Professional Pilot, May 2018

Astronautics designs develops and manufactures a variety of avionics displays along with cockpit integration The company has been providing innovative and tailored solutions to its commercial and military customers for 60 years PROFESSIONAL PILOT May 2018 73 dard features such as a wind direction speed arrow DA DH settings RADALT indication and full on integration of navigation of GPS and conventional NAVAIDs confirm youve moved up in a class of equipment This flight display has a big corporate aircraft flightdeck look and feel and is even Night Vision Imaging System NVIS compatible The company that built the Road Runner EFI is just as interesting as the equipment itself Astronautics background deserves a short bit of storytelling to give some context to their latest innovations being announced These include a number of helicopter products like the new Air Ground Communications System AGCS cyber systems and more Astronautics has a foundation based on solid engineering thats been going on for quite a while in the USA Trusted Innovation The Astronautics Corporation The story of Trusted Innovation actually starts in 1959 with the founders of the company The now legendary brother and sister team of Nathaniel Zelazo and Norma Paige created Astronautics Corporation of America Beginning with supporting the early US Space program in 1959 and then moving into electrotechnical flight instruments in the 1960s the company had a rapid growth in building the essentials of whats now our modern flight instrument culture Many a military pilot today will recall flying the Astronautics ADIs that were seemingly 3D with a rotating earth conveniently marked with heading and pitch In fact most aviators all know how they hugged this instrument with an integrated ILS in dark and bad weather trusting it was the thing that would get them home The move into the digital era with processors followed with the creation of systems for the Black Hawk helicopter monitors for NASAs Mission Control and the purchase of Kearfott Corporation Now the company is in the software and systems era developing and fielding EFBs airborne secure servers and new SVS based helicopter flight instruments Keeping the success going over the decades with innovations seems to be a principle behind each of Astronautics generational move in technology For example the company has developed modern flightdeck instruments and the AGCS which provides secure connectivity Today more than 150000 aircraft use Astronautics products and equipment The companys depth of products in the helicopter community is quite large ranging across Airbus Bell Boeing Leonardo MD and Sikorsky Astronautics Primary Flight Display PFD line the AFD 6800 is designed to replace and upgrade helicopter flightdecks and expand special mission shipsets with their PFD and MFD The MFD is a 6x8 engine flight instrument display and data concentrator that shows information in a variety of formats The Astronautics AFD 6800 can be expanded to include flight displays MFDs and can host 3rd party applications Astronautics delivered the first MFDs in 2016 to SENER for the Spanish Navys Agusta Bell AB 212s Astronautics announced upgrades to the system and delivery for the 5th aircraft in 2018 Also one of the key differentiators of this display is its HD video capability with multiple formats and inputs RoadRunner EFI new technology The development of a helicopter flight instrument with a Flight Path Vector FPV is new to the helo industry and its a unique form of energy management The green circle symbol with wings called the Flight Path Vector or Flight Path Marker enables a pilot to see instantly where the aircraft is going The conventional fixed pitch symbol and pitch ladder is still Connected aircraft solutions by Astronautics deliver secure and robust connectivity to both rotary and fixed wing aircraft