Avionics News July 2021 - 32

COMMUNICATING HISTORY
Continued from page 31
Then Garmin concluded its support of the GNS 430.
In 2020, with Avidyne sales rep Steve Lawson, the
GCW worked out a sponsorship arrangement that fit the
organization's nonprofit budget. At Dallas Executive
Airport, Force Aviation would replace TR's existing
equipment with an IFD540 and remote-mounted AXP322,
and SkyTrax100B would reliably meet all of TR's
navigation, communication, and ADS-B Out and In needs.
The audio/intercom challenge remained because off-theshelf
units provide no more than six connections, and the
GCW wanted 13. A customized unit seemed to be the only
solution. During a lunchtime discussion of the company's
upcoming projects, Force Aviation President Dennis
Sorber mentioned this challenge, according to David
Oglesbee, Becker Avionics director of sales.
After itemizing the B-17's ICS requirements, Oglesbee
said Becker's DVCS6100 digital voice control system
would meet them out of the box, and that programming
it would provide the desired combinations of intercom
services to the various headsets throughout the airplane.
" Dennis connected us with CAF, and we took it from
there. " Becker worked out a sponsorship agreement
that provided the DVCS6100 and AR6203 VHF
communication radio.
On a living history flight, said Root, " We have three
passengers in the waist, aft of the bomb bay with the
loadmaster, three in the radio room, just forward of the
bomb bay, and two in the nose. In cockpit are two pilots
and two flight engineers. "
Force piggybacked some headset connections in the
radio room so the GCW could add headset jacks in the
chin turret and in the tail cone by the tailwheel. " That way
we can talk to the ground crew during engine start (and
during ground maintenance) and to the flight engineer who
is manually lowering the tailwheel, should that emergency
ever arise, " Barker added.
The pilots and flight engineers are on hot mikes, with
PTT needed only for radio communications. Becker
programmed the various configurations that determined
what the other headsets heard such as ATC, cockpit
communications, and ICS conversations. When the other
stations are isolated from the cockpit, a call light lets the
pilots know that the loadmaster needs to communicate
with them.
32 avionics news * july 2021
" We did a test flight after everything was installed,
and on takeoff, with those four big radials outside the
cockpit, we could talk in a normal voice with the voiceactivated
system, " said Oglesbee, who was not surprised.
The heart of the DVCS has been serving in another noisy
environment for years, the cockpit of the Army's UH-72
Lakota utility helicopter.
The Force Aviation crew that installed the new avionics
also flew on the test flight, and for one of them it was
a bucket-list reward, said Erik Svendsen, director of
avionics. " Charlie Griffith, the project's primary structures
tech, has always wanted to work on a B-17 and getting to
fly on one was a dream. "
Griffith redesigned and built a new overhead avionics
rack and moved it forward 5 or 6 inches, which was
important to Root. " I'm short, so my seat is all the way
forward, and I used to get stiff and sore from looking at
the radios in their old location. "
The new rack is also smaller, with the Becker ICS
on top, followed by the Becker comm, and the Avidyne
IFD540. " Because we often fly with flight gloves, we like
the 540 because it has buttons as well as the touchscreen. "
Texas Raiders " is the only B-17 I know of that still flies
with its original instrument panel, " Root said. Unlike the
other B-17s flying today, instead of an avionics stack, " it still
has its original attitude indicator in the center of the panel. "
In addition to a standby attitude indicator, TR has
electronic attitude and horizontal situation indicators for
the pilots, Root explained. " On the ground, they are just
small dark screens " that don't detract from the panel's
World War II panorama.
Installing 21st century avionics in a 76-year-old
airplane originally equipped with vacuum-tube radios
that required an operator dedicated to them, the project
presented no electronic challenges, according to Svendsen.
Julio Moreno was the primary avionics tech, supported
by avionics techs Nick Word and Joe Force; they had the
time-consuming task of removing everything associated
with the old intercom system. Then they ran new wire
from nose to tail. It wasn't that difficult because TR is a
stock B-17, which is nothing more than frames, skin and
stringers.
They started work Feb. 2, 2021, and when TR returned
to service on March 4, said Barker, not only did it have
21st century avionics with crystal clear, hands-free
interior communications, its new weight and balance
paperwork revealed a 137-pound weight loss. q
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