Fri, Oct 14, 2011
When flying complex airplanes in instrument or other challenging
conditions, anything that makes it easier for the flight crew to
concentrate on flying the airplane is a good thing. Rockwell
Collins was out of the gate early at Oshkosh this summer,
introducing its touch-screen interface for the Pro Line Fusion
Primary Flight Display.
"The theory is 'touch what you want to change'," says Rockwell
Collins' Adam Evanschwartz. He says that the system is unique in
the marketplace because of its HUD capability which allows pilots
to increase their situational awareness while interacting with the
PFD and MFD.
Evan Schwartz says that pilots find the system very intuitive
after about a half hour of flying. In his demonstration, a touch in
the center of the PFD brings up a menu which allows the system to
be divided into two parts, showing primary instruments and
synthetic vision on one side of the PFD, and a GPS terrain map on
the other.
An icon-driven drag-and-drop interface allows pilots to change
the display to show charts for primary, alternate, or enroute, and
that display can also be divided into two equal parts for the
display of even more granular data such as checklists.
The moving map function also allows the pilot to update route of
flight by "rubber banding" the course line displayed for easy
vectoring around weather, or a change in waypoints or primary and
alternate airports. Weather radar and other information can also be
overlayed on the moving maps.
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