HEAD-UP DISPLAYS (HUDs) for business aircraft are finally catching on says Flight Visions. The Sugar Grove, Illinois-based company says, that its FV-2000 low-cost HUD is now certificated on the Cessna Citation II, Learjet 55 and Gulfstream IV.
By the end of the year, says President Robert Atac, the HUD will be approved on the Canadair Challenger 601-3A, Dassault Falcon 50, Gulfstream III and Sikorsky S-76. Installations planned for 1996 include the Beechjet 400A, Citation III, Falcon 200 and 900, Hawker 800 and Gulfstream II, he says.
Flight Visions has teamed with Litef to use the Germany company's LCR-92 fibre-optic-gyro attitude/heading-reference system (AHRS). Atac says the $32,000 AHRS will allow display of a velocity-vector symbol on the $75,000 HUD. This safety-enhancing feature is now only available if the aircraft is equipped with an inertial-reference system, he says.
The company says that it has orders for some 160 HUDs and is pursuing a wider market than other manufacturers in a bid to offer fleet commonality to corporate flight-departments.
Dassault is installing a Flight Dynamics HGS-2000 head-up guidance system in the Falcon 2000 and is aiming for Category IIIa certification in 1996. Testing of the Honeywell/GEC-Marconi Avionics HUD 2020 on the Gulfstream IV-SP will begin in December, with Cat II certification planned for 1996 on the GIV and 1997 on the GV.
Also gaining ground is the global-positioning system (GPS). Rockwell-Collins' new Avsat 3000, for "...corporate-aircraft operators looking for basic satellite-based navigation-management capability", is a scaled-down version of the Avsat 6000 soon to be certificated in the Challenger 604. It can be integrated with Collins' Pro Line avionics, or can stand alone.
AlliedSignal Aerospace's new GNS-XL is an approach-approved, GPS-based, flight-management system with a large liquid-crystal display. Deliveries are to begin in February 1996, and the one-box system will be certificated in the Citation Excel wide-body light business jet.
Source: Flight International
