Enhanced package to be retrofitted to existing 500s by year-end and will have 'no impact' on delivery schedule
Eclipse Aviation, builder of the Eclipse 500 very light jet (VLJ), has announced a new list of well-established avionics providers to fill the gap left by its separation with Avidyne, maker of the displays and software behind the aircraft's Avio integrated avionics suite.
The new avionics package, dubbed the Avio NG, will feature higher-resolution, longer-lasting primary flight and multi-functional displays built by IS&S - a flight management system built by Chelton, Garmin GTX 33 and GTX 33D transponders, Honeywell Primus Apex KTR 2280 digital radios with 8.33/25 kHz channel spacing and a PS Engineering PMA500 audio control panel.
Enhancements will include a five-times longer mean-time-before-failure for the displays (from 1,400h to more than 7,000h), plus higher-resolution displays (from 600 x 800 pixels to 768 x 1,024 pixels for the primary flight display and from 1,024 x 768 to 1,440 x 900 pixels for the multifunction display) and wide-angle readability of the displays. Honeywell already provides the RDR 2000 weather radar and KGP 560 terrain awareness and warning system as options.
Announcing the new avionics team on 5 March, Eclipse chief executive Vern Raburn said the changes would have "absolutely no effect" on the delivery of an expected 402 aircraft this year, nor would the new system affect the aircraft's $1.54 million price tag, at least in the near term. "Eclipse is picking up the cost," he said. The Albuquerque, New Mexico-based airframer has delivered one aircraft since receiving its US Federal Aviation Administration certification in September, partly due to issues in obtaining a production certificate for the aircraft.
Raburn says Eclipse 500s delivered through the first half of the year with the Avidyne systems would be retrofitted with the Avio NG by year's end, a process he said would take less than 10 days.
The number of aircraft to be delivered by mid-year remains uncertain as Eclipse continues to address issues that have delayed its receipt of a production certificate.
Source: Flight International
