Founded in 2005, the AIRO Group is a multi-faceted air mobility, autonomy, and aerospace electronics and technology concern.
The organization comprises five highly-regarded core businesses: Sky-Watch, the Denmark-based maker of fixed-wing and quad-copter Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV); Jaunt Air Mobility, the Dallas, Texas-based manufacturer of electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) and hybrid-electric VTOL aircraft; Coastal Defense and Agile Defense, providers of defense training and consultation services to the U.S. Government, its allies, and private industry; and Aspen Avionics, the Albuquerque-based avionics design and manufacturing firm and maker of the popular Evolution Flight Display family of products.
In the high-summer of 2022, Aspen Avionics announced that it had developed new software by which the company’s Evolution Flight Display series could be interfaced with Garmin’s GFC-600 digital autopilot. Dubbed v2.12, Aspen’s new software product, when coupled to Garmin’s GFC-600 autopilot, amalgamates the unit’s basic autopilot functions with Aspen’s Primary Flight Display (PFD). So integrated, Garmin’s autopilot and Aspen’s glass-panel technology streamline autopilot control and reduce pilot workload, thereby rendering flying—particularly single-pilot IFR operations—easier and safer.
In addition to news of software triumphs, summer 2022 also saw AIRO Group announce that the vast majority of aircraft owners who’d retrofitted their machines with Aspen Avionics’s Evolution Pro MAX PFD or Evolution E5 systems had been granted FAA approval to remove the OEM attitude indicators from their retrofitted aircraft. Turn and bank, altimeter, and airspeed indicators, however, were required to be retained in the modified aircraft.
Conversely, FAA approvals of installations of Aspen’s Evolution 2000 MAX or Evolution 2500 MAX systems permitted aircraft owners to remove the vacuum system and all backup indicators—including vertical speed, turn and bank, altitude, airspeed and attitude indicators—from aircraft retrofitted with subject systems.
Elimination of cumbersome iron-gyros and the fiddly vacuum systems by which they’re driven affords aircraft owners improved cockpit aesthetics, a streamlined instrument scan, reduced aircraft weight, and improved system reliability.
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