First Customer Installation Delivered 90 Days After STC Received

Avidyne and S-TEC are wasting no time in getting King Airs equipped with their new Alliant Integrated Flight Deck into customers' hands. The companies announced the delivery of the first such customer-owned Beechcraft King Air 200 this week. The aircraft, N5PX, is co-owned by Mike Murdock and Deason Dunagan of Huntsville, AL.

"This panel is a great way to get a thoroughly modern avionics suite in a great airplane," Murdock said. "With the Alliant system, we can now take advantage of all the advances like a digital autopilot, large primary flight displays and such, in a nice clean, integrated package."

"This is a very exciting time for the entire Alliant team," said S-TEC President Mel Hilderbrand. "We delivered the first cusomer installation just 90 days after introducing the system and receiving the FAA STC."

In addition to the vastly upgraded avionics, the Alliant installation in the customer’s 1979 King Air also resulted in a 368-pound increase in useful load, due to the lighter weight compared to the plane's older avionics. (The weight savings varies with each aircraft, of course.)

"We were able to completely free up the left side of the nose avionics bay," Murdock said. "We can get a door installed and use that as more baggage space. You can never have too much baggage space when traveling with a family."

"The Alliant system transforms a proven and reliable airframe with a high-performance glass cockpit," said Mark Sandeen, Avidyne’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing. "The Alliant King Air installation adds beautiful displays, dual-redundant PFDs, enhanced safety and improved reliability. And it boosts aircraft performance and utility with a significant increase in useful load."

Murdock said the increased safety offered by the Alliant system -- recently selected by ANN as one of the Best Products of 2006 -- was paramount in the partners’ decision to purchase the Alliant package.

"We fly our families in this airplane so we’re very concerned about safety," he told Aero-News. "The Alliant system gives us a safer airplane. There’s greater redundancy with dual ADAHRS, reduced pilot workload and greater situational awareness because everything is right there on the panel for you to see."

The Alliant Integrated Flight Deck for the Beechcraft King Air family is the first implementation of Avidyne’s Envision series of retrofit integrated flight deck products and S-TEC’s IntelliFlight 2100 Digital Flight Control System.

The standard Alliant Integrated Flight Deck package includes dual-redundant Avidyne EXP5000 10.4" primary flight displays (PFDs), an Avidyne EX500 multi-function display (MFD), the S-TEC IntelliFlight 2100 digital autopilot, Mid-Continent two-inch standby instruments, and interfaces to most popular traffic, terrain, lightning, radar and radar altimeter systems.

FMI: www.alliantkingair.com, www.s-tec.com, www.avidyne.com