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By Shane Nolan |
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December 10, 2010 - Astronautics Corporation of America
(Astronautics) announced on Thursday that it has
received Technical Standard Order Authorization (TSOA)
approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
for the newest Astronautics 6” x 8” Electronic Flight
Instrument (EFI) display, Control Panel (CP), and Engine
Data Concentrator Unit (EDCU).
Variations of the equipment are being offered as an Electronic Flight Instrument System (EFIS) and Engine Instrument & Crew Alerting System (EICAS) on civil and military aircraft around the world including C-130, L-100, helicopter and trainer aircraft. |
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The units comply with the latest RTCA DO-160F standard requirements to meet applicable environmental conditions. The newly TSO’d system is currently being shipped in support of C-130 avionics upgrade programs around the world. The 6” x 8” EFI display uses Astronautics’ patented light-emitting diode (LED) NVIS compliant backlight with avionics grade active matrix liquid crystal (AMLCD) “glass”.
The
resulting new glass cockpit installations have exceptional
viewing angles for improved human factor considerations.
The EFI
display, available with different bezel configurations, has a
small mechanical package allowing it to accommodate difficult
instrument panel mounting situations.
Astronautics currently utilizes a six (6) display
configuration in C-130 retrofits for different customers.
Depending on discrete input strapping or pilot selection
or both, the display functionality can be primary flight,
navigation, system status, video, or EICAS.
The system uses the EDCU to convert analog engine data to digital data that is provided to the EFI for display on the EICAS. The CP is used to select the information that is displayed on the navigation display, as well as set the altitude minimums, barometric corrections, selected altitude, and gross weight.
“A benefit
of this display’s flexibility,” said Dan Wade, Vice President of
Business Development, “is that a customer will only need one
part number to service all aspects of the displays in the
cockpit. Having one
TSO’d part number will save the customer substantially on
operational costs, as the customer will need only one part
number for their rotable spares pool.” |
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