New-generation screens move into the GA market
The six Meggitt displays in The New Piper Meridian (above) complement the two Garmin moving maps and the AlliedSignal radar. Meggitt Avionics surely doesn't have the name recognition of an AlliedSignal, Honeywell, Collins, or even newcomers Garmin and UPS Aviation Technologies (nee II Morrow). But if you fly a Cessna Citation, Gulfstream, Beech 1900 airliner, Boeing, or about any other turbine aircraft, you probably have some Meggitt sensor buried in your fuel system or elsewhere deep inside your airplane. In fact, even the hydrocarbon fire detector up on your hangar ceiling may come from Meggitt, a United Kingdom-based company that builds any number of exotic sensors and probes.
Your unfamiliarity with the Meggitt name is about to change as the company's U.S. avionics division begins a big push to move EFIS-like displays deep into the general aviation market. The new displays promise light weight, low power, easy installation, and greatly improved situational awareness at a price never before possible. Meggitt Avionics recently announced that it would sell a version of its MAGIC panel — Meggitt Avionics new generation integrated cockpit — for $39,900. The system includes a primary flight display (PFD) and a navigation display (ND), along with an air data attitude heading reference system (ADAHRS).
If $40,000 doesn't sound inexpensive, understand that the system displaces your conventional airspeed indicator, attitude indicator, altimeter, turn coordinator, two navigation indicators, and your vertical speed indicator — along with the gyros and much of the associated pitot-static plumbing. If you consider the purchase and installation price of all of those instruments, compared with the two Meggitt tubes and the ADAHRS (about the size of an electric pencil sharpener), you can begin to appreciate the revolution coming to many GA cockpits. In addition, the mean time between failures of the Meggitt active-matrix, flat-panel LCDs and the solid-state ADAHRS is projected to be much longer than fothan for conventional in-struments and gyros.
Until now, about the only EFIS option available to lighter aircraft was from AlliedSignal. There, a two-tube EFIS, utilizing heavy, power-hungry, and less reliable cathode-ray tubes, sells for $60,000 to $80,000 or more, depending on options. That system still relies on mechanical gyros and weighs about 70 pounds; the Meggitt system weighs about 16 pounds.
So where can you buy one? Well, you can't quite yet, but by the end of the year, Meggitt will be glad to take your order for shipment right after the first of the year when the system is scheduled to receive its TSO approval. By the end of March, the company plans to be able to ship retrofit kits that include the two displays and the ADAHRS and, if desired, engine instrument display panels for older Cessna Citations and aircraft such as Beech King Airs, Piper Cheyennes, and Rockwell Commanders. Meggitt hopes to be able to announce installation agreements with a couple of modification companies at the National Business Aviation Association convention this month in Atlanta.
The first new airframe to receive the Meggitt panel will be The New Piper's Malibu Meridian. The standard panel on the single-engine turboprop specifies electromechanical instruments, but of the more than 135 orders placed so far for the $1.375 million aircraft, all include the Meggitt option. With the Meggitt panel, the Meridian buyer will get dual PFDs, NDs, and ADAHRSs. Dual Meggitt engine-parameter displays are standard. In addition, Meggitt provides the Meridian's fuel probes, fire detection system, and engine data-acquisition unit, which records engine operating parameters for trend analysis. The PFDs and NDs all have reversionary modes, so that data from any one failed display can be shown elsewhere in the cockpit. If the pilot's ADAHRS fails, the copilot's takes over. Likewise, powerplant information can be depicted on either engine display. Still don't trust the electronics? Piper has specified three two-inch electromechanical instruments (altimeter and attitude and airspeed indicators) with their own air-data system as standard equipment in the event of a complete electrical failure. Piper has not yet announced how much the Meggitt option will add to the Meridian's base price.
The complete Meggitt panel made its first flight in August when Piper's third Meridian flight-test aircraft took to the sky for the first time; the fourth conforming prototype was to fly in early September. The aircraft is scheduled to earn its certification papers by mid-2000, with first deliveries to follow immediately.
So how does a company that designs exotic sensors for everything from tanks to oil rigs find itself building a new generation of displays for GA cockpits? Almost by accident, explains Stephen A. Marshall, president of Meggitt Avionics, the U.S. subsidiary of Meggitt.
Meggitt Avionics U.K. first moved into the display business a number of years ago after it developed the ADAHRS, which contains a tiny quartz gyro that senses any change in attitude, altitude, airspeed, or heading. Meggitt ap-proached Boeing with the ADAHRS and an LCD as a completely redundant system for its airliners. Boeing liked the concept, but not the idea of using an unproven product, according to Marshall. Cessna, though, was interested and soon signed up Meggitt to provide a backup flight display for its Citation line (see " Excel Excells," page T-2). The ADAHRS and a three-inch LCD depict all of the airspeed, altimeter, navigation, and attitude information necessary to control the aircraft in the event that all of the rest of the jet's displays fail. Since then, the system has been installed on more than 600 business jets, airliners, and military aircraft — including those at Boeing.
It was such a backup system that Meggitt first proposed to The New Piper for the Meridian. Piper officials balked. They were looking for a sophisticated new primary system for the Meridian. But Meggitt had never built a primary system, which must endure a much greater level of testing than a secondary system. Two-and-a-half months later, Meggitt went back to Piper with a plan to deliver a primary system with four displays, each measuring three inches by four inches. The contract was awarded in early 1998, just a few months before Piper unveiled the Meridian.
To achieve the price point necessary for the Piper contract, Meggitt knew it could not afford to use traditional aviation displays, which are extremely expensive because of limited manufacturing volumes. Meggitt turned to the automotive market and adapted a display being put in many cars, where the volumes are obviously much higher. Meggitt successfully put the displays from the auto market through the same battery of vibration, altitude, temperature, and RF tests that all of the other aviation displays must pass. Traditional aviation displays are VGA, like notebook computer screens. The auto glass is one-quarter VGA, or one-quarter of the resolution of VGA. So, Meggitt software engineers set to work writing code to dramatically improve the resolution and readability of the displays. In the end, the Meggitt displays look very much like full-VGA screens, but at a fraction of the cost of full-VGA glass.
With the Meridian project well under way, Meggitt has begun marketing the system to other airframe manufacturers. Century Aerospace, which is developing the Century Jet, a small twin-engine business jet, plans to make the Meggitt system standard in its aircraft. Meggitt may have additional announcements at the NBAA show for new airframe contracts. Meanwhile, the company hopes to move the new technology both up and down the GA market. Marshall feels the two-display system with an ADAHRS could easily find a home in single-engine piston aircraft down to about the $500,000 level, and up the retrofit market through turboprops and light jets. The company plans to introduce larger displays and more sophisticated systems over the next couple of years, perhaps moving the Meggitt name from obscurity to one known in every cockpit.
For more information, contact Meggitt Avionics at 10 Ammon Drive, Manchester, New Hampshire 03103; telephone 603/669-0940; fax 603/669-0931; e-mail [email protected]. E-mail the author at [email protected].
