News from the paris Airshow on NAVAIR TH-57 Cockpit Upgrade (EFIS)
What’s the message you’re bringing to the market at Paris?
The big new program we’ve got is the U.S. Navy TH-57 trainer fleet. That’s real exciting, because that’s the launch vehicle for the Cobham cockpit. Chelton Flight Systems technology forms the core for a complete suite of avionics for Cobham. Cobham for years has had a number of “black box” companies, but they’ve never offered system integration or a completely integrated system. That’s what we bring to the table. We bring that platform technology around which all these black boxes can be assembled into a complete system.
For the TH-57, we’re supplying virtually every piece of equipment in the aircraft that has a jiggling electron in it. It has the EFIS, a terrain awareness and warning system (TAWS), a flight management system, an autopilot and stability augmentation system, communications radios, navigation radios, GPS, tactical radios, audio controls, ELT, engine data concentrator, airframe data concentrator, engine display, engine indication and crew alerting system, master caution system, flight data recording. There is a very large amount of capability that’s all been integrated into a single system now. And TH-57 is the first time it’s being deployed as an integrated system. The U.S. Navy has about 125 helicopters in service in the TH-57 fleet, and they’ll be equipping all of them. And the U.S. Army, which flies its TH-67 trainer version of the 206, was involved in the selection process, as well. There is a desire in the military in general for fleet consistency.
What is it that makes the Chelton system so appealing for the helicopter market?
It depends on the pilot. There’s so much capability. Each individual pilot tends to gravitate toward his or her pet capability. There’s the synthetic vision, which is very compelling. That’s the real-time, forward-looking, 3D depiction of terrain, and since it also includes traffic and towers and antennas and navigation aids and the airport environment, it makes for a very compelling, very dramatic improvement to safety. It gives you VFR cueing in limited-visibility situations. So even if you’re in a VFR helicopter and you get into dramatically reduced visibility, even nighttime, the synthetic vision still gives you a sunny day. You can see the mountains and hills, towers, antennas. You can see the buildings. You see other aircraft flying around if you’re equipped with a traffic sensor. In the airport environment, you can see the landing runway.
What’s the message you’re bringing to the market at Paris?
The big new program we’ve got is the U.S. Navy TH-57 trainer fleet. That’s real exciting, because that’s the launch vehicle for the Cobham cockpit. Chelton Flight Systems technology forms the core for a complete suite of avionics for Cobham. Cobham for years has had a number of “black box” companies, but they’ve never offered system integration or a completely integrated system. That’s what we bring to the table. We bring that platform technology around which all these black boxes can be assembled into a complete system.
For the TH-57, we’re supplying virtually every piece of equipment in the aircraft that has a jiggling electron in it. It has the EFIS, a terrain awareness and warning system (TAWS), a flight management system, an autopilot and stability augmentation system, communications radios, navigation radios, GPS, tactical radios, audio controls, ELT, engine data concentrator, airframe data concentrator, engine display, engine indication and crew alerting system, master caution system, flight data recording. There is a very large amount of capability that’s all been integrated into a single system now. And TH-57 is the first time it’s being deployed as an integrated system. The U.S. Navy has about 125 helicopters in service in the TH-57 fleet, and they’ll be equipping all of them. And the U.S. Army, which flies its TH-67 trainer version of the 206, was involved in the selection process, as well. There is a desire in the military in general for fleet consistency.
What is it that makes the Chelton system so appealing for the helicopter market?
It depends on the pilot. There’s so much capability. Each individual pilot tends to gravitate toward his or her pet capability. There’s the synthetic vision, which is very compelling. That’s the real-time, forward-looking, 3D depiction of terrain, and since it also includes traffic and towers and antennas and navigation aids and the airport environment, it makes for a very compelling, very dramatic improvement to safety. It gives you VFR cueing in limited-visibility situations. So even if you’re in a VFR helicopter and you get into dramatically reduced visibility, even nighttime, the synthetic vision still gives you a sunny day. You can see the mountains and hills, towers, antennas. You can see the buildings. You see other aircraft flying around if you’re equipped with a traffic sensor. In the airport environment, you can see the landing runway.
