Avionics

Whether as simple as a search light for a police helicopter or as complicated as the tactical system for an airborne early warning system they are unavoidable in today’s complicated world of modern day aviation.

Many developments in the field of avionics have their origins in World War II. Autopilot systems that are common today were started to help bomber planes fly steadily enough to hit precision targets from high altitudes. Radar was developed during the same period. A substantial spending of military spending is in avionics. A growth in cost of avionics is seen in civilian market too. Development costs have been escalated by Flight Control Systems (fly by wire) and new navigation needs brought by tighter airspaces. The recent boom in consumer flying has brought forth a major change. More elaborate methods of controlling aircraft safely have been invented as more people have begun to use planes as their primary method of transportation.

Most avionic equipment including control, monitoring, communication, navigation, weather and anti-collision systems are typically located in the cockpit of an aircraft. Majority of aircrafts are powered using 14 or 28 volts DC electrical systems. Larger more sophisticated aircraft such as airliners or military combat aircraft are powered by 115 volts 400 Hz AC. Major vendors of flight avionics include Panasonics Avionics corporation, Honeywell, Thales group, GE Aviation systems, Garmin, Parker Hannifin etc.

Communications are a major part of avionics of an aircraft. They connect the flight deck to the ground and flight deck to the passengers. Public address systems and aircraft intercoms provide on board communications. The determination of position and direction on or above the surface of the earth is called Navigation. Satellite based systems such as GPS and WAAS or ground based systems such as VOR or LORAN or any combination thereof are used. The position of the aircraft is calculated automatically by navigation systems and displayed.

Monitoring is another important aspect of aviation. In olden days electromechanical displays, gauges and instruments were used. “Glass cockpits” made their presence in the 1970’s when flight-worthy Cathode ray tubes (CRT) began to replace electromechanical devices. The use of computer monitors instead of gauges and other analog displays is referred to as “glass” cockpit. As avionics progressed aircrafts were getting more displays, dials and information dashboards that eventually competed for space and pilot attention. The average aircraft started to have more than 100 cockpit instruments. To balance how much control is to be automated and how much the pilot must do manually is one of the key challenges in glass cockpits.

Aircraft flight control systems have means of automatically controlling flight. It helps in reducing pilot error and workload at key times like landing or takeoff. It was Lawrence Speery who first invented autopilot during World War II to hit precision targets from 25,000 feet. Most commercial aircrafts today are equipped with Aircraft Flight Control systems. Collision avoidance systems are in common use today. Most large transport aircraft and many smaller ones use a traffic alert and collision avoidance system (TCAS) which can detect location of nearby aircraft and provide instructions for avoiding midair collision. This helps in avoiding lot of accidents. Smaller aircrafts use simpler traffic alerting systems. The use of Black Boxes has been common for decades. They store flight information and audio from cockpit. They are recovered after an accident to determine control settings and other parameters during the incident.

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