Wed, Mar 27, 2024
Bring Older Aircraft Up to Factory Spec With Ready-Made BasiX-Pro
Bell Textron has gotten FAA certification for its Basix-Pro Glass Retrofit Kit, creating a new flight deck upgrade compatible with all Bell 412EP models.
The new glass cockpit retrofit suite offers all the usual benefits of a glass panel, with synth vision, reduced workload, greater screen space for mapping and charting, and better all-around situational awareness. The retrofit kit offers installers the same gear used in the production line at Textron, with the same Astronautics displays and Garmin avionics included with everything needed to hook them up. It's a great way to upgrade a faithful old aircraft, doing away with old, finicky vacuum gauges and replacing them with dependable digital gear. Along with the obvious visual and situational awareness improvements, the BasiX-Pro kit sports the kind of fit and finish expected of a production aircraft. In a world of hodgepodge panels with all kinds of unique issues and inop functionality, it provides a breath of fresh air in an older 412EP. The Basic suite dovetails neatly into systems, allowing full use of Bell's preferred 4-axis autopilot with full panel functionality.
“As a part of Bell’s Customer Support and Service offerings, we are committed to developing and certifying new technologies for legacy platforms,” said Chris Schaefer, vice president, Customer Experience, Bell. “In an effort to increase reliability, situational awareness and decreased pilot workload, the BasiX-Pro Kit delivers the latest integrated flight deck, high-resolution displays as well as engine data and flight operation recording. With the BasiX-Pro Kit, 412EP’s now can be upgraded to 4-axis autopilot further reducing pilot workload.”
Bell notes that it will offer the BasiX-Pro retrofit package through Aeronautical Accessories with retrofits being performed at their 'global completion centers of excellence' (i.e. hangars, as the normal would call them). Those lie in Tennessee, Florida, Singapore, Australia, and Prague.
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