TECHNOLOGY AVAILABLE TO EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT

By Jim Ruttler, Instrumented Rated Pilot, RV-10 Builder, Patent Attorney
www.ruttlermills.com
jim@ruttlermills.com

So before we get too far down in the weeds about the building process, I'd like to back up a little and talk about the technology available to experimental aircraft.  This will make the building information a little more exciting since you'll understand the reward that awaits your efforts.

To be clear, some - not all - of these technologies are available in new certified aircraft that cost three quarters of a million dollars.  And, some - not all - of it can be added to existing certified aircraft for large sums of money.  However, the only place you can get ALL of it for a reasonable price is in the experimental aircraft world.  If it isn't clear why, back up and read some of the earlier posts.

I was very fortunate to have stumbled upon Vans Aircraft and have selected the RV-10 to build because of all the add on technology that is available to Vans models.  I had no idea what I was getting into when I did, but because they are the most popular experimental aircraft, there are a ton of companies that sell aftermarket products specific for the Vans models.  

One of these companies is Advanced Flight Systems, which is offering the quick panel avionics systems for most Vans models.  Naturally, Rob Hickman of Advanced Flight flies and tests the equipment on an RV-10, so you know that everything will work on your Vans model.  These quick panel systems include everything you need to have the most advanced - no pun intended - avionics suite on the market.  The advanced quick panel system comes with synthetic vision, traffic, weather, fully coupled autopilot, and complete engine monitoring.  

Synthetic vision is essentially a three dimensional image of what you see outside your window.  When you are in the clouds or in marginal weather, the synthetic vision provides you with the view of what you would see if you could see.  And, it does so with amazing clarity and accuracy.  Now compare this with the typical certified avionics.  With most general aviation planes, you have to constantly generate a situational view in your mind based on all of the disparate pieces of information gleaned from different instruments like your attitude indicator, heading indicator, altimeter, vertical speed indicator, compass, ILS, and information gleaned from air traffic control and your charts.  Essentially, you look back and forth at the instruments and try to figure out where you are going, how high you are, and whether you are going to hit something, and you do this until your eyes and brain hurt and hope that time is after you land.  To me, this is like the difference between using a 1980's computer using MSDOS only and using an iPAD today - and literally that is exactly what the technological time divide is with the old and new avionics.  To drive the point home, here is an image of the traditional instruments found in most certified general aviation aircraft as compared to Advanced Flight's synthetic vision.

Now the choice here is so obvious - why would anyone fly with the old instruments?  Well, we've covered that already with the difference between certified and experimental aircraft.  With certified aircraft, you can't have the Advanced Flight Deck because the FAA says so and the other available systems are far too expensive for most pilots to afford.  Now, for experimental aircraft, it literally makes no sense to install the old technology because, this might surprise you, the Advanced Flight system is cheaper than installing the mechanical instruments, which cost upwards of $5k each due to their sophisticated mechanical gyroscopes. 

Another technology integrated into the Advanced Flight Deck is ADS-B traffic.  What happens is that the Advanced Flight Deck pulls traffic information from the new FAA ADS-B network, which includes radar traffic, and then presents this traffic within the 3D synthetic image.  The current way for most pilots to get traffic is to look out the window for it or rely on air traffic control to audibly warn you about nearby traffic.  I have found this to be ineffective and my wife is constantly afraid of hitting other planes after a few near misses we've had.  Some iPAD applications provide you with some traffic, but it is limited only to the other planes with these advanced capabilities like mine or jumbo jets; that is, you won't get the full traffic picture on your iPAD because it won't show you the old planes that you are most likely to hit.  Here is an illustration of the 'see and avoid' method vs. the ADS-B traffic in Advanced Flight Systems (see the black diamond showing you that traffic is 600 ft below you to your left).

The Advanced Flight System comes with a fully coupled autopilot.  This means the computers will fly the plane based on your touch input to the screens and based on your flight plan you've loaded.  The system will climb, turn, descend en route and avoid terrain.  It will even join instrument approach courses and fly the approaches automatically down to published minimums.  You can turn the plane by dragging the heading bug on your screen or climb the plane by dragging the altitude bug on your screen.  One of the really nice features is the fly through boxes that are visually depicted on your synthetic vision.  These boxes are created based on your flight plan or the approach you want to fly, so all you have to do is fly through the boxes and you'll get to your intended runway.  Here is an illustration of the boxes that the Advanced Flight Deck is flying the airplane through (note that the wind speed and direction are visually depicted by the arrow and that is why the airplane is being controlled on a heading slightly left of the intended course).

 

There are a ton more avonics features that we will be exploring in later posts, but I just wanted to give you a flavor of why you would want to put in the effort to assemble an experimental aircraft, which we will discuss next.  

As far as expense, the Advanced Flight System with everything we've discussed here comes in two packages: visual flight rules or instrument flight rules.  The visual panel includes everything like synthetic vision, traffic, weather, and full autopilot.  The instrument panel includes a certified GPS to allow for instrument flight.  The price of the visual flight rules system is a very reasonable $20k and the price of the instrument flight rules system is a very reasonable $40k.  These prices include ALL of the antennas, autopilot motors, displays, radios - a fully customized and silk screened panel - pre-built wiring harnesses - a custom circuit board to make installation painless.  The instrument flight rules system also includes redundant computers, batteries, and the brand new Avidyne 540 touch certified GPS system.  Her again is an image of my panel, which is the instrument flight rules panel. 

As far as non-avionics technology, there is an abundance.  Parachute systems and the belly bod with motorcycle are my favorites and worthy of mentioning now.  The parachute system is an airframe parachute that deploys on demand to set the airplane down at around 25-30 miles per hour - a survivable impact.  This feature is available on Cirrus aircraft in the certified world, but not for the same low cost in the experimental world.  The belly pod is, on the otherhand, something you can only find in the experimental world and is something I will be adding to my RV-10.  It allows you to carry skiis, backpacks, luggage, and even a motorcyle that is specially designed to fit in the pod.  Here are some images.

 Next, we will start exploring the building process.