What's In The CockpitsMostly avionics suites from Rockwell Collins. As one of the top suppliers Rockwell Collins provides avionics to all the largest commercial, regional and business jet manufacturers, including CSeries and Boeing's 787.
Interesting to see Bombardier picking up a lot of tips on Lean Manufacturing. Attention to details such as rating and ranking suppliers can go a long way towards improving efficiency of production:
Pro Line Fusion suite sparks Collins' synthetic vision plans
May 6, 2010
Avionics
Rockwell Collins test pilots spent part of their winter in Alaska putting the synthetic-vision portion of the avionics maker’s new Pro Line Fusion cockpit through its paces in one of the most demanding flight environments in the world.
Collins flight-test crews braved winter’s darkness and unceasing turbulence, flying dozens of low-visibility approaches to Alaskan airports in the company’s Challenger 601 flying test bed. The point of the exercise was to evaluate the SVS’s capabilities in areas of challenging terrain before bringing it to the cockpits of the Bombardier Global Express and Gulfstream G250, the first two OEM models in line to receive the Fusion system.
Greg Irmen, vice president and general manager for commercial systems at Rockwell Collins, said Pro Line Fusion has logged about 350 hours aloft as part of a test regimen that the avionics maker expects to wrap up by the end of the year. Three airplanes have joined the certification program, with the Collins Challenger 601 logging the bulk of hours aloft (about 200) since the shakeout flights started last fall. “We’re getting down to the crunch phase now as we look to wrap up certification test flying,” he said.
OEM test pilots are also evaluating Pro Line Fusion in the Global Express and the G250, although only the Global is equipped with SVS so far, testing for which has been limited mainly to the flatlands of central Kansas. Gulfstream plans to offer SVS to G250 buyers as an option, but for now the focus has remained on core testing of Fusion capabilities, including an all-new flight management system that relies heavily on graphical flight-panning tools.
Irmen said Collins will first seek a supplemental type certificate (STC) for Pro Line Fusion in its Challenger, a step that is expected to ease the certification effort for the OEMs that have selected the cockpit. “We’re going through the certification in the Challenger as a risk-mitigation move,” he said. “It should make the follow-on certification process much smoother for our customers.”
Rockwell Collins has installed Pro Line Fusion in its own corporate Challenger 601 on the right side of the cockpit, leaving in place the original Pro Line 21 cockpit system on the left. Most of the Alaska testing, Irmen said, was flown into Juneau International Airport, famous for the extreme terrain surrounding the approach through Gastineau Channel. Test pilots flew multiple low-visibility approaches through the channel using both the head-up guidance system and the head-down SVS display. “During the SVS testing the synchronization of the image on the display with the real world was great,” Irmen said. “The pilots were really impressed by it.”
Rockwell Collins engineers are now going over data from those test flights as well as others at airports in California’s Sierra-Nevada mountains, Irmen added.
SVS uses a massive database of the earth’s terrain, obstacles and airports to create a 3-D image on the pilot’s primary flight display that is intended to replicate on the computer screens the same view out the window that would be seen on a perfectly clear day. Each manufacturer adds its own nuances to the concept, and Rockwell Collins (Booth No. 1143) is no exception. For example, airports in the distance appear on the Fusion SVS display first as translucent domes. As the airplane approaches, the dome slowly disappears, leaving a computer-generated view of the runways.
Irmen said Pro Line Fusion testing
in the Challenger is about “70 percent complete,” meaning the avionics manufacturer will need to fly another 50 hours or so before submitting paperwork to U.S.
FAA for the STC. He said Bombardier and Gulfstream have each flown about 60 hours with the cockpit so far.
Bombardier is conducting Pro Line Fusion flight tests in the Global Express in Wichita, Kansas, while testing in the G250 is under way at Gulfstream development partner IAI’s base in Tel Aviv, Israel. In the Global series Pro Line Fusion is being branded as the Global Vision cockpit. Gulfstream has opted to call its version of the avionics the PlaneView 250 cockpit, in keeping with the nomenclature of the avionics in its larger models.
But with the introduction of the Global Vision-equipped Bombardier jets and Gulfstream G250 next year, Rockwell Collins will catch up with its competitors in a hurry. In addition to the Global Express XRS and 5000 and G250, Pro Line Fusion has been selected for the Learjet 85 and Embraer Legacy 450 and 500, as well as the Bombardier C Series and Mitsubishi MRJ regional jets, making the cockpit the top seller among new business jet market entrants since being announced in 2007.