Avionics Advances Law enforcement agencies certainly
want their helicopters to be more capable than ever. “On the avionics side, law enforcement officers (LEOs) are looking for features that provide much higher situational awareness than what is currently available, particularly in situations with a degraded visual environment,” the MD spokesperson says. “Use of color coding in synthetic vision views, for example, to identify obstacles, terrain and traffic are common requests. We also see requests for improved health monitoring instruments that would help pilots recognize potential issues much more quickly.”
Enhanced pilot and aircraft safety are also driving advances such as fully integrated avionic systems. “A true fully integrated avionic system goes beyond flight instruments under glass to include the engine and all systems integrated with it, as a way of enhancing safety margins,” says Terry Miyauchi, Bell’s para-public customer solutions manager. These advances include functions such as primary situational indicators (PSI) being part of the primary flight display (PFD), rather than separate systems.
“These types of trends collectively lead to critical information all in one place, resulting in less cockpit clutter, streamlined warning systems and a greater situational awareness safety margin,” Miyauchi explains. “So-called ‘glass cockpits’ that simply put electronic flight instruments only under glass can be counter-intuitive by leading to greater head-down time. The true, fully integrated avionics glass cockpit contributes to greater safety margins by additionally creating increased head-up time.”
Deputy Juan Reyes is a pilot with the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office Air Support Unit. His department flies two MD 500Es and a new MD 530F equipped with a FLIR Star Safire 380-HD camera, and it has recently purchased a second FLIR unit to replace older FLIR SC8000s.
“We used to only use the 8000s in the cockpit at night,” Reyes says. “The 380-
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HD has such superior picture quality and zoom features that we leave it on day and night. Adding to the improved resolution is the ability to overlay digital mapping on top of the 380-HD’s video image. We now know where we are at all times.”
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