ANN Flies The Eclipse 500... and The Eclipse Lives

By ANN Editor-In-Chief Jim Campbell

• Read Part One
• Read Part Two

AVIO... Its genius is not necessarily in what it does, but rather the manner in which it does its job. Eclipse's Matt Brown, AVIO Project Manager, briefed ANN for a number of hours on the capability and operability of AVIO. I understood about every other word he said, but a little studying of the briefing manual and some practice on the test aircraft cleared things up rapidly. None of this is hard to learn… but there is plenty to take in.

The breadth of this system is extensive, while redundancy and simplicity are meant to rule the day. Primary AVIO components are based upon a series of multiple, redundant computers, sensors and displays that include:

• Dual aircraft computer systems (ACS)
• Dual full authority digital engine controls (FADEC) per engine
• Fail-passive 3-axis autopilot
• Autopilot control panel (ACP)
• Dual integrated sensor suites (ISS)
• • Attitude heading reference system (AHRS)
  • • Magnetic azimuth detector (MAD)
  • Global positioning system (GPS) with Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) enabled
  • • Air data system
    • Dual air data computers (ADC)
    • Dual static port systems
    • Dual combination pitot/angle-of-attack probes
    • Voting pitot/static probe
    • Dual outside air temperature (OAT) dual-sensor probes
• Dual 10.4-inch active matrix liquid crystal primary flight displays (PFD)
• Single 14.1-inch active matrix liquid crystal multi-function display (MFD)
• Single pilot-side data entry keyboard
• Electrical power distribution system (EPDS)
• • Dual 200 amp starter generators
  • Dual 24 Vdc, 24 amp-hr lead acid batteries
  • 127 electronic circuit breakers (ECB)
  • Six electronic contactors for fault isolation of the power distribution buses
  • Six main power distribution buses (four main buses, one emergency bus, and
    one hot bus)
• Smart actuators
• • Landing gear
  • Flaps
  • Autopilot

There are two 10.4' portrait mounted PFDs in the cockpit at either side of a massive 14.1" MFD. It's a beautiful panel to gaze upon… though it leaves one with a nagging feeling that they need to be feeding this monster a steady supply of quarters to keep it working. It's all familiar territory to Cirrus and Lancair flyers, with those displays offering attitude, heading, airspeed (with trend vector and target pointers), vertical speed (with trend vector), altitude (with trend vector and target pointers), slip and skid indications, flight director command bar (very nicely done in this iteration, I might add), autopilot flight mode annunciations, autopilot targets, barometric pressure, true airspeed, groundspeed, mach number, OAT, and approach minimums.

The lower half of the PFD hosts a configurable HSI that can display three bearing pointers from individual nav sources. Like everything else in the Avidyne universe, this real estate is used to its utmost with the HSI display able to offer traffic, weather radar, flight plan, ground track, and terrain overlays, in one's choice of 120-degree and 360-degree views. Rate of turn, wind speed/direction, ground track and com/nav tuning are also displayed in the lower half of the PFD.

The massive MFD does it all… (and can actually do so if the case warrants its need to take over for potentially unavailable PFD functions). The MFD displays its own attitude direction indicator (ADI), moving map, weather information, terrain, traffic, electronic checklists, flight management tools, synoptic displays, crew alerting system (CAS) messaging, electronic publications and charts, and engine instrumentation. All primary systems are accessible through the MFD, including trim position, flap status, landing gear status, fuel quantity, and cabin pressurization. The MFD always displays critical engine info such as N1, N2, ITT, Fuel flow, Fuel quantity, and Oil pressure.

Should a PFD or MFD have a bad day, yours might not have to suffer the same fate. AVIO offers a 'composite mode' that allows a pilot to configure required information to the remaining screens. In composite mode, the PFDs can display an ADI, engine instruments, trim position, flap status, landing gear status, fuel quantity, cabin pressurization, CAS messaging, and autopilot flight mode annunciations. One may also access checklists, electronic publications and charts, synoptic pages, com/nav tuning, and flight management tools via the remaining displays. AVIO's composite mode can be invoked at the pilot's discretion… even if everything is performing at 100%.

Outside of the PFD/MFD, there are a few other ways in which a pilot may interface with AVIO… including a pilot-side data entry keyboard (the copilot's side is optional) that can take the place of most PFD or MFD input chores. Aside from that, the pilot may also access the ACP (autopilot control panel), a center switch panel, an overhead engine start panel and the left switch panel.

Taking Advantage

There is a lot to learn in order to take full advantage of AVIO's capabilities, even though this level of integration has never been seen before in a bird this small and is absent from most other bizjets of any iteration. Thankfully, the menuing protocol involved in translating AVIO's info makes a lot of sense and is designed to lead a pilot along a proper path to the information they need. Simple steps (as demoed in the lab's system, but not yet onboard the test aircraft) like showing graphic presentations of the system detailed in the MFD's checklist as those items are iterated on screen make perfect sense and reinforce one's feel for the arrangement quite rapidly. Such Synoptic Displays offer graphic representations of Engine, Fuel, Climate control system and pressurization, Electrical system and electronic circuit breakers, Ice protection, Flight controls, Audio, and Diagnostic/Setup. It's a wholly slick presentation… and if you didn't understand how everything worked together initially, follow through these systems and their presentations a few times in the "real-world" and the light-bulb WILL go on.

Other modes inherent in AVIO offer Electronic Checklists, which may be may be viewed at the pilot's discretion and make themselves known automatically in sync with the aircraft's position, configuration and mode of flight. All these checklists are interactive and integrated with both the aforementioned synoptic pages and CAS messaging. The CAS (Crew Alerting System) is a pilot nanny of the first order. It provides caution/warning messages, as well as necessary visual and aural alerts - and it will prompt you with the necessary checklists and synoptics, as needed. The cool thing about this is, as designed, it is a system that will leave you the heck alone if you don't need to hear from it. Too often, various CAS-type systems are as much to blame for accidents as the problems that cause them to pipe up… often due to a lot of distraction and the force-feeding of barely related info that does as much to confuse as it does to inform. The whole point of CAS is to make a pilot pay attention because it is not prone to bother you unless you need to. Cool.

AVIO also includes (along with so much more), an Electronic Publications function that displays formerly paper documents electronically on the PFD and MFD. Electronic publications available on AVIO include the aircraft flight manual, instrument approach procedures (from Jepp), and other ancillary publications. Updates are made though a simple USB 2.0 interface. AVIO also detects, monitors and documents the condition of the aircraft and its critical systems. The Health and Maintenance Monitoring functions of AVIO continuously monitors and detects system malfunctions, and can track performance trends in order to (eventually) and predict failures. Other functions included in the HMM, offer built-in-testing, troubleshooting guidance and fault analysis.

There's more to AVIO, much more, but we'll never get to the flight report if we keep this up… but we'll have more info on this system in additional flight test reports we'll be filing in the not too distant future.

FMI: www.eclipseaviation.com