Aviation Week & Space Technology, October 27, 2008, Bailey Lauerman - (Page 2) AVIONICS STORM D DAVID HUGHES/ORLANDO, FLA., and SINGAPORE A irline, business jet and military transport pilots have used airborne weather radar for decades to see and avoid hazardous thunderstorm cells, but they have been stuck with looking at a 2D view of these phenomena on a cockpit display. Now the third dimension is coming into view for the first time on the flight decks of a wide range of aircraft, thanks to Honeywell’s new IntuVue technology. Being able to see not only a top-down “plan view” but also a second radar display of the same thunderstorm from the side gives pilots a fresh look at an old hazard—which offers airlines the potential for safer and more efficient routing as well as millions of dollars in savings by minimizing unnecessary diversions. It’s not surprising that the technology is earning a place on all new Airbus airliners, some Boeing aircraft and business jets starting with the Gulfstream G650. The IntuVue (intuitive view) radars allow pilots to see a storm’s vertical dimension and what altitude bands contain the heaviest rainfall rates. It’s as if a knife had cut through the center of a cell to depict what’s happening at the core. Such vertical profiles of heavy precipitation can spotlight dangerous hazards to air- GEORGE LARSON/AW&ST craft. Storm side views currently show the areas of greatest reflectivity (highest rainfall rate) in red, but Honeywell plans to add turbulence (in magenta) to this display starting with the Airbus A350. With a side view, pilots can see the tops of storms and determine if the areas of heavy precipitation are reaching high enough to pose a threat. In some aircraft, however, cockpit display sizes are so limited that the side view can’t be shown, at least until the displays are upgraded. But IntuVue also provides effective tools for gauging the vertical development of storms when only a plan view is available. IntuVue first does a constant scan from the surface to 60,000 ft., all the way out to 320 naut. mi., to create a vast store of data on the weather ahead. Once this information is in a buffer, the pilot can “slice and dice” it to see what’s going on at 30,000 ft., or at much higher or lower altitudes. The radar achieves improved accuracy at longer ranges (compared with conventional radars) by using pulse compression technology. This manipulation of the wave form for improved resolution had been used only on military radars before Honeywell engineers applied it to IntuVue. Partly as a result of this volumetric scanning capability and special 3D display, IntuVue is making significant inroads— particularly at Airbus, where the technology is standard on the A380 and A350 and will soon be available on the A330/A340, A320 family and A400M. It’s already flying on the Boeing 777 and 737NG and the U.S. Air Force C-17, and has been selected for the G650. IntuVue’s main competitor is Rockwell Collins’s automatic MultiScan weather radar. MultiScan is standard equipment on the Boeing 787, 747-8 and the 737 version of the Boeing Business Jet, and is available on a wide range of other models of Boeing and Airbus aircraft (AW&ST July 9, 2007, p. 44). MultiScan also has been introduced in the business aviation market. IntuVue includes its own digital terrain database that provides two additional features. The system One storm at 120 naut. mi. showed lots of red in the vertical view at and above the Convair 580’s 28,000-ft. altitude. AviationWeek.com/awst 2 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/OCTOBER 27, 2008 http://www.AviationWeek.com/awst
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