Business & GA

Miniature Air Vehicles

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) that can be contained in a backpack or even in the palm of your hand promise to deliver new intelligence-gathering and surveillance capabilities from the platoon level down…

Commercial

Managing Change In FMS

New types of aircraft operating procedures and concepts are influencing the development of flight management systems (FMS). As those technology-driven procedures evolve, avionics and airframe manufacturers say they are improving their products…

ATM Modernization

Special Report: Securing Intellectual Property

Intellectual property (IP) is as important to avionics as avionics is to an aircraft. Properly securing, maintaining and policing intellectual property rights will help maximize a company’s ability to attract investment, protect…

Business & GA

Product Focus: Aircraft Switches

Control of an in-flight aircraft is predicated on the pilot’s ability to alter critical aircraft components and/or conditions to safely carry out the flight plan. Switches are one way designers have traditionally…

Business & GA

New Products

Digital Signal Processor Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing, Leesburg, Va., unveiled conduction-cooled, rugged versions of its CHAMP-FX digital signal processor (DSP) 6U VME64x and VITA-41 engines. Also, Curtiss-Wright qualified the high performance IP…

ATM Modernization

Safety: Inertial System Drift

The most expensive failure of a twin Inertial Reference System (IRS) occurred on the first Ariane V rocket in 1996. Thirty-seven seconds after liftoff, a software fault caused an extreme attitude change,…

ATM Modernization

Perspectives: eLORAN’s Shortcomings

While I share the concern about possible backups to automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) in the event of GPS local or larger outages, I don’t believe the entire story about Enhanced Loran