ANN Flies The Eclipse 500... and The Eclipse Lives
By ANN Editor-In-Chief Jim Campbell
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.