AVIONICS AND INSTRUMENTATION 2021
This extensive annual Avionics and Instrumentation guide from African Pilot has been produced two months earlier than in 2020, because of the numerous announcements that were made at EAA AirVenture in preparation for the world’s largest aviation event.
In a normal year, I would be attending AirVenture to view the new Avionics and Instrumentation products that would be launched over the seven-day event. However, the fact that South Africans could not travel to the United States has resulted in me compiling this feature remotely.
Given the economic conditions the aviation industry has experienced over the past two years, especially in southern Africa, finally it feels like the headwinds are abating. Last year after the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown brought the economy to a standstill many companies adjusted to the ‘new normal’ with the continued installation of new cockpit and aircraft cabin technologies. Even with the absence of major airshows on 2020 such as EAA AirVenture, where many new products are introduced to the market the roll out of new avionics continued.
A properly equipped panel filled with ‘glass instruments’ brings a higher level of reliability to the cockpit, whilst it provides a path that owners and pilots can remove older flight instruments powered with air-driven, spinning-mass gyroscopes and air-data instruments. The upgrades also provide for reliability-plagued vacuum pumps that drive gyroscopic instruments to be removed. These new ‘glass instruments’ are far lighter in weight and offer significantly improved functions that are considerably more reliable that older generation instrumentation. For example, a digital electronic Primary Flight Display (PFD) combines three air-data and three gyro instruments into one unit. Whilst some of the earlier incarnations used electronic displays to present all six of what was known as the ‘six-pack’ as six individual instruments.
However, further advances in digital air-data sensors and solid-state gyro-instrument sensors helped the PFD evolve quickly into an instrument with a gyro-compass dial, a turn indicator and more, all of this overlaid on an altitude indicator presentation dominating the central area of the screen.
An owner / pilot faced with the need to overhaul an ADI or HIS now has the option of replacing these expensive to repair analogue instruments with a digital alternative for a price close to what the overhaul would have cost. With owners / pilots embracing the new digital options to upgrade to state-of-the-art glass displays and autopilots from several manufacturers at prices that also enhance the value of the aircraft.