Honeywell has deployed the first 10 ground stations for its Wingman live text weather services. Some 200 ground stations are expected to be on-line by year-end, uplinking live Doppler digital weather radar images to aircraft.
The service, plans for which were announced at last year's Experimental Aircraft Association show, was demonstrated for the first time at this year's show on Bendix-King multifunction displays.
It will provide live weather images for a flat monthly fee, with the information updated via the ground stations from the US National Weather Service about every eight minutes.
Wingman graphic weather images can be shown on the Bendix-King KMD 150, 550 and 850 multifunction displays, which were certificated late last year. Other brands of displays are also compatible for the service. Operating the system requires Honeywell's new KDR 510 VHF Data Link (VDL) Mode 2 data system, which is priced at about $5,000.
"We've got the hardware side in hand and now it's mostly a matter of completing our station installations and finishing the TSOs [technical standard orders] for the in-flight hardware," says Dan Barks, marketing manager for Honeywell's Bendix-King line.
The next stage of development involves the Traffic Information Service (TIS), which will provide in-flight radar images of traffic via Mode S link. Progress on hardware to operate the TIS trails the weather links, concedes Barks, but is on track for deployment in 2002. The Bendix-King KT-73 Mode S transponder, which is needed to receive the air traffic images, is undergoing testing to satisfy TSO requirements.
Source: Flight International
