Digital Autopilot Interface Reduces Maintenance Costs, Adds
Safety And Reliability
The certification and availability of the EA100 Adapter for
attitude-based autopilot systems was announced just a few minutes
ago by Aspen Avionics, as an ANN crew was completing an
illuminating visit to their production facility in Albuquerque,
NM.
The EA100 provides a digital-to-analog data conversion between
the EFD1000 and an aircraft’s attitude-based autopilot
system. The adapter enables the Evolution Flight Display’s
AHRS to provide accurate and reliable attitude information directly
to the autopilot. Aspen customers now have the option to remove
aging (and expensive) legacy attitude mechanical gyros when they
install Evolution Flight Display Systems.
“The EA100 improves installed legacy autopilots by
providing superior digital attitude information, effectively
breathing new life into the aircraft’s automatic flight
control system,” said Brad Hayden, Aspen’s Vice
President of Marketing. “The EA100 Adapter has the added
benefit of eliminating the expensive ongoing repair and overhaul
costs associated with maintaining mechanical autopilot
attitude gyros, like the Bendix/King KI-256.”
Aspen leverages the Evolution Flight Display system platform to
offer safety enhancements over traditional mechanical or competing
digital autopilot control systems.
In Evolution 2000 or Evolution 2500 Package systems, the EA100
can be installed to receive attitude input from both the EFD1000
Multi-function Flight Display and the EFD1000 Pro Primary Flight
Display. The redundant AHRS sensors in these multi-display
configurations provide dual AHRS inputs that can independently
monitor autopilot performance. Aspen is the only avionics
manufacturer to offer this level of autopilot integration and
reliability.
The EA100 has the added capability to immediately disengage the
autopilot if an AHRS fault is detected. This represents a safety
improvement over legacy designs where an autopilot would continue
to respond to attitude commands from the gyro, even if that
gyro’s performance had become degraded or otherwise
inoperative.
The first version of the EA100 will allow the replacement of the
popular Bendix/King KI-256 attitude indicator and will support the
KAP 100/200 series, the KFC 200 series, and other Bendix/King
autopilots that require input from that model of gyro. Future
versions of the EA100 Adapter will support additional Bendix/King,
Collins, Cessna/ARC and Sperry autopilot systems.
The EA100 Adapter is available from Aspen Avionics authorized
dealers and is priced at $2,495.00.