Affordable Insurance For Intimidating Flight Conditions

By Gene Yarbrough

Controlled flight into terrain or unseen obstacles at night is a hazard for every pilot. And as more people enter the world of aviation, many of them computer or video game savvy, the expectation is to be able to fly in all conditions. With the advent of enhanced vision systems (EVS) and road navigation becoming common place in automobiles, today’s pilots expect the same type of all weather capabilities and real time navigation from their aircraft.

While the ability to be able to find your way by dead reckoning is still vital, more pilots are looking for high-tech tools in the cockpit. The whiz-bang technology that provides these capabilities had been largely relegated to the military or commercial sectors, but in the recent years technologies are emerging that the “average” aircraft owner can enjoy. Increasingly we are seeing glass panels that provide “synthetic” vision, coupled with GPS navigation. But these systems lack real world info that can be the difference between life and death.

Patrick Farrell, President of Forward Vision describes the company’s EVS system as a product purposefully designed for general aviation, but only as a reference tool, not to reduce minimums or for precision approaches. Farrell said the technology was “…..fairly mature due to the military development, however was not suitable for general aviation due to technological barriers with such items as the infra-red detectors.” Overcoming the hurdles to bring this product to market has taken 5 years of research and development by Forward Vision. Some of those obstacles included developing a method to prevent “blooming”, where the entire view screen is saturated with white when the detector was pointed at the sun or other hot object, obscuring the field of view for some seconds until the system resets to calibrate for the incoming signal. This blooming and reset could occur as quickly as every 30 seconds and reset typically takes 4-5 seconds. Forward vision has developed proprietary software to overcome this problem. The first IR detectors were not robust enough to handle GA duty and could be damaged by direct exposure to sunlight, not to mention the extraordinary price of the new technology. Forward Vision has developed proprietary IR detectors and software to bring the price into an available range for GA consumers.

Priced around $20,000 per unit installed, Farrell believes his product is set to compliment GPS navigation via glass panels. Farrell indicated that current units in field number around 200 with sales and installations of about 6 per week. The company currently has STC approval for some 160 airframes currently and hopes to have 85% of the perceived market approved by year end, and is being well received by consumers.

Farrell commented that the intended purpose and use of the system is to provide a real world, real time reference for CFIT, spatial disorientation, engine out at night, and entry into IMC. Also visualizing deer on runways and other obstacles such as snow banks increases a pilot’s ability to operate safely in reduced visibility scenarios. Farrell said the system could see thru smoke, haze, and fog and is a primary reason American Champion Aircraft has chosen to install the system on their new “Aqua-Bama” water bombing aircraft.

As with any vision simulating system orientation to what the pilot views on the display and what is actually outside the cockpit must be in agreement for the pilot to trust the system when the soup gets thick. Both the Cirrus installation and the American Champion units are mounted off the aircraft centerline. Farrell said there is about a 10 second learning curve for the pilot to orient the center line of the aircraft with the centerline displayed on the unit. The mental offset for the pilot merely involves remembering that he is sitting some few feet to the left or right and becomes second nature quickly. He said that mounting the unit on the aircraft centerline is possible and that the propeller does not interfere with operation or display of the unit.

Farrell indicated that the future for EVS systems is the integration of synthetic vision and infra-red. Combining the two technologies would give the pilot the clear concise terrain display of a moving map with instant navigation information and the real world view of what is behind that cloud.

FMI: www.forward-vision.net