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Aviation History
1997
1997 - 0562.PDF
INDUSTRY TEAC records deal for AV-8B video TEAC HAS RECEIVED a US Navy contract to supply 209 airborne video-tape recorders for US Marine Corps McDonnell Douglas (MDC) AV-8B Harrier lis. The same system will now be offered to Italy and Spain, both of which countries are operators of theAV-8B. The Navy had planned to exer cise its option to acquire the AV-8B video-recorder from Precision Echo, supplier of the system for the MDC F-18, but decided to open the contract to competition after experiencing severe reliability problems with the F-18 recorder. Engineries, Precision Echo and TEAC submitted bids. TEAC says that its V-80AB-F 8mm recorder has a demonstrated mean time between failures of morethan2,000h. Montebello, California-based TEAC America Airborne Video Products, objected to the decision, made in December 1994, to award the F-18 contract to Precision Echo, which had offered a cheaper unit based on a repackaged con sumer video recorder. TEAC emphasises that its recorders ".. .are not a repackaged consumer product, but have been designed for severe military envi ronments", which, according to the company, reduces their life- cycle costs. • NEWS IN BRIEF m NORTHWEST PAIRING Northwest Airlines has selected Montreal-based Ad Opt Technologies' Altitude crew-pairing software after tests of the crew-scheduling system yielded operating sav ings for the airline of "several hundred thousand dollars per month". • SABRE MANAGES YIELDS Hawaiian Airlines is to imple ment Sabre Decision Tech nologies' Airmax automated yield-management system to optimise the allocation of seats and pricing flight-by- flight and increase revenues. AlliedSignal tests TCAS changes GRAHAM WARWCK/WASHINGTON DC ALLIEDSIGNAL Aerospace is flight-testing the latest soft ware for the traffic-alert and colli sion-avoidance system (TCAS 2). The "Change 7" software is the final iteration of the TCAS 2, incorporating operational feed back from users of the system, and is the basis for the international air borne collision-avoidance system (ACAS 2) standard, says Allied Signal TCAS programme manag er T)mMullinix. Change 7 introduces 225 sys tem-logic changes covering sur veillance, collision-avoidance logic and aural/visual annunciations. Mullinix says that the changes address system-performance issues such as phantom resolution-advi sories (RAs) and unclear RA an nunciations. AlliedSignal has flight-tested the surveillance-soft ware changes and "everybody's happy", claims Mullinix. Verbal commands issued by the TCAS 2 have been changed, to improve clarity. An example is the use of "adjust vertical speed", rather than the "reduce climb" or "reduce descent" command now issued after the pilot has responded to an RA. Mullinix says that pilots were missing the word "reduce". The new aural annunciation is cou pled with a change to the TCAS vertical-speed indicator to display a "fly-to" green arc instructing the pilot to level off after a climb or descend RA. Mullinix says that the change is intended to eliminate large vertical excursions caused by pilots over reacting to RAs. Flight International observed the display in operation in AlliedSignaPs Convair 580 test- bed and the manoeuvre following the initial l,500ft/min (7.6m/s) RA, and subsequent levelling off, was almost unnoticably gentle. Change 7 also refines the colli sion-avoidance logic to avoid RAs which require pilots to reverse ver tical velocity or to descend through the intruder's flightpath. The change also reduces the number of "bump-ups" which occur when fly ing over busy airports, when fast- climbing aircraft trigger RAs only to level off before becoming a threat, Mullinix explains. The US Federal Aviation Ad ministration is expected to com plete Change 7 development in May. AlliedSignal plans to have a software upgrade available for its TCAS 2 unit by the second quarter of 1998. Mullinix says that the upgrade will cost "$0 to$5,000" per aircraft, depending on the cus tomer, plus up to $1,000 to modify the associated Mode S transponder. The FAA is expected to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking by mid-year making Change 7 mandatory by 1 January, 2000. Europe is working to make ACAS 2 mandatory by the same date, while Australia and Japan are aim ing for compliance by 2001. Mullinix says that Europe does not recognise the TCAS 1, fitted to US regional airliners, and that it will require all aircraft with 19 or more seats to carry ACAS 2 by 2005. J Lufthansa passes EU eco-audit scrutiny LUFTHANSA TECHNIK (LHT) has become the first aircraft maintenance and overhaul firm to win certification under the European Union's (EU) ecology- audit regulations. Certification is voluntary, but LHT says that it differentiates the firm from its competitors, and pro vides "a systematic view of the envi ronmental impact of our activities". For the audit, the company had to satisfy the prerequisites of hav ing an environmental-impact man agement system meeting Euro pean standards, and having adopt ed short- and long-term environ mental protection goals. According to LHT chairman Wolfgang Mayrhuber, the com pany has now made a "significant contribution" to environmental protection, having stopped using chlorinated hydrocarbons, and also having eliminated chloro-flu- orocarbons from its aircraft main tenance and overhaul operations at the end of 1996. • BAe Airbus delivers first A330-200 wing BRITISH AEROSPACE AIRBUS HAS DISPATCHED the first A3 30-200 wing from its plant at Chester to Airbus partner DASA Airbus at Bremen, Germany, for equipping. BAe put the wing in die jig for final assembly in November 1996. The lower- capacity, longer-range A3 30-200 is scheduled to have its maid en flight in August. 24 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 5 - 11 March 1997
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