Crane Aerospace and Electronics (booth 2810) has tapped Duncan Aviation (booth 3600) to help it accelerate efforts to certificate its wireless tire pressure indication system on several business jet types.
Crane announced this morning a partnership agreement with Duncan to support Crane's ongoing efforts to secure several supplemental type certificates for its SmartStem wireless tire pressure indication system. SmartStem was initially certificated on the Cessna Sovereign and Citation X in 2007.
Crane director of aftermarket sales Tim King says the agreement with Duncan, a large aircraft service provider with facilities in Nebraska and Michigan, "will help us accelerate STCs for some other business jet types".
Crane senior manager for regional and business jet markets Michael Tveit says the company is working on certificating the system on six more business jet types. Crane so far has done all certification work for SmartStem in-house, but certification is not a core competency for Crane and the company's engineering resources are limited. "Duncan has a lot of experience in that area", Tveit says.
King says Crane has so far supplied 80 SmartStem kits to Cessna, which sells SmartStem as an option on new Sovereigns and Citation Xs as well as a retrofit. Tveit says Crane is working on certificating SmartStem on other members of the Citation family with additional STCs expected next year.
He says Crane also plans to certificate SmartStem on the first non-Cessna business jet late this year or early next year, but non-disclosure agreements prevent it from naming it.
SmartStem is also standard on new Boeing 777s and is being demonstrated for the US Air Force on the Lockheed Martin F-16. For business aviation, Tveit says "safety is the big value proposition". The SmartStem includes a hand-held reader to measure tire pressure, with a USB port to facilitate the downloading of information to a tire management software program.
Crane is talking to manufacturers about offering SmartStem on new and existing aircraft, but King says it is also exploring selling the system directly to owners and operators.
"We want to get SmartStem out as much as possible in the business aviation community to enhance safety and provide an efficient and reliable means to measure tire pressure," Tveit says.
Source: Flight Daily News
