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Aviation History
1994
1994 - 0131.PDF
AIR TRANSPORT The new venture would handle air craft phased out of Thai's fleet, such as the Airbus A300 aircraft over the next few years. A go-ahead for the leasing company would be "linked" to the new airline, but Thamnoon says: "We are not setting up this airline because we want to get rid of our older aircraft. They would be free to take the equipment they want". Bang kok Airways operates a mixed fleet of DeHavilland, Embraer, Shorts and Fokker types. • Airbus tests infra-red on A340 Airbus Industrie is testing a heads-down enhanced- vision system (EVS), using an infra-red camera mounted on the nose-gear leg of an A340. The forward-looking image can be selected on the captain's navigation display screen and, in the trial aircraft, is also displayed and recorded at the flight-test engineer's station. The company, which has au tomatic-landing capability available on all its aircraft, does not believe that an EVS is likely to play a useful role in hand- flown approaches, but thinks it could have other uses. Engineering test-pilot Bernd Schaefer explains that it could be valuable for low-visibility taxiing and runway line-up, ensuring that the take-off run way is clear. It could also Inverted periscope could avoid Concorde nose droop search data in the 65,000- 82,000ft (20,000-25,000m) range, bridging the gap be tween current research aircraft and space-based systems. "This region is important to understanding the potential at mospheric effects of supersonic transports, and Perseus will provide data that we cannot get any other way," says NASA manager, atmospheric effects of aviation, Howard Wesoky. The Perseus uses a high as pect-ratio wing-design based on that of the Daedalus, which broke several records for- human-powered flight in 1988, and is powered by a modified four-cylinder Rotax engine driving a 5m propeller. The aircraft is towed by a ground vehicle into the air with the propeller locked in a horizontal position until it reaches about 700ft, when the propeller is freed and the aircraft released. On its first flight, lasting 56min, the Perseus reached an altitude of 2,000ft and cleared basic launch and landing pro cedures, engine operations and datalink functions. Of the ten initial test flights planned for the Perseus, three will involve carrying a 50kg payload to 82,000ft. A proof-of-concept version was flown three times by Au rora in November 1991. • permit reduced minima for au tomatic-landing approaches to runways with instrument- landing systems, but lacking the specified lighting for Cate gory III landings. He says: "A number of air ports in the world, especially in the USA have got a lot of the equipment you need for Cat II or III autoland — but, because they don't have one element like lighting, you just cannot do them." The A340 installation uses a camera supplied by Sagem of France working in the 8-12 micron range. Schaefer says that Airbus will not devote any sorties to flight-testing of the system, but will perform dedi cated taxiing trials and some approaches. One difficulty has been find ing appropriate conditions in this year's relatively benign Eu ropean winter so far. Operating regulations re quire that, for Cat III touch downs, pilots should be able to confirm visually that they are lined up, or use another acceptable means. Airbus hopes that that could include "heads- down" EVS, as well as the head-up display (HUD) EVS being tested elsewhere. Schaefer says: "For the near future, we see massive prob lems with providing an EVS picture on the HUD for large aircraft. That is mainly because of the big distance between the pilot's eye and the EVS sensor. To overlay the picture correctly to the outside world, the EVS picture must correlate exactly, and that is a problem if you have 5-10m difference between the sensor and the eye." Airbus is now beginning studies of how to install and integrate a millimetre-wave (MMW) radar EVS into the A340, which it says is an easier engineering task than the infra red. It will perform MMW EVS trials at a date to be decided. Schaefer adds: "You could also use EVS as the basis for an intelligent ground-proximity warning system." • J41 crash probe focuses on training US investigators are concen trating on pilot training and experience, and weather conditions as the possible causes of a 7 January crash of an Atlantic Coast Airlines Brit ish Aerospace Jetstream 41. Five people died including the three crew. The J41, on United Express flight 6291 from Washington DCs Dulles International Air port, with five passengers and three crew aboard, crashed at 23.21 local time while on an autopilot-coupled instrument- landing-system final approach to Port Columbus International Airport in Columbus, Ohio. The captain, who was flying the aircraft, had 160h on type and 3,650h total flying time. The first officer had 31h on type and 2,430h total. The aircraft's de-icing system had been activated at least once during the approach, the Na tional Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) says. Weather conditions were a 700ft (210m) ceiling and 4.5km (2.5nm) visibility, with light snow and fog. The temperature was -5°C. A report by a preced ing pilot of icing at 2,500- 3,000ft was not passed on to the J41 crew, the NTSB says. The aircraft was on course and on glideslope, gear down at around 500ft altitude and descending at l,000ft/min (5m/ s), when, according to a survi vor, the aircraft became unsta ble. Descent rate doubled to around 2,000ft/min and, 15s later, the aircraft crashed into a building 1.2nm short of the runway. The three survivors were uninjured. The NTSB says that there is no evidence from the cockpit voice recorder of mechanical malfunction, or of fire or struc tural failure before the crash. The J41 had entered service in July 1993 and had logged some 1,000 cycles and l,000h. D FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 19 - 25 January, 1994 9
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