the Rockwell Collins Common Avionics Architecture System (CAAS) in the U.S. Army CH-47F and UH-60M Upgrade, and the Avionics Management System (AMS) in

the commercial Sikorsky S-92 and Cana-dian Forces CH148 helicopters. The new “glass cockpit” also uses hardware and software in the Marine Corps CH-53E CNS/ATM (Communication Navigation Surveillance/Air Traffic Management) upgrade and German CH-53G.

“We’ve taken a lot of the best pieces from other programs and put them together for the ’53K,” said Sikorsky avi-onics/electrical Integrated Product Team lead Kyle Delong.

The Marine Corps plans 200 CH-53Ks to retire CH-53Es and CH-53Ds. The three-engined Heavy Lift Replace-ment helicopter passed a Critical Design Review last summer and should fly for

the first time in late 2013. To implement Marine Sea Basing and Ship-to-Objective Maneuver concepts, the Kilo version has to sling-load 27,000 pounds over 110 nau-tical miles at sea level — more than twice the load of today’s CH-53E — yet fit the same amphibious assault ships. The ’53K is also expected to carry four times the payload over the same distance at high density altitudes like those in Afghani-stan. For all its brute power, the Kilo with fly-by-wire flight controls has to be easier to fly than the ’53E and cost half as much to operate and support.

Development of the CH-53K was initially paced by the fatigue lives of the CH-53E fleet. NAVAIR ultimately

Kilo CockpitThe new cockpit layout of the U.S. Marine Corps CH-53K Heavy Lift Replacement helicopter features ‘best pieces’ from other programs

By Frank Colucci

The CH-53K Avionics Management System borrows hardware from the Rockwell Collins Common Avionics Architecture System.

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accepted a ’53E Service Life Extension Program and slipped Kilo Initial Opera-tional Capability from 2015 to 2018 to reduce development risk.

More measured development makes the program more efficient in qualifica-tion testing, according to Michael Torok, Sikorsky vice president and chief engineer for Marine Corps programs.

“I really think the key here is the extent of the up-front work we’ve done with the fleet customers, combined with the lessons learned from the S-92, the Canadian program, the Black Hawk M and MU, and a real system engineering focus to really get this right, right off the bat,” Torok said. “The ’53 has the luxury of following these other programs.”

Flight-worthy hardware and produc-tion-representative software are now in CH-53K Systems Integration Labs (SIL) located at Sikorsky Aircraft in Stratford, Conn., and Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Qualified hardware will be delivered early next year for test aircraft.

The development program flies four Engineering Development Models. Pro-duction deliveries for the Marines stretch from 2017 to 2028, and the new heavy lifter has already drawn interest from potential international customers. Sikorsky chose principal subcontractor Rockwell Collins in 2006 to give the CH-53K an Avionics Management System like that in the successful S-92. AMS con-

trols and displays and mission computing resources themselves evolved from the CAAS in Chinooks and other helicopters.

“We’re technically not a CAAS cock-pit,” said Dan Toy, Rockwell Collins prin-cipal marketing manager for rotary wing aircraft. “We’re kind of a CAAS deriva-tive based on the ’53E and ’53G.”

CNS/ATM UpgradeThe CH-53E CNS/ATM upgrade flown last November mixes five portrait-format Multi-Function Displays (MFD) and dual center-console Control Display Units (CDU) with some electromechani-cal gauges.

“The Marines were trying to leverage what had been developed for the Army cargo helicopters, and we provided a very affordable solution to upgrade the ’53E,” said Toy, of Rockwell Collins. Production of the CNS/ATM upgrade for Marine CH-53Es has been deferred, but the par-tial glass cockpit may be applied to Navy MH-53E minesweepers around 2012.

Separate from the CNS/ATM upgrade, Rockwell Collins gave the Ger-man CH-53G cockpit landscape-format cockpit displays and new performance management functions. “It started close to CAAS but evolved with a lot of Ger-man-unique requirements for production and certification,” said Toy. “The German ’53 system has headed off on its own path largely, away from the ’53E and ’53K.”

Compared to the ’53E CNS/ATM and ’53G upgrade, the Kilo cockpit uses next-generation MFD and CDU hardware and customized software. Like the CAAS in Army Chinooks, the Kilo AMS has five 6-by-8 inch portrait-format MFDs, compatible with night vision goggles, to present integrated flight and naviga-tion symbology for IFR operations at night. The interchangeable displays can show the embedded Harris digital map and imagery from the Raytheon AN/AAS-29A Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) gimbal. Together with the CDUs and two Multi-Function Control Units, they enable the crew to access UHF/VHF/SATCOM communications and Defensive Electronic Countermeasures (DECM). Addition of a troop command-er’s display planned for the Kilo cabin has been deferred.

Marine CH-53K requirements call for CNS/ATM compatibility to navigate civil airspace, ETAWS (Enhanced Terrain Avoidance Warning System) functionality and embedded training capability.

They also call for the cargo helicopter to exchange digital data in network-cen-tric warfare scenarios. Rockwell Collins provides the ARC-210 multi-band radios that are standard for Navy/Marine Corps aircraft. The fifth-generation ARC-210 in the CH-53K supports the latest Vari-able Message Format waveforms and SATCOM links. Link 16 capability for

CH-53 Super Stallion is the workhorse of the U.S. Marine Corps. The service plans 200 CH-53Ks to retire CH-53Es and CH-53Ds.

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the CH-53K has been deferred for now, but the heavy lifter will have a Multifunc-tional Information Distribution System (MIDS) terminal to implement Link 16 with software. “All the network capability

is there as soon as they designate which waveform they want to use and what radio they want to run it through,” said Brian Cyr, Rockwell Collins CH-53K program manager.

Like CAAS, the CH-53K AMS uses MFD 268 multifunction displays and CDU-7000 control/display units, and an integrated processing cabinet. “A lot of the software is different. The PVI (Pilot-

The CH-53K will replace the CH-53E in Marine Heavy Lift helicopter squadrons, with initial operational capability slated in 2018.

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Vehicle Interface) is different. We have a lot of (software) re-use, but how it gets presented to the pilot is different,” Cyr explained.

Kilo displays, for example, show dial formats rather than the vertical tape read-outs in the ’53E CNS/ATM cockpit. The CH-53K AMS will also perform Center-of-Gravity calculations tied to fuel con-sumption.

Sikorsky conducted 25 Crew Station Working Group meetings with NAVAIR and fleet operators to formulate CH-53K flight displays. Marine pilots evaluated external cargo/load, RNAV and other symbology for the Kilo AMS on synop-tic displays using desktop computers at Stratford and Patuxent River, Md.

“They don’t have to have a mental model of the system; they can actually see it,” said Sikorsky’s Delong. The desktop simulators continue to feed changes back into Kilo cockpit requirements. “We keep those up to date to make sure they’re see-ing the same thing in the real aircraft,” Delong said.

Desktop symbology migrated to the Sikorsky motion-base simulator in Stratford with CH-53K displays and fly-by-wire cyclic and collective inceptors. The new Marine helicopter capitalizes

on FBW hardware and software devel-oped for the Army UH-6M Upgrade and Canadian CH148. The triplex flight control system has dual self-checking processors on each of the three channels working redundant hydraulic main and tail rotor actuators. Hamilton Sundstrand flight control computers interface with BAE Systems active inceptors — a side-arm cyclic and limited-travel collective — that give the pilot tactile cues based on control, power and structural limits.

The CH-53E CNS/ATM provides no flight director and no direct interaction between mechanical flight controls and cockpit displays. The ’53K AMS takes flight guidance cues from the FBW sys-tem and embedded GPS, and runs system diagnostics. “This is a fly-by-wire aircraft, and our cockpit has major workload reduction features integrating our fly-by-wire system as well,” Delong noted.

Marine pilots have so far conducted three part-mission evaluations with the Kilo cockpit tied to FBW flight control models. “We have high-fidelity flight control laws that can be evaluated in our facility. Where prudent, we modify the design to meet their needs,” Delong said.

The Sikorsky motion-base simulator is one of five SILs outfitted with actual CH-

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53K hardware and software. A ribbon-cutting ceremony last October opened the Sikorsky Avionics/Electrical SIL to test the AMS with the DECM and other Government Furnished Equipment.

An electrical SIL has the CH-53K main generators and auxiliary power unit and can run independently or with the Avionics SIL. Rockwell Collins set up its own Avionics SIL at Cedar Rapids identical to that in Stratford. A Sikorsky Flight Control SIL that was undergoing system-level checkout ties the Kilo cock-pit to actual aircraft servos to check FBW software and hardware changes before they go to the real aircraft.

Open ArchitectureCAAS and AMS in all their forms use a distributed processing architecture with “smart” displays and controls. The CH-53K AMS has 18 Power PC processors in nine line replaceable units (Weapon Replaceable Assemblies). A high-speed Local Area Network carries AMS inter-nal communications between processors. Data Concentrator Units under develop-ment by Curtiss Wright Controls in City of Industry, Calif., will convert discrete inputs from engine, transmission, fuel and

other aircraft sensors to digital signals for databuses to feed the AMS.

Legacy equipment such as the radios and MIDS terminal are controlled through a Mil-Std-1553B databus. The DECM suite has its own 1553B bus to integrate the Northrop Grumman AN/ALQ-24 Directed Infrared Countermea-sures set, Northrop Grumman APR-39B(V)2 radar warning receiver, Honey-well AAR-47(V)2 missile/laser warning receiver and BAE ALE-47 improved countermeasures dispenser.

Like other Rockwell Collins Flight 2 avionics, the CH-53K AMS provides a Modular Open System Architecture with PCI backplane interfaces for hardware and a Posix operating system for software applications from different suppliers.

AMS displays show Raytheon FLIR imagery from an analog video interface. The system hosts Warning/Caution/Advi-sory software from Sikorsky, digital map software from Harris, and ETAWS soft-ware developed by NAVAIR. Most soft-ware is field-loadable to upgrade systems without removing them from the aircraft.

CH-53K processors and databuses also have room to grow. “Our customer requirement is 50 percent for most sys-

tems,” Delong said. “For the AMS, we have a 65 percent requirement for memory and processor reserve. We have a lot of software already accounted for in those reserves, like Link 16.”

The CH-53K has been designed to look after itself to reduce life cycle costs. Design-for-the-maintainer working groups helped optimize wire harness and equipment installations for easy access.

The Kilo AMS hosts Integrated Vehi-cle Health Management System (IVHMS) software from Goodrich in Burnsville, Minn., to generate comprehensive systems information. “It’s certainly a carryover from the S-92 with lessons learned,” said Delong. “What’s new and significant is the 95 percent requirement for fault detection; we also have a 90 percent requirement for fault isolation.” The Kilo Integrated Sup-portability System displays health data on a maintainer’s handheld computer.

CH-53K AMS fault isolation/fault detection functions are the same found in CAAS. “We have one of our software apps on every processor,” said Cyr, of Rockwell Collins. The health monitor application polls software and hardware and feeds results to the IVHMS for main-tenance decisions.

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RFID SPECIAL SECTION

APRIL 2011 SPECIAL SECTION 27

Era Of Airborne RFID Begins

Anticipated

for the past several

years, the application of radio

frequency identi� cation (RFID)

tags for component tracking

on commercial aircraft is

upon us, at least for tags that

are “passive,” or without an

integral power supply. Work on

a standard for battery-powered

“active” tags has begun.

A special section to Magazine


28 APRIL 2011 SPECIAL SECTION

This was the message delivered

by industry experts in aerospace

RFID who spoke during the

recent Avionics Magazine webinar,

“Airborne RFID: Radio Frequency Iden-

tification Takes Off.”

Current guidance on applying RFID

tags on working aircraft is provided by

an FAA advisory circular, AC 20-162,

“Airworthiness Approval and Opera-

tional Allowance of RFID Systems,”

dated Sept. 22, 2008. The advisory

allows use of passive devices as long

as they are not interrogated in flight or

when an aircraft is on an active runway

or taxiway. It succeeded a foundational

FAA policy memo from May 2005 that

declared passive RFID tags acceptable

for use on civil aircraft under specified

conditions.

The advisory circular “gives us the

green light to start populating legacy

airplanes that have already been deliv-

ered and new deliveries with passive

RFID devices on the parts,” said Ken-

neth Porad, associate technical fellow

and RFID program manager with Boe-

ing Commercial Aviation Services.

“We will not have to recertify or

requalify them, because the regulatory

agencies have proclaimed that they do

not impact form, fit or function of any

installed system or equipment on the

airplane,” Porad said.

“That is the industry position that’s

agreed upon by all the airframers in our

supplier base. And so we are good to

go at this very moment to put passive

devices on airplane parts. There’s no

barriers to enter that market.”

Boeing has about 65 people work-

ing full-time on RFID across the compa-

ny, with some 50 pilot projects in place,

Porad said. Those projects include

supply chain management of incoming

materials, tool tracking on the produc-

tion floor and identifying consumables

and perishables such as sealant used in

manufacturing aircraft.

Airbus last January placed a multi-

year order to equip its coming A350

XWB with RFID tags on some 1,500

parts to support aircraft configuration

management, line maintenance, ware-

house logistics, payload tracking and

life-limited parts monitoring.

The airframers and their airline

customers have cooperated on RFID

development. “We agreed early on

that this would be non-competitive

and so we’ve been working with Airbus

through the Air Transport Association

and other standards bodies, including

EPCglobal, so we could have non-con-

flicting requirements,” Porad said.

“To have inconsistent direction to

common suppliers would be costly and

foolish for both” Airbus and Boeing, he

explained. “We have lots of customers

that fly a mixed fleet. They fly some

Boeing products and some Airbus

products. And these airlines have told

us, ‘Please, please do not deploy a

solution that would require us to have

two sets of infrastructure for a Boeing

airplane or an Airbus airplane. And so

we’ve met with Bombardier, Embraer,

Airbus … and we are working together

so there’s benefits across the whole

supply chain.”

In the case of onboard, on-airplane

parts marking, discussions involving

Boeing and others have focused on

line replaceable units, parts that are

reparable as opposed to consumables,

spare parts, dispatch-critical items, life-

limited or time-controlled parts subject

to airworthiness directives, and emer-

gency equipment such as life jackets,

first aid kits and breathing apparatus.

Getting to the stage of deploying

RFID tags on “flyable” components has

taken several years.

Reacting to what Porad described

as an “explosion” of interest in RFID

across varying industries at the start

of the last decade, Boeing and FedEx

in 2003 conducted an on-board evalu-

ation of high frequency 13.56 MHz

passive tags on an MD-10 freighter.

While “that worked fine,” Porad said,

the tags afforded a maximum, one-foot

read range. The evaluation was repli-

cated using 915 MHz UHF tags, “and

lo and behold, we got 10 to 12-feet

read range,” he said.

“That worked for us, because no

matter where the mechanic was stand-

ing inside the fuselage, if he could go

12 feet either direction and up, he

could capture information off all of the

tags. We kind of proclaimed UHF pas-

sive, 860 to 960 MHz (as the frequency

range) … and that was in line with

EPCglobal’s thinking.” EPCglobal is a

standards organization for Electronic

Product Code and RFID technology.

Based on the results of the FedEx

evaluation and a petition to FAA,

Porad said, the agency released its pol-

icy memo of May 13, 2005, supporting

‘What we are adding with

extended memory ... is a sig-

nificant (parts) history under

the ruggedized conditions

for which aerospace exists.’

Timothy Butler

President and CEO, Tego Inc.

‘We are good to go at this

very moment to put passive

devices on airplane parts.

There’s no barriers to enter

the market.’ Kenneth Porad

Boeing Commercial Aviation Services


APRIL 2011 SPECIAL SECTION 29

Current guidance on applying RFID tags on working aircraft is provided by FAA Advisory Circular 20-162. The use of active RFID tags on aircraft is possible, but the qualification process is described as ‘onerous.’

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SAE G18 Technical Committee for RFID in Aerospace is in the process of drafting a new standard for the use of active and battery-assisted tags in aircraft. Some of the technological considerations are described.

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30 APRIL 2011 SPECIAL SECTION

on-board use of passive RFID tags.

Industry standards underpin RFID

development for flyable components.

Air Transport Association (ATA) Spec

2000 Chapter 9, “Automated Identifi-

cation and Data Capture,” which is part

of a set of e-business specifications

developed by airlines and suppliers,

provides industry guidelines for trace-

ability, including the use of RFID to

permanently identify parts and their

lifecycle status.

AS5678, “Passive RFID Tags Intend-

ed for Aircraft Use,” was published

in December 2006 by the Society of

Automotive Engineers (SAE). It pro-

vides a requirements document for the

manufacture of passive-only UHF RFID

tags for aerospace, identifies minimum

performance requirements for use on

aircraft parts and specifies test require-

ments, including compliance with

RTCA DO-160E environmental test

criteria.

SAE was in the early stages of draft-

ing a new standard, AS6023, “Active

and Battery-Assisted RFID Tags Intend-

ed for Aircraft Use.”

“Active RFID tags (those with a bat-

tery) are being widely promoted for air-

craft applications,” states the rationale

by SAE’s G18 Technical Committee for

RFID in Aerospace.

“Some of the applications include

sensing temperature, vibration, stress,

fatigue, cargo handling, etc. Because

these tags have a battery and transmit

RF, there is a possibility they could

interfere with safety of flight.”

Said G18 Committee Co-chairman

Barry Allen, “from a technical perspec-

tive, there’s two issues with active tags

that are of concern. The first is the

proximity to sensitive devices. [T]he tag

is physically attached to a device, and

because of that, a much lower power

has the potential to interfere. I’m not

saying it will; I’m saying it has the

potential. That’s what the concern is.

“And the second item is … the fail-

ure mode. What’s the worst-case sce-

nario? With the passive tag, basically

nothing can happen. It’s unpowered.

But because you put a tag on that

battery, is there a failure mode that

can cause that tag to broadcast con-

tinuously, or (at) higher power? In the

battery itself, we have to worry about

safety risks.”

In addition to passive devices, FAA

AC 20-162 also addresses use of Low-

power active and Battery assisted pas-

sive (BAP) RFID devices. Low-power

active devices consist of a low-power

RF transmitter, an integrated circuit

controller, memory, antenna and power

source, according to FAA. BAP, or

semi-passive, devices have their own

power source, but the battery pow-

ers only the microchip, and the device

transmits only when interrogated.

‘Onerous’ Process

While use of active tags on aircraft is a

possibility, the qualification process is

“onerous,” advised Allen. “It’s a very

expensive process and, to my knowl-

edge, nobody in the industry has actu-

ally gone through this entire process

yet and is actively deploying active tag

technology in flight,” he said.

“This is where most of the go-

forward work has to be,” Allen said.

“And there’s a lot of anecdotal evi-

dence available out in the market for

people who have tested and tried this.

We have some in-flight tests — FedEx

did an extended test, UPS has done it

(and) the U.S. Air Force has been flying

this technology for many years with the

Savi (tag) and now the ISO 18000-7”

standard. Savi Technology, a Lockheed

Martin subsidiary based in Mountain

View, Calif., is the primary provider

of active RFID technology to the U.S.

Department of Defense and allied

defense forces.

Added consultant Anthony T.

“Buzz” Cerino, who has participated

with the G18 committee, “One of

the things that was found out during

efforts to come up with the passive

standard was that several organizations

did look at active tags, battery-assisted

passive tags, and found that many of

them were very close to achieving the

DO-160 requirement and, in fact, some

did. That was one of the reasons why

the committee felt that it would be rea-

sonable and achievable to move for-

ward with a requirements definition.”

Memory chip developer Tego, Inc.,

of Waltham, Mass., is supplying the 8

Kbyte chip specified by Airbus for the

A350XWB, in an order announced Jan.

19, 2010. It will be contained in tags

designed by MAINtag SAS of Paris.

In November, Tego announced the

availability of aviation-grade RFID tags

developed by Marubeni Chemix Corp.,

of Tokyo, and containing “TegoChip”

technology. The Marubeni TAGAT tags,

available with 4 Kbyte of memory, are

tested to SAE AS5678 for flyable parts,

are compatible with ATA Spec 2000

and are interoperable with standard

UHF Gen2 readers, the company said.

“What we are really adding, with

extended memory capability, is a

whole history now, so that throughout

the value chain, you can have a sig-

nificant history over a long period of

time under the ruggedized conditions

for which aerospace exists, to have

visibility into a whole range of parts

and information that hasn’t existed

before,” said Timothy Butler, Tego

president and CEO.

Butler said his company can provide

a platform with up to 32 Kbytes of

memory, a multiple of those chips now

in volume production.

“The current chip today will hold up

to 35 to 40 pages of information. Think

of it less like a chip and a tag and more

as a USB device,” he said. There is “the

ability to actually now hold pictures,

data, encryption — all sorts of informa-

tion that you would never have thought

(possible) before.”

Butler offered a scenario of how

on-board RFID tracking will benefit

aerospace. An avionics manufacturer

“builds a part for a Boeing or an Air-

bus plane that gets deployed into an

Air France plane that gets service,”

he said. “But 10 years later, maybe in

Costa Rica or Milan, the information

about those assets and those parts that

are being replaced today doesn’t go

along with those assets, and people

have no idea what’s actually happen-

ing with that information. They don’t

even know for sure whether or not it’s a

counterfeit part, for instance.

“The ability to have visibility into

this, the ability to carry the information

with those assets and pull the informa-

tion off by each of those major players

has huge value across the industry.”

—Bill Carey


product focus

LightingBy Ed McKenna

The use of light emitting diode (LED) technology on com-mercial and business aircraft is becoming more the norm than the exception. LEDs can be

used to illuminate everything from airline logos on the tail to switches on the flight deck. The technology is being built or ret-rofitted into aircraft to improve appear-ance and boost energy efficiency. While technology and market issues remain, LED lighting is expected to supplant much, if not all, current technology on aircraft over the next few years.

“The pace of LED (technology) migration into aircraft is ... accelerating for both the OEM as well as aftermar-ket,” said Andre Hessling, manager of advanced product development, lighting systems at Goodrich Interiors. “There is hardly any consideration of conventional lights anymore.” Goodrich makes a range of lighting systems using LED technol-ogy, including cabin wash lighting and passenger lighting.

The benefits of LEDs are well known, including weight savings, lower mainte-nance costs, ruggedness and increased system reliability. But now, the technolo-gy is further evolving, thanks to advance-ments in other industries, including auto-motive and consumer lighting systems, allowing for more applications of LED lighting solutions in aviation.

“Home lighting is the Holy Grail for LED manufacturers (and) while it is still in its infancy,” it is gaining momentum, said Rob Harshaw, president and CEO of Heads Up Technologies, of Carrolton, Texas. Developments in these markets will drive not only technology improve-ments but also customer expectations for this type of lighting, said Harshaw.

“It is slowly but surely encroaching everywhere,” said Bruce Maxwell, presi-dent of Luma Technologies, of Bellevue,

Wash. “It used to be (thought) they would never be bright enough for outside lights.” But now LEDs are available for all exterior lights, including high-powered flood lights and landing light systems.

This use of the technology will con-tinue to grow over the next several years as airlines and regional carriers look for ways to save on maintenance costs and weight, while providing an aesthetically appealing interior for their passengers, said Scott Sweet, interior lighting product manager at Emteq, of New Berlin, Wis.

The technology continues to improve as LEDs are being developed “to ever higher performance levels in terms of flux per bucks,” lumens per emitter and light output (flux) per watt, but the rate is declining, showing that LEDs are reaching a first level of maturity,” said Hessling. “Also, the light quality — the homogeneity of emitted spectrum –– of white LEDs is improving.”

“Because we are seeing more (effica-cious) light being emitted from the LEDs, we can package them differently” than earlier LED systems, which were mainly just “a straight line of light,” said Stephen Scover, vice president and general man-ager of the lighting division of B/E Aero-space, Wellington, Fla. “There are places that you can now put light or use lighting effects that you couldn’t in the past.”

B/E Aerospace is using these innova-tions to provide LED lighting for the new “Sky Interior” on Next Generation Boeing 737s. “The system is somewhat revolutionary,” said Scover. “It is a seam-less type of product: You basically walk on the aircraft and experience lighting as opposed to (encountering) a bunch of lights staring at you from different or odd angles.”

The company has worked closely with Boeing to develop the interior design.

“We just didn’t come in at the back end of the program; we worked with

some of the bin structures and on where light would be placed,” Scover said. “I think what that indicates is that there is an industry acceptance now that a LED system is the way to go.”

On the flight deck, thanks to the qual-ity of the lighting — its light, color and contrast — “things are not quite so fuzzy anymore; they are nice and crisp and clear,” which translates to greater situ-ational awareness and enhanced safety, said Maxwell. Last year, Luma Tech-nologies introduced the LT-4500 Series Integrated LED Display System for King

Adoption of LED technology for interior and exterior aircraft applications

is growing, but challenges remain for manufacturers of these systems

Emteq is providing exterior anti-collision light for Bombardier CRJ regional jets.

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Air and Beechcraft 1900D aircraft. The system is designed to be a one-for-one, drop-in replacement for existing incan-descent units, with immediate plug-and-play functionality.

With increases in power density and improvements in optical efficiency, “LED applications on the exterior that were more difficult to do before are really now becoming more realistic if they are designed properly,” said Vera Fosnot, Honeywell senior manager of product marketing for lighting.

The transition to LED began with lower-power products, such as position lights, but is now progressing toward the higher-power products, like landing light systems, she said. Currently, the great-est demand is for LED replacements for those lights with poor reliability, high cost or high impact of repair as well as “lights that are dispatch critical for the operators, such as navigation lights,” Fosnot said.

However, “all of the lights on the exte-rior can now be LED, if they are designed and integrated properly,” and Honeywell is developing a full suite of exterior LED applications that will be applicable on many different platforms, she said.

The exterior lighting market includes

large and smaller niche companies offer-ing LED products for a variety of aircraft types. For example, Goodrich touts its introduction last year of a product line of supplemental type certification certified exterior lights for the Airbus A320 series. Hessling said the line of runway turn-off lights, taxi lights and logo lights offers a return on investment within a year or less.

Emteq offers a variety of exterior LEDs including the combined tail posi-tion and anti-collision lights for the Bom-bardier CRJ. Designed to replace current

halogen and xenon products, the LED products include an integrated power supply, eliminating the need for an exist-ing external power supply, said Sweet.

Heads Up Technologies has developed and qualified high intensity LED exterior lights for the Cessna Citation Jet series including the landing lights, wing inspec-tion lights, tail flood lights and overwing exit lights, said Harshaw. He said the landing light outperforms the incan-descent source it replaced and provides “huge weight savings.” Heads Up also provides the LED cabin lighting for the Beechcraft King Air 350i.

Emteq is capitalizing on technol-ogy improvements, such as better color control and greater intensity, developed in other industries, said Sweet. “It has opened up the possibility for significant innovation with our most recent examples being the Daylight Variable White Wash lighting product and exterior landing lights.” The Daylight system offers a vari-able white LED lighting system capable of outputting multiple shades of white light and is controlled through a control management system.

However, this surge in demand has its downside. LED has “gone ballistic in every market and anytime anything goes ballistic there goes source of supply (and) consistency,” said Maxwell. It is also a challenge for component developers, like Luma, to keep up with the changing tech-nology. “It’s a good problem, but still a challenge,” he said.

LED ChallengesFor all the advancements, challenges of LEDs, including heat management, color consistency and cost remain.

“Thermal management is really the key to the longevity of LEDs,” Fosnot said. It is critical to design the LEDs properly and seek “the full FAR compli-

Market Moves

Following are recent developments announced by lighting system manufacturers.

➤ Talon Aerospace, of Helena, Ala., in December was awarded an EASA supplemental type certificate for its LED anti-collision lights for the Airbus A300-600, A310, A318, A319, A320, A321, A330 and A340 and Boeing 757, 767, DC-10, MD-10 and MD-11.➤ Northrop Grumman’s air-traffic management subsidiary, Northrop Grumman Park Air Systems, in February was awarded a contract to provide a Runway Status Light (RWSL) Control System for Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.

The RWSL Control System is an automated system that warns aircraft and vehicles if it is safe to enter or cross runways through a series of lights embedded in the pavement. The contract is to be completed by end of 2011.➤ The Venezuelan air force purchased a joint solar and AC-power airfield lighting system from Carmanah Technologies Corp., of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, and ADB Airfield Solutions, of Columbus, Ohio. The two companies have partnered to create a lighting system that includes radio-controlled solar LED ADB-branded runway edge lights and SATO blue taxiway lights manufactured by Carmanah, combined with an AC-powered ADB approachsystem. ➤ Emteq, based in New Berlin, Wis., in February received an FAA supplemental type cer-tificate for installation of its LED Anti-Collision/Position (Navigation) Light in the Bombardier Regional Jet 100/200/440.

Also, in November 2010, the company was awarded a contract from the U.S. Department of Defense for Phase I of a Small Business Innovation Research program to develop a rotor blade tip lighting system. Emteq said the goal of the program is to design and build a reliable, lightweight rotor blade tip lighting system that can be modulated to provide red, green and white navigation lights at the appropriate positions on the azimuth; a hover mode to clearly mark the complete rotor disk circumference to ground crew; and a low-observable, NVG-compatible mode for night formation flight.➤ In September, Rockwell Collins was selected by the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) to provide the cabin core system (CCS) for its C919. Rockwell Collins’ CCS, which will leverage technology from the company’s Venue cabin management system, allows flight attendants to control all subsystems on the aircraft including in-flight entertainment, passenger connectivity, lavatory, heating/cooling and lighting.

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Goodrich makes a range of lighting systems using LED technology, including cabin wash lighting and LED reading lights like those, above, retrofitted into an MD80.


ance over their entire rated life.”Companies use different approaches

to handle the excess heat from the lights, including using plastic and metal heat sinks. From early on, “our products had metal or aluminum heat sinks (and) we have made something like 20 miles of LED lighting now and have had very few failures,” said Harshaw.

With more airplanes being made of composites, LED systems have to be carefully designed “to withstand HERF (high-energy radio-frequency) and light-ning induced transience,” said Maxwell. “LEDs are very delicate things. They have all these great benefits, but they have to be nurtured and packaged.”

“The physical integration remains a challenge for our general cabin lighting (indirect wash) from time to time,” said Sweet. “We still have to be careful in ensuring the angles and orientation of the light is just right.”

Electrical integration, specifically con-trol, can be a challenge, he said.

In addition, color consistency of the LEDs “is a huge problem,” said Harshaw. “Even on a single reel of 2,000 to 5,000 LEDs, there are subtle variations in all the lights.” This requires techniques to put them together, so the color variation can’t be seen.

On the flight deck, a key remaining challenge is getting human factors and industrial design groups to craft a defini-tion of “what light colors are required in terms of cool work-lights and warm‚ ambient lights,” Hessling said.

Dimming groups of lights also might pose a few challenges, since the differenc-es between the current-driven LED and easier-to-dim voltage controlled filament lights must be accounted for, he said.

Cost is also a key issue, especially when it comes to retrofitting. “Airlines have really been watching their discretion-ary funds. When you think of a retrofit for lighting that certainly would be discre-tionary,” said Fosnot.

The cost of the technology and imple-mentation is coming down. “However, as the technology improves costs may rise,” advised Hessling.

The business case can differ from application to application. For example, “incandescent lights that fail often and are annoying to replace, like reading lights, allow for a fairly easily justifi-able business case,” Hessling said. On the other hand, replacing sophisticated halogen reading lights with very different electronic characteristics than LEDs may not be so easy to justify.

Companies generally concede tech-nology changes in the near future will be more evolutionary than revolutionary, at

least for aircraft applications. However, they are keeping an eye on the develop-ment of organic LEDs.

“We have been a bit disappointed by the slow progress in this area,” said Hessling. “There are some (first) applica-tions in sight for the business jet clients now, which we will integrate in our VIP product line-up, where performance and lifetime is less of an issue and experience is the key attribute.”

Next month: Synthetic Vision Systems

Avionics Magazine’s Product Focus is a monthly feature that examines some of the latest trends in different market segments of the avionics industry. It does not represent a comprehensive survey of all companies and products in these markets. Avionics Product Focus Editor Ed McKenna can be contacted at [email protected].

Companies

ADB Airfield Solutions ........................................www.adb-airfield.com

Aerospace Optics .................................................... www.vivisun.com

Airtechnics, Inc. .................................................www.airtechnics.com

Astronics Corp. ................................................... www.astronics.com

Avtech Corp. .......................................................... www.avtcorp.com

B/E Aerospace .............................................. www.beaerospace.com

Bruce Aerospace Inc. ...........................................www.bruceind.com

Carmanah Technologies Corp. ............................ www.carmanah.com

Dallas Avionics, Inc. ...................................... www.dallasavionics.com

Day-Ray Products, Inc. ........................................... www.day-ray.com

DeVore Aviation Corp. of America ..................www.devoreaviation.com

Diehl Aerospace ...........................................www.diehl-aerospace.de

Ducommun Technologies ..................................www.ducommun.com

Eaton Aerospace .......................................................www.eaton.com

Electro-Mech Components, Inc. ..............www.electromechcomp.com

Emteq ..................................................................... www.emteq.com

Endicott Research Group ..................................... www.ergpower.com

Esterline Control Systems .......................................www.esterline.com

Goodrich .................................................. www.goodrich-lighting.com

Heads Up Technologies .......................................www.heads-up.com

Honeywell .......................................................... www.honeywell.com

IDD Aerospace .......................................www.iddaerospacecorp.com

Interface Displays & Controls ..................... www.interfacedisplays.com

Luma Technologies .............................................. www.lumatech.com

Northrop Grumman ................................. www.northropgrumman.com

Page Aerospace .......................................www.pageaerospace.co.uk

Panelight Components Group, LLC ....www.panelightcomponents.com

Precise Flight, Inc. ............................................ www.preciseflight.com

Rockwell Collins ............................................www.rockwellcollins.com

Sirio Panel S.p.A ....................................................... www.siriopanel.it

Spectralux ..........................................................www.spectralux.com

STG Aerospace ............................................ www.stgaerospace.com

Talon Aerospace .........................................www.talonaerospace.com

Heads Up Technologies pro-vides cabin wash lighting systems for various aircraft types, including the Hawker Beechcraft King Air 350i.

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new products

OpenVPX BoardCurtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing introduced the VPX3-1256, a 3U OpenVPX single board computer (SBC) based on the new Intel Core i7 next generation quad-core processor.

The board is designed for harsh envi-ronment, air and conduction-cooled aero-space applications, including unmanned aircraft systems, tactical aircraft and rug-ged naval systems. It is available with up to 8GB of high-bandwidth DDR3 SDRAM

(1333 MHz) and comes with high-speed I/O, including dual Gigabit Ethernet, Gen2 PCIe or SRIO, four USB 2.0 ports, and an XMC/PMC site supported with eight lanes of PCI Express.

Visit www.cwembedded.com.

Recorder TSOL-3 Aviation Recorders, of Sarasota, Fla., received FAA Technical Standard Order (TSO) C197 Information Collection and Monitoring Systems approval for its Light-weight Data Recorder, Model LDR 1000.

The LDR 1000 is compliant with the qualification and documentation require-ments of EUROCAE Document ED-155, Minimum Performance Specifications for Lightweight Flight Recording Systems.

L-3 said the LDR is well-suited to the law enforcement, air ambulance and offshore oil and gas exploration aviation markets, where Flight Operations Qual-ity Assurance, Flight Data Monitoring and Helicopter Operations Monitoring Program initiatives are becoming more prevalent.

Visit www.l-3ar.com.

Radar Display USB Interfaces

Ballard Technology, of Everett, Wash., intro-duced the USB 708, a line of portable avionics interfaces that enable computers to commu-nicate with ARINC 708 and similar weather radar display databuses.

The USB interfaces allow engineers and technicians to test weather radar Control-Dis-play Units (CDU) and Transmit-Receive units using any available PC, according to the com-

pany. They also are used for monitoring, recording and playing back data, as well as simulating weather radar systems. The system incorporates Plug and Play and Hot Swap features for easy installation and movement between computers, accord-ing to the company. Ballard said the USB 708 supports maximum data throughput and simultaneous operation on all channels. Word length and pre-sync pulses are software-selectable to support custom protocols that deviate from ARINC 708.

Two channel (1 receive, 1 transmit) and four channel (2 receive, 2 transmit) models are available and each includes 8 avionics discrete I/O, 48-bit hardware time-tag and IRIG synchronization/generation. Visit www.ballardtech.com.

RE-INTRODUCING NON-SMOKING FLIGHTSDon’t let smoking ballasts keep your aircraft on the ground –

upgrade your fleet with EMTEQ’s certified 115VAC LED

wash light. Reduce inventory and maintenence costs while

modernizing your aircraft’s interior. Clear the air at

www.emteq.com/cleartheair.

LED LIGHTING | AVIONICS UPGRADES | ENGINEERING

www.emteq.com



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