Merritte DeBuhr Bio

Manager, Technical Program Development
Electronic Cable Specialists (ECS)
merritte.debuhr@ecsdirect.com

Merritte DeBuhr
With 37 years in the field of aviation, Merritte's career path began at King Radio/Allied Signal, moved to Smiths Industries, Goodrich Test Systems, and eventually ECS, where he has spent the past 12 plus years.

Focused on up-front program and product development, Merritte's work with ECS has been related to mandated safety and market driven retrofits such as smoke detection and fire suppression, enhanced ground proximity warning systems (EGPWS), cockpit door surveillance (CDSS), and Electronic Flight Bags (EFB).

As a result of the September 11th tragedy, significant effort was placed on finding a means to mount a display system in the cockpit that would support video monitoring of the cockpit door. This peaked the interest of pilots and the airline community to install a device that could serve multiple purposes and host the multitude of documents required for use on the flight deck.

ECS took the initiative to develop solutions to support this need and Merritte began investing the majority of his time in EFB definition, installation design, certification, training, and participating in industry activities. These activities included participation in every ARINC 828 EFB specification definition meeting and serving as the industry editor for the first official release of the document.

The wealth of this experience opened the door for ECS to sponsor EFB workshops which have been presented by Merritte at major industry functions over the last two years. These workshops are aimed at helping potential EFB customers understand the overall complexity of implementing a full-up operational approved EFB program.