Avidyne Blog

Being Prepared for the Unexpected

Patrick Herguth — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 02:56:00 GMT

Happy New Year and best wishes for 2012!

I wanted to try and pick back up with this blog and the first topic is how safety is a dominant topic within Avidyne. Our goal is to improve the safety, utility and simplicity of general aviation and I wanted to share some of the topics that we discuss internally with this broader community of active, online pilots.

As I reread my last post from April 2010 (hey, we've been really busy!) I do have some updates regarding my own flying experience and how that influences my personal opinions about flying with advanced technology. I did get my instrument rating last year and built up about 150 hours on the G1000 on a Cessna 172/182, flew to Oshkosh as PIC in a DFC90 equipped Cirrus and recently took my first true solo cross country from Massachusetts to Iowa this past August in a Cirrus with “first generation” Entegra / STEC 55x configuration. More recently I have been flying a Cirrus with our Entegra R9 and DFC100 equipment and to get a better appreciation for the days before glass I have been flying a PA28R where the most advanced piece of equipment in the plane is a recently installed refurbished 430W. For fun I fly in a super decathlon so I can remember what it is like to have to look out the window for an entire flight. My goal over the last few years has been to get some time in as many of the various configurations that pilots are flying today in order to appreciate how our customers use technology in the cockpit.

I spend a decent amount of time reading the COPA, Beech and Piper forums and I have personally benefited as a pilot by having my “head in the game” every day by reading threads across various topics. Within Avidyne we also analyze GA accidents to try and find ways to improve the safety of the fleet. This process has led to features such as envelope protection, straight and level and a continued focus on ease of use. Between the forums and our internal design process it forces me to think about “what would I have done” quite often and I see other pilots engaging in those same discussions on the forums. That prompted me to ask our team to put together a series focused on illustrating how our equipment operates in various emergency scenarios. My intent is to get our pilots thinking about these scenarios and being prepared for them so they can effectively manage the situation.

The original Entegra system is installed on almost 4,000 aircraft and 6 years ago it was on the leading edge of avionics technology. When we designed the Entegra R9 system we leveraged our experience with the first generation system in order to build a integrated flight display that was easier for the pilot to use, especially in an emergency situation. The scenarios that we have put together serve two purposes:

1) no matter what system you are flying we are encouraging you to be proficient in emergency procedures specific to your avionics and aircraft,

2) to illustrate how the technology has evolved and how this could provide some pilots with an advantage in an emergency situation.

My goal is encourage training and preparedness for emergency scenarios that could arise and to also raise awareness that the technology could be used to provide an added safety margin.

Here is a link to a scenario the team put together.

Safe flying!

The Start of Another Exciting Flying Season!

Patrick Herguth — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 19:53:00 GMT

This blog entry can also be found at Avidyne Live.

I am a newbie to flying and the aviation culture, but I’ve been around long enough to know that spring weather (actually summer like weather here in the Northeast) means it is time to kick off the air show season. We are in the middle of a very busy two week stretch that includes the Aircraft Electronics Association (AEA) meeting which is attended by the avionics sales and service groups from across the country, Aero Friedrichshafen which is a popular fly in and airshow located in Germany and Sun ‘n Fun starts next week in Florida.

These shows are always a busy time for us, and they create excitement among our employees and customers. This year’s show season brings with it a little more optimism than we’ve had in a couple of years. We have survived the recession and the sharp downturn in GA; we have introduced our next generation of products which have been successful in these challenging economic conditions and we are hopeful that as the economy strengthens so will the GA industry.

We have three press releases that have gone out this week covering the following topics :

Avidyne Corporation and Extra Aircraft LLC today unveiled the Entegra Release 9 Integrated Flight Deck avionics suite for the Extra EA-500 aircraft. Extra Aircraft is the first manufacturer to choose the innovative Entegra Release 9 suite as factory-standard equipment.
Avidyne has partnered with RocketRoute.com to provide Eurocontrol-approved Flight Planning for the European General Aviation market and world-wide flight tracking.
Avidyne announced two innovative new features called “FMS Preview” and “FMS Centered” for their award-winning Entegra Release 9 Integrated Flight Deck (R9) avionics system. FMS Preview allows pilots to see a graphical presentation on the split-screen map as they scroll through the list of available departures, airways, transitions, and approach procedures in the R9 Flight Management System (FMS). FMS Centered enables pilots to scroll through their flight plan and view the entire route of flight at a single range setting on the split-map display, to get a better idea of the weather along the route. (See Attached Press Release for More Info.)

We will have more to announce next week at Sun n Fun as well, so stay tuned.

On a personal note I will be taking my first long distance GA flight as I fly a Cessna 182 to the Sun ‘n Fun show next week. To date the longest flight I have taken in a SEP aircraft is about two hours. I am going to do this with my instructor, from Executive Flyers Aviation, as part of my IFR training. Almost all of my 120 hours of flying has been in a G1000 equipped plane (except for the 30 hours I’ve logged in a Super Decathlon for basic aerobatics training, that was fun!). My plan is to use this training time to really understand our competitor’s product, do my check ride in the aircraft, and then transition into an R9 equipped plane so I can have a solid understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of each product.

I am looking forward to the trip and have received many comments on how this will be an invaluable learning experience that I wouldn’t otherwise have gotten by doing local cross country trips as part of the standard IFR syllabus. I won’t be getting the full Sun ‘n Fun experience as we will be going into KPCM so we have easier in and out logisitics.

If you are attending Sun N Fun feel free to sign up for our customer appreciation party on Tuesday night. This is our second annual party in which Avidyne employees throw a BBQ and get a chance to interact with our customers. It’s pretty cool when the senior developer of our FMS is flipping burgers and talking to the R9 pilots who are flying the system with the airshow providing the backdrop. This whole flying culture is pretty cool!

Recent Cross Country Flight with an Avidyne DFC Autopilot

Patrick Herguth — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:58:00 GMT

This blog can also be read at Avidyne Live.

Steve Jacobson, VP of Product Management, and I recently took a trip to an avionics shop in PA for an Aviydne DFC autopilot evaluation. We wanted to get their feedback on the installation time estimates and processes we have put together and to learn more about the hurdles we may encounter as we upgrade Entegra aircraft to the new line of DFC autopilots.

The main concern we have for installing the DFC autopilot is that the rigging and the servos are within the published specifications. If they are, the DFC autopilot will be a significant improvement over the current rate-based autopilot. If the rigging and the servos are out of spec then the performance could be degraded and additional troubleshooting will be required to get the advertised performance from the DFC autopilot. We are working to create simple tests to see if the airplanes are within the published tolerances before we start the upgrade process. Our plan is to gather data from a few high volume service centers so we can get a sense of the distribution of aircraft that are in and out of spec. We are also planning to do a small production run after the certification of the autopilot to manage any entry to service problems that may arise and then go forward with full rate production. It is very important to us that we have a smooth installation with our new line of digital autopilots.

Since we had a 1.5 hour flight each way I used the opportunity to get in some flying time. It was a beautiful day for flying and we were VFR all the way. Steve was the PIC and handled the aircraft in the terminal areas. Once we were in cruise I turned off the autopilot and worked on flying the course, maintaining altitude and handling the radios since we had flight following. It was good practice for me since I am about a month into my IFR training and the focus to date has been basic instrument flying while handling multiple tasks. I don’t have a lot of hours in a Cirrus so it was fun to get a feel for the airplane and work on dividing my attention between the various distractions. I did gain a new appreciation for the left handed Cirrus pilots out there as I was in the right seat and found it challenging to copy down instructions from ATC while hand flying the airplane.

One new advantage I personally discovered with the DFC autopilot is the quality of the flight director. Since we have the ability to easily swap the autopilots we flew one leg with the 55x and one leg with the DFC autopilot. I only have limited experience with using a flight director and Steve challenged me to fly it with both autopilots. On the leg with the 55x the flight director was very challenging and I felt that it increased my workload. This is due to the inherent technology of a rate based system which causes the command bars to jitter and move constantly even when we were flying straight and level. I felt that it was much easier to fly using a traditional scan technique. When we flew the leg with the DFC digital autopilot and engaged the flight director I flew the airplane much better compared to the traditional scan technique. The command bars were steady and easy to “capture” the correct attitude to fly the GPS course and maintain the correct altitude. We used it to fly our descent and I was a much smoother pilot because of the flight director.

We have spent a lot of time explaining the new features and functionality of our new DFC digital autopilots. This is warranted given the breakthrough nature of Envelope Protection and the Straight & Level button, coupled with the straightforward upgrade process. While the flight director is a feature that currently exists in most of the Cirrus configurations, I personally think this may become a favorite feature of our DFC customers.

FLYING Editors’ Choice Award a Fitting Summary of 2009

Patrick Herguth — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:16:00 GMT

This blog post can also be viewed on Avidyne Live.

We were recently bestowed the Editors’ Choice Award for the Entegra Release 9 avionics by FLYING Magazine. This is the third time that Avidyne has won an Editors’ Choice Award for innovations in avionics for general aviation. 2009 was one of the most exciting years in Avidyne’s history and I wanted to reflect briefly on what we accomplished last year.

I think the most important accomplishment for 2009 was our continued focus on our customers. In mid 2008 we committed ourselves to fixing customer service and improving the quality of our products. Last year was about proving ourselves every day to our customers and creating an environment of continuous improvement. We weren’t perfect, but we are proud of the difference we have made in our effort to minimize the downtime of our customers. This will continue to be a focus in 2010 and we have already made some significant improvements in our call workflow to reduce average resolution times from 2 hours to 20 minutes!

Avidyne had a busy year for product introductions. The Entegra Release 9 upgrade leveraged everything we learned from our first generation Entegra products and developed these innovations on the most advanced avionics architecture that you can find in light general aviation. We committed to the market in mid ’08 that we would certify the product within a year and we actually beat that target by several months. This was a tremendous accomplishment by the entire company. We also launched our family of DFC autopilots that can upgrade the existing STEC 55X by swapping the AP flight computer and integrating with the digital ADAHRS in the Entegra avionics system. The EX600 was launched in late 2009 and improved upon the industry leading EX500 MFD and once again delivered new and innovative features to the multifunction cockpit display. Like all of our products, these innovative features were based on a real understanding of how pilots actually use our products. In a year that has been dubbed one of the most difficult in general aviation we were proud to deliver multiple, innovative products to the market.

As a business, we had to transform ourselves with the changing market conditions. Providing high value upgrades to our existing customers is a new and growing segment of our business and one that we feel is appropriate for the economic conditions. More of our customers are keeping their current airplanes, and we are providing them options to improve the safety, utility and simplicity of their aircraft. Our customers have responded to this with over 100 R9 upgrades ordered in 2009 which on an annualized basis was 20% of the total new piston aircraft delivered worldwide in 2009. We are proud of our ability to adjust quickly to the needs of our customers and we will continue to do so in 2010.

Langewiesche’s “Silver Chain”

Patrick Herguth — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 13:10:00 GMT

This post can also be found on our Avidyne Live site.

Langewiesche’s “Silver Chain”

I have been working my way through Stick and Rudder: An Explanation of the Art of Flying by Wolfgang Langewiesche and it has been a very interesting read. There are multiple places where Langewiesche talks about making planes safer and easier to fly and he also talks about the idea of a “silver chain” that would keep an airplane from stalling. The thought experiment is that if you put a physical chain on the stick it would never let the pilot pull back far enough to stall the airplane. He debunks the idea because while it would provide a level of safety in some situations, the problem is too complex for this simple design to deliver a plane that wouldn’t stall. I am too much of an airplane novice to understand all of advances in aircraft design that have occurred since the book was published, but I think a lot of the concepts discussed in the book have gone in to making general aviation airplanes easier to fly and more forgiving than the planes he was referencing in the book.

As I thought more about the safety chain concept I realized the envelope protection feature on our DFC90 and DFC100 autopilots is something that Langewiesche would be really happy about. When our autopilot is engaged it acts like the silver chain that Langewiesche realized couldn’t exist as a purely mechanical system. As Mark Krebs explained in his very technical blogs the Avidyne autopilot is constantly running calculations to determine the lift available in the wings of the airplane. This works with any power setting or flap configuration and overcomes the mechanical challenges that hampered Langewiesche’s chain to keep pilots from stalling the airplane during training or in stressful situations.

Envelope protection as a tool during an engine out emergency.

During my primary training last year I spent a lot of time with my instructor practicing engine out emergencies. I have been trying to take to heart the instruction to “fly the airplane” but I found that I barely had enough bandwidth to fly at Vg, pick a landing spot (no CAPS in a 172) and then get set up to put the airplane on that spot. When I was in training mode I did get better at using the GPS to find the nearest airport and I effectively ran through the checklist and “communicated” my emergency. Granted I am still a new pilot, but just flying the aircraft at Vg took most of my bandwidth.

One of the very interesting applications of envelope protection is managing an engine out situation. While cruising the autopilot will most likely be in GPSS mode and holding an altitude. If the engine quits and you do nothing the autopilot will lose airspeed as it tries to maintain altitude. It will do this until the aircraft reaches 1.2Vs and then envelope protection will take over and sacrifice altitude for airspeed. The pilot will have both visual and aural alerts while this is occurring. You can then use the GPS to see if one of the nearest airports is within gliding range and if it is the autopilot can fly direct to the airport. If an airport is not within gliding range then the pilot can use the heading mode for lateral guidance and focus on picking an optimal CAPS deployment or off airport landing spot while the autopilot is doing its job of flying at approximately Vg, not stalling the plane and giving you the most time possible to make the right decisions. Our product management team will work with the instructor community to determine how best to utilize this technology in an emergency situation.

As a new pilot that is still working on my stick and rudder skills I like having this kind of help in the cockpit. The DFC90 and DFC100 can really act like a co-pilot in this situation and allow me to focus on managing the entire emergency beyond just flying the airplane.

Avidyne DFC 90 & DFC 100 Autopilot: Envelope Protection

Patrick Herguth — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:09:00 GMT

This post was written by Mark Krebs, our Vice President of Engineering for Guidance and Controls and can be found on our Avidyne Live site

Envelope Protection

"Envelope Protection" is the name we give to two autopilot features that work to prevent stall and overspeed. In this post I'll discuss only the stall prevention part.

Considering how an autopilot works can easily become an exercise in flight dynamics. Fortunately it's a familiar topic for pilots! We'll introduce some of the mathematics along the way, and I think that whether you like math or not, you'll be able to connect your piloting knowledge to the equations.

Flying can be thought of as a hierarchy of decision making. Naturally you want to keep the airplane right side up, a very tactical consideration. You also want to avoid weather and traffic, achieve and capture an altitude, prevent stall, and, eventually, get there! And you more or less want all those things at the same time. A human's actually a pretty impressive computing machine, and the prioritization humans do almost unconsciously can be tricky to program.

Following the human model just described, the autopilot treats envelope protection as one of several simultaneous objectives. Like you, it wants to control pitch, limit g's, achieve commanded rate of climb & etc all at the same time. We employ two general techniques to get this done in the DFC series autopilots, one of them a little bit unusual...

First, and conventionally, many commands can be met while while constraints are simultaneously applied elsewhere. For example, upon encountering the glideslope, the AP will try to pitch over and capture it subject to the constraint that the g factor not drop too low. This is pretty easy thing to implement; somewhere in the autopilot there's a signal that represents the g load on the airplane. That value gets first calculated as a command by the glide slope control loop and then passed on to other functions for checking. One of those functions is the g limiter: whatever the REST of the autopilot would like to do, g's are constrained to the range of 0.2g to 3g. Once g command is determined, the next function down the line figures out how to achieve those g's using elevator servo commands.

I have used this as the first example because you do the same thing when you are flying. Your arm is the servo in a feedback control loop, pulling harder when you want more load factor from the airplane. The feedback comes from your body, which can measure g a couple of ways.

So, the constraints are relatively easy to understand as limitations applied to whatever else you want to do. Multiple competing objectives are a little more difficult to implement in software, but they're still easy enough to understand. For instance, given a vertical speed command, an altitude target, and "don't stall" as simultaneous mandates, whatyou do is prioritize them. "Don't stall" is most important, then vertical speed, and finally the altitude command is the last priority. What the DFC90/100 does, (and perhaps what you do too, if you think about it) is run these control loops at the same time, one for altitude hold and one for vertical speed. This is the second, and more unusual technique I mentioned above.

For contrast let's briefly consider the conventional approach. The AP could use various mode transition criteria to switch between loops, and only run one control loop at a time. That's common practice, however you can often feel a mode switch happening in those other autopilots, or notice that the switch didn't happen at the right time. Avidyne does not do it that way for critical pitch loops.

These loops are like two distinct imaginary pilots, competing for stick time. Perhaps the altitude autopilot is trying to point steeply up because the altitude command is 5000 feet above the present altitude, way up there! Meanwhile the other one, the VS control loop, is perfectly happy holding 800 feet/sec and wants to keep pitch right where it is at 7 deg. The prioritization logic chooses VS over altitude and now it's clear why: it would be crazy to use the altitude loop while we're still 5000' away from the command. The very reason there's a climb loop is that the altitude hold algorithm is so particular that, in responding proportionately to the very large altitude discrepancy pertaining during a climb, it would always be calling for an unsustainable aircraft maneuver: "Oh my gosh we're 5 THOUSAND feet off altitude, point the nose straight up!"  Instead the climb loop overrides the altitude loop until the aircraft reaches a height where it can respond linearly to command inputs based on altitude error.

What then controls the Avidyne autopilot's hand-over logic, and how is it different? Well, since we're running all the loops all the time, we can compare them. The capture transition happens at precisely that moment when the two control algorithms agree on the pitch command. That way it's perfectly smooth handover every time. This is a helpful way of thinking about the different modes too; that they are all "in there" somewhere, active all the time, computing and offering their elevator servo command to a supervisory function which selects from between the competing inputs. Now imagine that one of these behind-the-scenes autopilot controllers is concerned only with lift. It's not thinking about thevertical speed, or the altitude or the pitch angle or anything else: just lift. With that foundation, we are now in a good position to understand envelope protection.

Stall prevention is just one more control loop that's running all the time. It works in the background, and generally has high tolerance for whatever else the AP wants to do. However, the stall prevention algorithm has the absolute last word and it may take over the "pitch rate control loop" at any time: it's never switched off. Now, pitch rate is the innermost heart of the autopilot, analogous in humans perhaps to the subliminal "thinking" that keeps you balanced while walking, or when you’re flying an airplane, manages the g loading.

The metaphor isn't far fetched either, because there is an exact relationship between the autopilot's control of pitch rate and your control of g loading. It's called speed. The equation a = w x V_tas is unavoidable here. The variable w represents pitch rate¹ and a is the kinematic acceleration meaning the motion that results from the g forces applied to the aircraft. So we see that g's are proportional to pitch rate, and their ratio is speed. This is the centripetal acceleration equation from high school physics. Of course, there is one more component of the g's you feel, and that is the one g of gravity. We all understand the underlying concept perfectly well: it takes lift to fight gravity and it takes still more lift to turn the airplane, and you feel both of those in the seat of your pants as g loading.

At this point we have outlined almost all the computations that have to happen. The last one is a possibly familiar lift equation: Lift = 1/2 S_ref * rho_SL * Vias² * CL.² In words, the wing can generate lift in proportion to indicated airspeed and lift coefficient (CL) which you control through the angle of attack. We know we can not a exceed well defined maximum lift coefficient, called (no surprise) CL_max. Try to use more angle of attack and the stall buzzer goes off as you approach flow separation. So maximum lift is known. Further, lift and g are related by mass and we know earth's g is 32.2'/sec² so subtracting those (Lift_max - m*g) tells you how much extra lift is left over. That surplus lift can be used for acceleration, to turn the plane and that's pitch rate. It's important to mention the difference between kinematic and measured acceleration. Because of gravity you measure one g of acceleration even when you aren't kinematically moving at all. So what you (and the accelerometers inside the AHRS) feel is the vector difference between kinematic acceleration and g: a_meas = a_kine - g³. Since this is a vector equation, a lot of trigonometry arises as soon as we depart from zero pitch and roll, but for now if you will just stipulate that the geometry is properly accounted for, we can imagine that a fixed Lift budget gets“spent” on counteracting gravity and generating pitch rate.  If there's not enough lift because we're going too slow, then we either can't turn or can't fight gravity or both, you pick. The autopilot does this math and reduces things accordingly, starting with bank (limiting turns) and then grudgingly constraining pitch rate too. It is by controllling pitch rate that we limit g, hence lift.

What's interesting here is all the things we didn't have to consider here. There is no mention of vertical speed, or altitude, or airspeed control, or even pitch. Those are all important but do not matter to the equations implementing stall prevention. The algorithmthat's running behind the scenes is: "calculate the lift, subtract gravity, see what's left to accelerate the aircraft and then don't allow the pitch loop to try any harder than that." That might mean the calculated pitch rate comes out negative: you can fly slower than stall speed if you're willing to pitch over while doing it!  Finally, to be conservative, envelope protection always assumes max weight, just like the colored arcs on your airspeed indicator.

That completes the discussion of this envelope protection. The key points are that it’s always there in the background, calculating lift and keeping the airplane from approaching stall. You should never hear the stall buzzer while your DFC autopilot or flight director is engaged. (Well, providing you’re following the flight director.)

notes

¹w is the greek symbol for angular rate of rotation, a vector including not just pitch but roll and yaw rate as well.

²Here I must use the programmer's * to denote multiplication because later I will need "x" for the vector cross product.

³The bold font means these are vectors, and kinematic is construed to mean "in consequence of motion.

Avidyne DFC90 & DFC100 Autopilots: Leveraging the Existing Servos

Patrick Herguth — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:45:00 GMT

This post was written by Mark Krebs, our Vice President of Engineering for Guidance and Controls and can also be found on our Avidyne Live site.

How do the servos work?

One of the first questions many people have asked was how well the autopilot performs without digital smart servos. Plenty of smart folks have been confounded by the idea of a modern digital autopilot being coupled to the the existing Cirrus servo system: The question was even the topic of a COPA forum thread. "How could that work?" they asked. The answer is "very well indeed."

If that seems a surprising answer, well at first it was for me too; I was daunted by the initial challenge to utilize the existing servos. We had a few things going for us though: good understanding of the airplane's flying qualities, our high performance AHRS, and not least a modern digital flight control system. Over time, we overcame the challenges and became very comfortable with the Cirrus & STEC servos.

With three planes in continuous service now, we have accumulated hundreds of flight hours on multiple systems, including one with no STEC pitch servo at all, and they are all flying great. We are very confident the Cirrus trim servos and linkages provide a perfectly viable foundation on which to build a flight control system. I will provide the details here, along with correcting some misconceptions.

First, regarding digital servos. In all cases the servo boils down to a motor which is an analog device that converts current and voltage into torque and speed. Computer control makes it a "digital smart" servo, and as for computers, we got one. The point is, the tricky bit is about the "smarts" not about where they're located. With a fully capable actuator & harness already in place, it makes sense to keep the computation centralized. If there is any value in further discussion of servos, I'm happy to engage, just send me your questions.

Next, some basics on the flight control system. As you know, the stock Cirrus comes with pitch and roll trim servos, driven by DC motors through planetary reduction geartrains and closely coupled to the flying surfaces by spring cartridges. These motors are reliable and extremely strong: no way could a human ever overpower one. Enter the need for the spring cartridge. Whenever you move the yoke, you are overpowering that spring (but not budging the servo). That's why discussions of "wearing out" the spring cartridge are misplaced: it receives the greatest workout when the plane is hand flown! There are linkage issues we'll discuss in a moment, but basically, springs don't wear out, and we haven't seen any sign of it. It's a pretty good system. In fact, when I met with Cirrus aerodynamic designers to discuss the controls some time ago, they proudly touted the fact that you could fly the plane with just the trim hat. That might be a tricky proposition since the trim system only gives you one speed (full speed) but it is true, and is a unique feature of the Cirrus aircraft design.

The dynamics of the spring cartridge can be characterized informally by one word: "detent." What that detent is, is two springs preloaded to hold the yoke in the middle, against a center stop so that for the first several pounds of force applied, nothing happens. The cartridge won't budge. That's something you understand implicitly almost as a "muscle memory," and so when you feel the detent, you quickly and forcefully power through it. Once you've overcome the preload in either direction, the spring responds linearly thereafter and control surface deflection is proportional to the force applied. All this detail is relevant because as a human you have three special advantages over the autopilot. First, your arm is both a wonderful force sensor and a fast actuator. Second, you are attached to the elevator almost entirely without the slop (or "deadband," in the lingo) through which the trim servo must act. Lastly, your hand is a force sensor: you can feel the detent and know to push through it, but the autopilot servo can not. It doesn't know what it's pushing against, or how hard. Also, autopilot servo has some backlash of its own, which is the result of geometry and tension in the capstan bridle cable: that acts like another spring in the system, stiffer than the spring cartridge but softer than the preload.

So now, to summarize the autopilot's problem (again, from the viewpoint of the servo) it must push back through bridle backlash against unknown aerodynamic force from the elevator, which is itself attached through a sloppy linkage to the trim servo that introduces the detent characteristics just described. The aerodynamic force is called "hinge moment" and it's highly variable. Dependent on indicated airspeed and how much weight you want to put on the tailplane as a result of g-loading and cg location, the hinge moment can change dramatically during the flight and that's why there's a trim system: so you don't have to fight it all the time. In summary, the elevator servo is facing a backlash, a variable hinge moment, a deazdone, a preload and another spring. Finally, since we are driving a DC motor with a sticky, high ratio geartrain to push, it's going to take several Volts worth of determination to move at all!

That summarizes the challenges. What do we do about them? Two things...

Handling the last problem is the easiest, since we have a "smart" servo drive circuit. If we want to move at one volt speed, we command four volts, because it takes three volts just to "unstick" the motor. This is a very big part of the solution because it means we get proportionate servo response when we ask for it. The details are not much more complicated than that and you can easily imagine what a big improvement it makes: after all, control systems are all about getting what you ask for. In fact this is about all you need in the roll axis, where the spring cartridge is never deflected. There's been a surprising amount of confusion over the roll channel, with STEC introducing another whole servo and Garmin eschewing the trim system altogether. I don't know why. The Cirrus roll trim servo system is, in a word, excellent.

The pitch problem is a lot more interesting and the solution is both fun and elegant. First, consider that with all those different pieces of hardware, and all their individual dynamics, it is not clear who is flying the airplane! Is it the autopilot, the trim servo, or you? Just to illustrate with an example, suppose the aerodynamic hinge moment is large enough to overcome the spring cartridge detent. Then, if the automatic pitch trim is working, it will have been adjusting the trim servo to unload the autopilot servo and consequently the spring in that cartridge is deflected to "hold" the elevator force. We are in the linear range. "So what?" you may ask, but consider, that means the autopilot servo may be hanging "slack" in its bridle. It will have to turn a bit just to take a strain, before it can move the elevator at all. Until that happens, trim servo is actually flying the airplane! When this happens to you in your STEC you experience it as wandering uncontrolled pitch because the trim servo does not care about your glideslope deviation.

We experienced exactly this in flight test at high speed, during strong pull-ups, and sometimes on the glide slope, so, while intermittent, it can really matter. Our solution harks back to the rudder / elevator mixers on a Beech Bonanza: we simply command both servos to move the elevator. That way it doesn't matter which one has the solid linkage to the elevator because they're both doing the right thing all the time. When there's a trim signal (and this is sensed by the autopilot servo just the way it is in your STEC right now) then we command the servos in opposite directions, to soak up the load in that spring cartridge. That's it. In the long tradition of ruddervators, elevons, and spoilerons, we have a "trimmervator." It's a little bit funny, but legitimate. From the Bonanza to the B2, space shuttle, pegasus rocket and any number of other missiles, control mixing is a commonplace solution to cross coupled surface effectivity, which is what we've got here.

With these two simple ideas, we are able to master the complex Cirrus pitch flight control system, and get very good response out of the airplane. The system performs almost as well with just a trim servo although it suffers in speed and in situations where the hinge moment is large it just can't fly quite as precisely. We do recommend the pitch servo upgrade, but you will find that, even without it, your airplane will fly much much better with our autopilot.

This hardly begins to scratch the surface of the autopilot innovations. An important characteristic to think about is that "digital autopilot" is just a buzzword anyone can use. The devil's in the equations and not all equations are created equal. Probably, we won't share all the details of how Avidyne's advanced the control systems in the DFC, but a general discussion of some of those ideas will be forthcoming in future posts. The point, I suppose, is that I'm very proud of the uncompromising work we've done, and confident you'll see it expressed in robust, high performance capability of the autopilot. Some of the COPA posts are starting to show that already.

Happy flying!

Mark

Avidyne Digital Autopilot: Attitude Recovery with the Straight & Level Button

Patrick Herguth — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:30:00 GMT

This post was written by Mark Krebs, our Vice President of Engineering for Guidance and Controls, and can also be found on our Avidyne Live site.

Here at Avidyne, we have three aircraft in continuous flight test of our new DFC90/100 Autopilot and are proceeding towards certification at this time.

Since many of you may have the same ideas or questions as our test pilots, we thought it would be good to describe some of the key technical features of the autopilot in this forum. For many other "how does that work" questions, we're putting up a FAQ as well that you may want to peruse.

Several topics will be interesting to discuss here: I'll suggest a few to start:

Envelope Protection
Attitude recovery with the Straight & Level button.
How do we perform better, with the same servos?

In this first post, I will discuss Unusual Attitude Recovery.

Attitude "recovery" is what you do after something undesirable has happened. Whether because of a stall, wake upset, loss of spatial orientation, or an extreme maneuver to avoid traffic, the point is you are now in a situation you need to correct. Coincidentally, Flying Magazine published an article on upset recovery in their December issue. Titled "The Leading Killer," it's definitely worth reading. Recovery from these situations can be a difficult thing to execute correctly under pressure, and it's a significant cause of accidents. The autopilot hasn't historically been a useful option in getting out of situations like this, but now it is. The Avidyne DFC90/100 autopilot can assist you in handling an upset, because it has recovery procedures programmed in.

The Straight & Level button may be pressed at any time. When you do, you will get a proportionate response to the situation, meaning that if you are flying in an ordinary flight condition, you will get a restrained response from the autopilot, gently leveling the wings and bringing the nose to just above the horizon.

However if you're in an unusual attitude, the servos will be commanded to their limits, recovering pitch and bank with "full control authority." The autopilot will do the right thing at extreme pitch and/or bank angles, even inverted. For instance, if pitched up too far, the aircraft doesn't risk stall if it flies ballistically over the top, and the ailerons work better too, if the wing is lightly loaded. In this situation, the autopilot will "push" to just 1/4g load factor, enough to keep the gas on the bottom of the tanks and the pencils on the floor, but substantially unweighted. Meanwhile it will be rolling as fast as the servos can go. Once righted, the pitch loops will then pull with maximum g authority we allow.

If this sounds a little forceful, it's meant to be, and again the Autopilot only reacts this way if the initial attitude is extreme. As soon as benign conditions are reached, the response is toned back down to ordinary levels. Also, like all autopilot modes, Straight & Level is guarded by Envelope Protection, so there's no danger of a stall. That's why it's always safe to start the autopilot in Straight & Level if you find it convenient to do so.

The autopilot does have to work with a few limitations that YOU don't have, namely that you can move the control yoke very quickly and powerfully, moreso than the servos. Because of this, if you are not disoriented and are confident with mild aerobatics, you should nominally be able to recover the aircraft quicker than the Straight & Level button. On the other hand, if something is going wrong, or even if you just need a minute to get your thoughts together to deal strategically with a developing situation, Straight and Level is a good way to hand the airplane to the autopilot, and certainly a preferable first step if you're considering the chute.

An airplane can often be an unstable system. What that means is that you have to "stay on top of it" all the time. The purpose of any autopilot is to reduce that pilot workload, and Avidyne aims to take that to a new level. Unusual attitude recovery and envelope protection are meant to change the complexion of autopilot flight from exacting management of a finicky and complex system to one of simple, reliable certainty. You shouldn't be able to "get in trouble" using your autopilot, or lack confidence in it's ability to handle a situation. With the DFC-90/100, Avidyne aims to provide high performance and compelling features, but most of all, we are trying to make flying safe and simple.

The Avidyne DFC90: Another Big Step for Increasing Safety and Utility

Patrick Herguth — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:14:00 GMT

This blog can also be found at the Avidyne Live site.

Last week was very exciting for Avidyne with the announcements we made at AOPA. We have continued to focus on our customers’ needs and adapting our products for the current market conditions. We made announcements about our EX600 MFD product that continues to lead the market for aftermarket MFD functionality, the DFC90 digital autopilot that allows release 7 Entegra customers to upgrade their aircraft, and we also announced the Envelope Protection capabilities of the DFC90 and DFC100 autopilots.

The DFC90 project is important to us for many reasons: first, it allows us to create a continuum of upgrade possibilities for all of our customers in a wide range of price points. Second, it is going to provide a lot of value to our customers with a relatively low investment of money and time. Third, we are going to increase safety and utility for our customer base.

You can get all the details on the DFC90 by clicking the link above to our press release. I wanted to share with you my personal experience flying with the DFC90 over the past month. I don’t have much time flying in a Cirrus and even less time flying with the 55x engaged, but I have heard from a lot of our customers that they would like more out of their autopilot. The DFC90 and DFC100 will absolutely provide that to our customers, and we should have some PIREPS from non-Avidyne employees in the coming weeks.

As a 100-hour pilot, I can appreciate the “Straight-and-Level” functionality and the envelope protection capabilities. I flew with Steve Jacobson, VP of Product Management, last week, and he put the DFC90 through the demonstration profile. We did unusual attitude tests of 30⁰ pitch up / down and 60 degrees of bank. With the push of a button the aircraft smoothly regained controlled flight quickly and efficiently. He then demonstrated our Envelope Protection functionality where we commanded a VS climb rate of 500 FPM and we pulled back power. The PFD annunciated that we were in an “Underspeed” situation, and the aircraft gently reduced the climb rate, adjusting VS in concert with the ability for the aircraft to climb. When a climb was no longer possible and the airspeed dropped it sacrificed altitude for airspeed and kept us well above a stall and we eventually started to descend. This feature provides a tremendous level of safety for our turbo-equipped pilots that are in the flight levels. There have been some unfortunate fatalities caused by hypoxia that our envelope protection could have prevented. In a situation where the pilot is incapacitated due to hypoxia the one tank would run out of fuel, the engine would stop, envelope protection would prioritize airspeed over altitude hold, and the plane would start a descent. If someone was at FL250 it would take about 11 minutes to descend to 14,000 feet and hopefully the pilot would start to regain consciousness. They would then have another 10+ minutes to either restart the engine using the other tank of fuel or pull the chute. I think this can be a game changer for those of you with turbo-equipped aircraft that want another layer of safety and redundancy when trying to get more utility from the aircraft in the flight levels.

The other aspect of this program that is exciting is the ease with which someone can upgrade to the DFC90. First, it requires a hardware and software mod to the PFD. In order to decrease downtime, we will do this upgrade using our advanced-exchange system, so the PFD swap can be done in a couple of hours. Once the PFD 8.0 is in the airplane, the upgrade is as simple as removing the 55x control head with an allen wrench and then replacing it with the DFC90 control head. During our test flight last week it took us 90 seconds to swap control heads and get the full system up and running in between ILS landings on runway 29 at KBED. That was impressive and proved to me that this can be an easy upgrade for our Entegra customers.

I will get one of the more experienced pilots to post about the overall performance of the DFC90, but for this 100-hour pilot I am sold!

Third-Generation Architecture Improves Safety and Simplicity

Patrick Herguth — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:03:00 GMT

This can also be found here on our Avidyne Live site.

So far my posts have been very high level, so I want to dive in a bit deeper on a topic that highlights the advantage of the R9 architecture. First, let me provide some definitions that will make it easier to talk through the example. Admittedly, this is a very Avidyne-centric view of how the technology has progressed, but then again this is an Avidyne blog!

Definitions:

Gen 1: this refers to the first generation of architecture that led to the Avidyne Entegra PFD and MFD that integrates with 3^rd-party navigation / communication systems and autopilot systems. In 2003 these systems provided a level of flight instrument integration that was only found on the highest end jet-class avionics systems. The systems were integrated using point-to-point interfaces that either restricted the flow of data or created a high level of engineering overhead to control or monitor these other systems. Also, the PFD and MFD were built on different hardware and software systems that narrowed the features available on each component.

Gen 2: this refers to the architecture that was brought to market with the G1000 in 2005. It provided a higher level of integration with the navigation / communication systems, and it also allowed for shared functionality between the PFD and MFD components. A digital autopilot was later added to the G1000 and provided a higher level of integration than found on Gen 1 systems. This integration did provide an increase in system functionality but was still predominantly based on a point-to-point, federated architecture.

Gen 3: this refers to the architecture in the Entegra R9 system. Every component of the R9 system is connected to a passive, peer-to -peer databus that is based on the byteflight communication protocol. Byteflight was developed by BMW to manage safety-critical systems that needed deterministic protocols with fault-tolerant behavior. With every component of the R9 system on the databus, we have the infrastructure to monitor or control every component of the system. The R9 software is architected using the ARINC 653 protocol that separates the various functions like PFD, MFD, and FMS into separate partitions. This allows each function to run independently and avoids the situation where an MFD or FMS software failure could take down the PFD functionality. This type of architecture has been adopted by Honeywell and Rockwell Collins on their latest avionics platforms.

Analysis of an LCD Failure

The failure of an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) is one of the most common failure modes experienced in Gen 1 and Gen 2 avionics. Here is how a pilot would have to react to an LCD failure of the left box (the primary flight display).

Gen 1: A failure of the LCD on the PFD would result in a loss of the primary flight instruments with no choice but to use the backup instruments for attitude, airspeed and altitude indications. The GPS/Nav/Com 1&2 systems, MFD with engine, map, Wx and traffic and the Autopilot would still be operational.

Gen 2: A failure of the LCD on the PFD would require the pilot to press the red button to put the system into “reversionary mode”. In this configuration, the MFD goes into a specific configuration that shows critical flight information, engine data and a small map with Wx and traffic displays. This is a large improvement over a Gen 1 system, where the pilot would then have to fly off of the backup instruments. While this is an improvement, a significant amount of the system’s flexibility and functionality is lost in ”reversionary mode” and the user interface is different than the normal mode of operation.

Gen 3: In the Entegra R9 system a failure of either the left or right LCD results in only small changes to the information that can be accessed throughout the entire system with no change in the user interface. The left box will not be able to display anything, but all of the components remain operational and available because they are on the byteflight databus. The right box has the ability to show the flight-critical, PFD data and provide full access to all of the other screens that a user is accustomed to using during normal operation. We believe this has the obvious advantage of increased functionality but also the advantage of user familiarity in a failure situation.

The Entegra R9 system was designed around the lessons learned from previous generations of avionics. The loss of an LCD screen is the most common failure mode and we wanted this to have minimal impact on the pilot during a potentially stressful time. This is just one tangible example of how this third-generation architecture improves the safety, simplicity and utility of flying general aviation aircraft.

Patrick Herguth

COO, Avidyne Corp

Intuitive Design

Patrick Herguth — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:53:00 GMT

This post is written by Matt Nuffort, Senior Product Manager, and can also be found here on our Avidyne Live site.

At Avidyne we pride ourselves on intuitive design, which translates into ease of use. We spend countless hours reviewing and modifying the user interface of our systems to ensure they are as simple to use as possible. We assume the user will not read the manual, and, therefore, we want him to be able to figure out how to use the system by simply using it. We design it to be intuitive. This fastidiousness works. I cannot tell you how many customers have said to me “Avidyne is like Apple” when comparing us to our competitors. I take this as a major complement, because Apple is widely regarded for their elegant design and superb user interface.

In the aircraft environment, we believe strongly that a good user interface drives safety, because there will be fewer instances of “What’s it doing now?” or “How do I do that again?” an unfortunately all-too-common occurrence with modern glass cockpits.

Any aircraft cockpit can be a very high workload environment at certain times and in certain conditions. The pilot community generally considers single-pilot IFR in small, high-performance aircraft to be some of the most challenging flying possible. For this reason, we design our avionics for this user segment, confident that a system that meets the stringent demands of these users will exceed the demands for all other users. Since people think differently and have varying degrees of experience, a system’s ease of use is somewhat subjective. There are certain globally-agreed-upon standards for a good user interface, however. I believe all integrated avionics systems should adhere to these principles, but few do.

A good user interface requires little training. Someone unfamiliar with the system should be able to learn how to use it quickly, with little instruction. We call this ease of use “intuitive” design. General elements of intuitive design and a great user interface include the following principles, which are derived from a number of sources, including The Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines and The Art of Human Computer Interface Design:

1. Know the User

a. As Patrick mentioned in an earlier blog, Avidyne has made a concerted effort over the past year to get closer to the customer. We are now talking directly to customers, rather than only the OEMs, and we are soliciting feedback on features and functionality directly from the end customers. With Release 9, we brought in numerous pilots to fly the system in the lab and in our experimental aircraft, and we made changes to the system based on the feedback we received and the observations we made.

b. Avidyne employs numerous pilots and encourages employees to fly by paying for half of flight training. The majority of our engineers are pilots themselves, so they have an excellent idea of how the system they are creating will be used in real life.

2. Principle of Metaphor

a. There are many elements of the original Entegra system that customers really like, and we have made a concerted effort to retain those elements of the design, so that users of Release 9 will quickly feel at home in the cockpit.

3. Feature Exposure

a. We avoid nested menus at all costs. Our goal with Release 9 was for all major functions to be one button press away at all times. We do not want customers searching through menus, chapters, and pages trying to find the function they need right now. We do not want them to have to remember where a particular function is located in the system. They should be able to see it immediately.

4. Coherence

a. It is important for a complex avionics system to be coherent from one page or function to another. We achieved this goal by employing a user interface team of three people who were responsible for the user interface of the entire system. Rather than having the different teams working on Map, FMS, Engines, PFD, etc. define their own user interface, these three individuals ensured the user interface of the entire system was consistent.

5. Principle of Shortcuts

a. Release 9 is full of shortcuts for “power” users who have memorized simple steps to access information even more quickly. An example of such a shortcut is the chart icon on the FMS flight plan. If an approach procedure is selected for an airport, selecting the chart icon will immediately display the chart for that procedure. Another example is the ability to type the identifier for a VOR, such as “JFK” to tune the frequency for that VOR. Yet another example is the ability to press the “NRST” button on the keyboard numerous times to view nearest airports, VORs, NDBs, intersections, etc.

6. Principle of Aesthetics

a. We believe our system simply looks better than the competition. We employ graphic designers who focus exclusively on the design. They are not programmers but rather lifelong students of elegant design. Our use of colors and page layouts was driven by these designers, and software programmers coded to their designs.

Given that the aircraft cockpit, particularly the single-pilot IFR cockpit, can be an extremely high workload environment, the user interface should be a key consideration in any avionics purchase decision. So often we focus on feature comparisons alone. Certainly many of these features enhance safety, but I believe there are other critical considerations for today’s complex avionics systems, such as:

1. How much training will be required for me to learn this system?

2. How often will I need to fly to remain proficient on this system?

3. How confident am I that I can make the system do what I want it to do when I’m by myself and the workload gets really high?

Customer Focused Culture

Patrick Herguth — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:49:00 GMT

You can also see this blog on our Avidyne Live site.

Improving the overall satisfaction of our customer experience has been a high priority for Avidyne over the last eighteen months. We started the process by looking at the data around our failure rates and repair turn times. The failure rate of the integrated Entegra system was in line with industry benchmarks for avionics and on average a pilot would experience an equipment failure once in a 3.5 year time span. If we only looked at that data we would feel pretty good about the average customer experience in the fleet, but we knew the reality wasn’t quite that positive. We then looked at our repair and upgrade processes and the turn times to get product back to our customers. In early 2008 our average repair & upgrade turn times started to grow beyond 14 working days, our phone lines were swamped and we were in a deteriorating situation. We had to focus our attention on getting airplanes back in the air and in the spring of 2008 and we assembled a small team to figure out how we could recover from the situation.

In June of 2008 we were completing the transition of our manufacturing capabilities from a contract manufacturer to an in house operation. The system-level testing, repair and final assembly processes for avionics equipment are very specialized and we needed to directly manage this part of the manufacturing process. With the transition complete in mid 2008 we had the required infrastructure necessary to drastically improve our customer experience.

With direct control of our repair process we could better manage our service exchange pool enabling us to launch the Platinum Service plan in the United States. Under this plan we have guaranteed a two day turn time on both exchange and advanced exchange units. This has made a tremendous improvement in the downtime experienced by our customers and we have not missed on a single Platinum exchange since launching the program. We have also improved our repair and upgrade turnaround times for customers who want their exact unit repaired and we have also improved the turn times for our international customers.

There is no shortage of material in the business literature about how to create a “customer focused culture” with examples that generally start with lofty goals and a top down approach. We instead focused at the ground level by tracking key metrics like turn-around times, stock levels of the exchange pool, how many calls were going to voicemail, and how long it took for us to resolve a customer’s issue. This allowed us to focus on the processes that most affected the customer experience and drove us to respond quickly to gaps in our processes. I have worked in larger organizations where these initiatives get kicked off with lots of fanfare and discussion of the lofty goals. The program then spends too much time defining the high level goals instead of improving practical things at the customer level. I like the way we did it – focusing on the areas that are closest to the customer. This not only drove faster results, it also resulted in a culture that is always trying to put the customer first. I am impressed with what this team has done and how we are all aligned with creating a positive customer experience.

We aren’t stopping here though. There are still too many customers that have less than stellar service experiences with Avidyne. We are analyzing those failures, creating action plans and continuing to push the bar higher. If anyone reading this article feels that we are still falling short in our service efforts you can post your comment on this blog or you can email me directly. We are working hard to close our service gaps so if you see one please do let us know. I will comment in a later post about our AOG initiatives and how we think that will play a big role in our goal for increasing the utility of Avidyne equipped aircraft.

Patrick Herguth

COO, Avidyne Corp

pherguth@avidyne.com

A message from Matt Nuffort, Senior Product Manager at Avidyne

Patrick Herguth — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:08:00 GMT

This is a post from Matt Nuffort, Senior Product Manager, that can also be found at http://avidynelive.com/forum_topics.asp?FID=15&title=avidyne-product-development. Matt will be hosting his own blog on our AvidyneLive site but I will post here as well for the COPA community. Patrick

Like many of you reading this blog, I like to go fast. Speed is both a means of getting places sooner, an invaluable result for a busy schedule, and fuel for a soul that feeds on adrenaline and competition. Most of us fly airplanes, in part, for their speed. Of course, speed is relative. Relative to a car, an airplane almost always wins, especially when traffic and terrain become factors in the drive. The Cirrus SR22 I fly most frequently is a fast airplane, amazingly fast when you consider its single-engine, fixed-gear configuration. My boss often reminds me how slow it is, however, relative to the A-10 he flew in the Air Force. No doubt many of his Air Force buddies remind him how slow the A-10 is relative to other flying machines.

Nonetheless, we all appreciate the speed of our aircraft relative to earth-bound transportation options. We are constantly seeking a means of going faster, either by making the aircraft itself faster, trading up to a faster aircraft, or adding systems that streamline our planning and routing to our destination.

This blog will focus on numerous topics related to avionics, aircraft electronics that can make an aircraft safer, more useful, lighter (and thus faster?), easier to use, and, yes, even faster. Avionics is where the vast majority of innovation is occurring in aviation right now, and it is for this reason that I have found myself feeding my passion for aviation by working in the avionics industry for the past 8 years, first in the Air Force and now at Avidyne.

Topics I plan to address in this blog include questions like:

1. How will avionics change the way I fly?

2. What are the most valuable avionics to install in my aircraft?

3. Why have glass cockpits become so popular?

4. How do avionics improve safety? Can travel in a Cirrus SR22 be statistically safer than traveling by automobile?

5. Why does user interface (UI) matter in avionics design?

6. Why does architecture matter in avionics design?

7. What type of training is required for new glass cockpits?

8. How can avionics increase the utility of my aircraft?

9. Does Synthetic Vision really make me safer? What about Enhanced Vision Systems (EVS)?

10. What are the next frontiers in avionics?

My intent with this blog is to generate discussions about avionics. I mentioned in my biographical sketch that I’m responsible for defining the product roadmap at Avidyne and, on a more short-term scale, which features make it into the next software release for our new state-of-the-art integrated system. Our stated goal at Avidyne is to design avionics that make flying safer, increase the utility of your airplane, and are easier to use. Of course, it is my belief that ease of use will inherently increase safety and utility. A system that is easy to use inspires confidence in the user, and this confidence can lead to increased utility of the airplane. Intuitive, easy-to-use avionics also require less initial training and less recurrent training to remain proficient. For busy people who may not fly as much as they like, this outcome also results in greater utility. More to come on the topic of ease-of-use design in a subsequent post…

Matt Nuffort

Senior Product Manager, Avidyne

Simplicity, Safety and Utility

Patrick Herguth — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 19:23:00 GMT

this post can also be found at http://avidynelive.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=55&title=simplicity-safety-and-utility-intro

The recent certification of the Entegra Release 9 system was the result of five years’ development and over $100 million invested. This platform will allow us to continue to drive innovation in avionics for the next decade and beyond.

As we are executing and refining our roadmap we are discussing all of the possible features and functions as they correlate to three simple concepts: Simplicity, Safety and Utility. Looking out into the future of our product portfolio we will consider the features that have the biggest impact in those three areas. The ability for our product development team to measure the impact of a proposed feature against these benchmarks provides a clear method of determining our priorities. Here are some high level comments around each of these dimensions.

Simplicity: Avidyne was founded by Dan Schwinn, our current Chairman and CEO, in 1994 because he felt that flying could be made much simpler by utilizing technology in a way that was intuitive for the pilot. Not only did Avidyne develop the technology to meet the price and weight constraints of most owner flown aircraft, but we focused intently on how it was going to be used by single pilot operators. The company’s culture is built around the mantra of simplicity, and we now have an organization that lives and breathes this every day.

Safety: A core premise to Avidyne’s mission is improving the safety of owner flown aircraft. Avidyne’s first goal is to avoid an accident by reducing pilot workload through a simpler user interface and a higher level of systems integration. In situations where an emergency cannot be avoided the Avidyne systems can help optimize choices for a single pilot managing the situation. The systems should work as a virtual co-pilot and help facilitate the best possible outcome for the pilot. Dan Schwinn recently presented at a Cirrus Owners conference and talked about how we can work together with the Cirrus Owners and Pilots Association (COPA) to drive down the serious and fatal accidents in Avidyne equipped aircraft. Through training, better systems interfaces, and increased system integration we think aggressive goals can be set for the safety of these aircraft.

Utility: The typical profile of an Avidyne customer is someone who uses their aircraft as a form of transportation versus someone who flies as a hobby. Avidyne brought the technically advanced aircraft to general aviation in 2003 with the first, certified, integrated flight deck. The Piper and Cirrus aircraft that featured the Entegra system attracted owner operators who were looking to get real utility out of these airplanes. Most of Avidyne’s customers are using their aircraft as a business tool or as a primary means of personal transportation. Our goal is to increase the utility of your aircraft without increasing the risk profile of the missions you fly.

I will spend more time on each of these topics in future posts.

Launching the Avidyne Blog

Patrick Herguth — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 19:05:00 GMT

Over the last year we have been working hard to get better connected to our customers. Today we generally interact with our customers on the phone for sales and service questions and at trade shows or local fly-ins. We have also been very focused on the active, online forums like COPA where our customers congregate. Up until now we have generally just monitored these sites to stay close to the thoughts and ideas of our customers.

We are now ready to participate in the online community via a blog that we will host on our Avidyne Live web site. Since there is such an active community on COPA we will also copy the blog material into this site. You can access the blog directly at the following site: http://avidynelive.com/default.asp

Our goals for the blog are as follows:

To connect with a broader range of customers on a more frequent basis.
Discuss topics that are relevant to Avidyne and the general aviation industry.
Allow followers to post comments in reaction to the blog topic

The blog will not be a replacement for our customer service and sales communication channels. And our intent is to read any comments, but we probably won’t engage directly in an online conversation that you would expect in a forum.

So we will launch this and see how it goes. We know there is some risk to this, but we feel that the benefits of connecting with more customers will outweigh any potential risks.

I hope that you all enjoy the blog.

Patrick Herguth

Chief Operation Officer

Avidyne Corporation