Electronics & Connectivity - March 1, 2012 - 6

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ance symbology for their dynamics, size, shape, and usability. The goal was to ensure that the overall behavior of the prototype display could meet the demanding requirements for pilots to perform critical approach and landing performance evaluations. The flights in the California area were conducted in low-visibility conditions of marine fog. Pilots flew low approaches to 30 to 50 ft above the runway. The pilot flying responded with “lights,” and the response time was recorded and compared to when the pilot not flying saw the lights looking out the window. The findings indicated a statistically significant average of 30-ft advantage of use of IR over the naked eye in marine weather conditions with fog, rain, and clouds. The pilot flying with the CVS stayed head-down until 100 ft above the runway and then glanced up and made a subjective decision of whether he was appropriately configured to land and could comfortably complete a successful landing. A second series of flight tests was conducted on the Sovereign in October 2010. The goals were to improve the IR coloring, make modifications to the flight director dynamics, and integrate the hybrid IRS (inertial reference system) for improved accuracy of the aircraft position to better align the IR imagery with the synthetic vision terrain. Three Honeywell flight test pilots flew over 20 h in both day and night VMC. Findings indicated significant improvements in the IR alignment and usability of the flight director. The final series of flight tests took place over a two-week period in December 2010 on the East Coast of the United States on a Honeywell-owned G450 aircraft equipped with a certified Kollsman EVS camera and a Honeywell HUD 2020 display. The objective of the flight tests was to capture objective and subjective performance data while flying with the certified enhanced vision system on the HUD and the head-down CVS. The research question was whether the prototype CVS display could support the pilot’s approach and landing task
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Approach into Santa Barbara after breakout at 410’ above ground level. Note approach lights in front of the runway. prove the pilot’s awareness of the synthetic terrain in low-visibility conditions. The CVS was driven by a ruggedized flight test desktop computer located in the aft cabin. The single desktop flight computer was used to render combined SVS/EVS images, acquire real-time video streams, acquire flight and FMS data from the aircraft data bus, and record and analyze all the relevant flight test data and video data. The local flights originated from Phoenix Deer Valley (KDVT) to Prescott or Williams Gateway and then returned to KDVT. These local flights were used primarily to optimize the display color scale, improve the IR integration image quality over a variety of weather and terrain conditions, and to optimize primary flight and flight director guid-

March 1, 2012

Electronics & Connectivity - March 1, 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Electronics & Connectivity - March 1, 2012