Graham Warwick/LAS VEGAS
When New Piper Aircraft rolled out the Malibu Meridian in August, it caused a stir in the general aviation (GA) community. Not because of the aircraft's single turboprop engine, which is unusual enough, but because of its cockpit. Not only was the flightdeck equipped with the latest in flat-panel displays and satellite-navigation systems, a first in this class of aircraft, but the suppliers were not those traditionally associated with advanced "glass" cockpits.
Instead of selecting AlliedSignal's market-dominating Bendix/King products, Piper picked systems from upstarts Garmin International, Meggitt Avionics and S-TEC. "We wanted to go with AlliedSignal, but what they offered wasn't what we wanted," says Matthew Amundson, manager, international sales. "They offered cathode-ray tubes; we wanted liquid-crystal displays. Their system was too big, too heavy and too costly," he says.
Instead, Piper selected three suppliers that it believes "-are truly on the leading edge-and have leapfrogged over the competition to get to where they are today". It is a bold move for the aircraft manufacturer, which is taking a risk in going with suppliers which have no experience with integrated flightdecks.
Piper wanted the most advanced cockpit possible in an aircraft costing less than $1.4 million, however, and that meant breaking the mould. Garmin, Meggitt and S-TEC "-have a proven record of bringing products to market on time", the manufacturer says.
SECTOR SHIFT
Piper's decision highlights a shift in the GA avionics sector that has been coming since the advent of flat-panel displays and satellite-navigation systems opened up the market to new players. The technologies at the heart of these flightdeck innovations - liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) and global-positioning system (GPS) receivers - are essentially commercial commodities, accessible to a wider market than the specialist electromechanical and radionavigation systems in traditional avionics.
Successful exploitation of LCDs and GPS has introduced several new names to GA avionics, including Arnav Systems, Garmin, Meggitt, and more recently Archangel and Avidyne. Until the Meridian, however, these newcomers had not encroached significantly on the territories of the traditional GA cockpit suppliers.
Piper's decision, and the announcements at last week's US National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) convention that Meggitt is to supply displays for Century Aerospace's new business jet and American Utilicraft's new turboprop freighter, has served as a wake-up call for AlliedSignal. The company says it has new-generation GA avionics under development, and is believed to have demonstrated its ideas secretly to manufacturers at NBAA.
Meggitt, meanwhile, was openly celebrating its success just a few booths away. The UK company is an unlikely entrant into the GA avionics market, as its products sell into the air transport, military and high-end business jet markets. The Meggitt Avionics new Generation Integrated Cockpit (MAGIC) display system, however, has its origins in an innovative standby instrument developed by the company for its traditional customer base.
SOLID-STATE PACKAGE
Meggitt's secondary flight display system (SFDS) packages solid-state air data and inertial sensors in a single 3ATI (75mm) flat-panel display unit that replaces the traditional, separate, standby attitude, altitude and airspeed instruments. Marketing director Peter O'Sullivan explains that Meggitt originally built a flat-panel standby attitude indicator, "...but it wouldn't sell. There wasn't much difference in price [compared to an electromechanical instrument], so we put in airspeed and altitude to add value.
"Nobody believed we could do it," he recalls. "It took nine months of human factors work to get an acceptable display, but we did it." The SFDS was introduced in 1993, and the display is now fitted as standard on Cessna and Gulfstream business jets, Boeing airliners and several military aircraft, he says.
While the SFDS costs almost $30,000, and is therefore too expensive for the GA market, it did provide the basis for development of the MAGIC system. Use of an avionics-grade LCD is one reason for the SFDS' cost, so Meggitt is using commercial "glass" in the MAGIC displays. O'Sullivan explains: "Originally Piper wanted only engine displays, so we used commercial glass. Then they asked if we could do flight displays." Meggitt gave Piper an SFDS to flight test as a primary flight display. "It worked well, but it was too small," he says.
As a result, the MAGIC system uses the same 100 x 130mm commercial LCDs, produced by Sharp, for the primary flight display and navigation display as well as the two engine display units (EDUs). As there is only limited space for avionics in most GA aircraft, all electronics are packaged into the displays themselves, says O'Sullivan. The exception is a small data acquisition unit, which converts analogue signals from the engine sensors and fuel probes to digital format for transmission by databus to the EDUs for display. This unit can also record data for engine trend monitoring. 
LOW-COST SENSORS
Flat-panel displays alone do not make an integrated flightdeck. The key to that lies in the sensors that provide information for the displays - and particularly those required to drive the primary flight display. "The reasons we can do this [the MAGIC system] include the relatively inexpensive glass, but most important is the sensor package," says O'Sullivan.
Meggitt has developed what it calls the air data attitude heading reference system (ADAHRS), a solid-state sensing unit which outputs on a digital databus: pitch and roll attitude; pitch, roll and yaw rates; altitude; rate of change of altitude; airspeed; and heading. In the Piper Meridian, the compact ADAHRS is mounted in the vertical tail, close to the pitot and static sensors.
The ADAHRS is essentially the "back end" of the company's SFDS. "We spent literally millions developing the SFDS, and we're able to repackage it [to produce the ADAHRS] almost for free from the development point of view," says O'Sullivan. This has allowed Meggitt to produce the ADAHRS, and therefore the MAGIC display system, at a cost low enough to appeal to to the GA market. Whereas an AHRS alone previously cost up to $30,000, O'Sullivan puts the uninstalled cost for a dual MAGIC display system in the region of $75,000.
The importance of developing a low-cost sensor package is underlined by Arnav, which manufactures flat-panel multi-function displays (MFDs) for GA aircraft. The company says it has looked at producing a flight display system, "...but we need a low-cost AHRS". Arnav is hoping that NASA will sponsor development of such a system under its AGATE (Advanced General Aviation Transport Experiments) programme.
In the Meridian, meanwhile, Meggitt's engine and flight displays are integrated with Garmin's GNS530 navigation/communication system and S-TEC's System 550 autopilot. The display system receives navigation information from the GNS530, and provides attitude and heading information to the autopilot.
Garmin describes its new GNS530 as an "expandable architecture MFD". The panel-mounted unit integrates a 12-channel GPS receiver, 2,280-channel VHF transceiver, and 200-channel instrument landing system/VOR receiver with a 125mm-diagonal flat-panel moving map display. The GPS receiver is to be certificated for instrument flight-rules approaches, while the VHF transceiver will provide 8.33kHz channel spacing.
Garmin is well known for its GPS navigators, and the GNS530 is one a family of new systems that signal the company's intention to become a leading provider of navigation/communication systems for GA aircraft. As has Meggitt, Garmin has AlliedSignal's dominance of the GA avionics market in its sights. The Meridian is the first application for the GNS530, and the company is also providing the audio panel and digital transponder for the aircraft.
Another avionics manufacturer which, until recently, had AlliedSignal in its sights is Trimble Navigation. The company has been developing a full suite (or "stack" in GA parlance) of panel-mounted avionics under the TrimLine name, but earlier this month decided to exit the GA market and has put the business up for sale.
Michael Gagliardi, general manager of Trimble's aerospace business, says the company's board recently completed a review of all business units and decided that the GA avionics segment was "non-strategic". This is a U-turn from Trimble's previous direction, which was to diversify out of its core GPS business. This led to the purchase of Terra, which produced a line of GA avionics.
Trimble has been investing heavily to win a bigger share of the GA market, Gagliardi says, and is close to completing development of the last major piece of its new TrimLine avionics suite, the TN-200 GPS navigator. Gagliardi says the company will now try to package the GA business for sale, hopefully before the end of the year.
TrimLine avionics have been selected by Cirrus Design for its new SR20 four-seat light aircraft, which was scheduled for certification by the end of October, and by Mooney for its high-performance piston singles. Gagliardi admits that both companies are now "very hesitant", but he says Trimble will support them until a buyer for its GA business is found. If a buyer is not found, he says, Trimble will stay in the GA avionics market.
LARGE SCREEN SITUATION
As part of its TrimLine development programme, Trimble has been working with Avidyne to develop a large-screen flight situation display, which it calls Information Central. Avidyne produces a line of software products allowing display of a moving map, flight guidance, lightning strikes, weather radar, traffic, ground-based weather and terrain. The company also has an agreement with AvroTec to produce a large-screen flight display system called FlightMonitor, which has been selected by Lancair for its recently certificated four-seat light aircraft, the Columbia 300. Avidyne's display software has been selected by Mooney for its Bravo and Ovation, and Commander for its 114.
These large displays are the latest innovation in GA avionics. Cirrus is fitting Arnav's 260mm ICDS 2000 display as standard on the SR20. Initially, this displays a moving map, with uplinked weather graphics as an option, but Cirrus has asked Arnav to add engine monitoring. Arnav, meanwhile, is developing what it describes as a form of enhanced ground proximity warning, which displays the aircraft's projected flightpath in relation to the terrain.
These and other developments illustrate that the GA avionics market is actively embracing new technology - and new suppliers. The message to established players is clear: the time to innovate is here.
Source: Flight International