Aviation Week & Space Technology - 3 November 2014

48 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/NOVEMBER 3/10, 2014 AviationWeek.com/awst

John Croft Orlando, Florida

Universal Upgrades

Avionics maker jumps forward

with InSight flight deck

U

niversal Avionics is about to cer-

tify a new flight deck that tight-

ens the working relationship be-

tween pilot and machine with a blend of

higher-resolution 3-D synthetic vision,

larger displays and new icon-based

command-and-control architecture.

Called InSight, the system is the

first major integrated cockpit refresh

in nearly a decade from the company

that first certified synthetic vision for

the multifunction display in 2002, for

light airplane (Part 23) primary flight

displays in 2005 and for air transport

(Part 25) cockpits in 2006. The first-

generation product was rudimentary

by today’s standards, however, with

lower-resolution graphics, no on-screen

graphical flight-planning capabilities,

no runways represented on the 3-D for-

ward views and no split-screen options.

With InSight, by contrast, all the

modern features and high-resolution

databases have been brought up to

date and “future-proofed” with the

addition of wireless access. Universal

expects to certify the fixed-wing ver-

sion in dual-pilot configuration in its

Cessna Citation VII flight-test aircraft

in mid-2015. The company will hold the

supplementary type certificate (STC)

for the broader Citation Model 650 se-

ries, making it available to its dealer

network for retrofits, and it is eyeing

other Part 25 aircraft.

“We learned a lot from 10 years of

flat-panel retrofits and forward-fits in

30 different certifications,” says Dan

Reida, vice president of sales for Uni-

versal. “We went back to the drawing

board to improve on what we had and

remain innovative. We’ve succeeded

with InSight.” Reida says the company

did not pick the dual-pilot Citation VII

“because there was a huge market,” but

because it met the needs for the initial

certification of the InSight system in a

Part 25 aircraft.

Aviation Week observed the new

cockpit in action on a round-robin flight

from Orlando Executive Airport north-

ward to Tallahassee on Oct. 18 in the

Citation VII with Universal senior test

flight test pilot Joel Glunt and business

development manager and pilot Carey

Miller. One initial surprise for a new-

model flight deck is that there are no

installed touchscreen devices, an option

competitors are increasingly using to

augment the human-machine connec-

tion. At the request of its customer

base, Universal took a countercultural

approach with InSight, however, in that

practically all interactions between pi-

lot and machine are carried out on the

pedestal behind the throttle quadrant

using a flush-mount cursor control,

two push buttons, a keypad and knob

or two. The only touchscreen capability

in the near term will be between a pilot’s

portable iPad and an onboard router to

load flight plans into the flight manage-

ment system, an option that Universal

plans to make available sometime after

the initial certification next year.

“We took a very serious look at

[touch],” says Reida. “But with the typi-

cal customer in the [Part 25] markets

we serve, we decided not to go there.

For those aircraft, it can be difcult to

access touchscreens. We also have a

customer base that flies using gloves,

and we didn’t want to shut them out.”

Consistent with the philosophy,

there are no bezel buttons or touch-

screen capabilities in the Citation’s

four 10.4-in displays in portrait format,

which are larger than the 8.9-in. dis-

plays for Vision-1, the first-generation

system. InSight has an Ethernet-based

architecture that results in fewer line-

replaceable units and more processing

carried out on commercially available

displays hardened to aircraft standards

by Universal.

The enhancements have allowed the

company to cut the price of the new

EFI-1040 display to 60% of the cost

of the 8.9-in. EFI-890; a three-display

system starts at $250,000 for aircraft

with a Universal flight management

system (FMS) and a typical autopilot,

says Reida. Universal continues to build

and support the EFI-890 at its Tucson,

Arizona, facility.

“We still have programs in the early

stages [with the EFI-890],” Reida says.

Along with business aircraft, Vision-1

is installed in special-mission aircraft

and some regional airliners, including

Air Iceland Bombardier Dash 8s.

Glunt put me in the right seat of the

Citation VII cockpit on the ground at

Orlando Executive to demonstrate the

features of the cockpit. Initial boot-up

of the system took more than 5 min.

due to the alignment needs of the leg-

acy attitude heading reference system

(AHRS), a component Universal kept

with the cockpit to keep costs down.

Other original equipment included the

air data computers, autopilot, crew

alerting system and standby instru-

NEXT-GENERATION AVIONICS

Universal Avionics flight test pilot

Joel Glunt uses the 3-D exocentric

vision feature of InSight to help with

taxiing at Orlando Executive Airport.

JOHN CROFT/AW&ST PHOTOS

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