Wally,

I wanted to send you a quick note to reply to some questions you had about the AHRS that we use and the environmental testing that our unit has undergone.  As far as the AHRS goes, we ship the Crossbow AHRS 500, which has developed a reputation that speaks for itself in the experimental market. 

As far as the environmental testing goes, the only relevant testing to talk about for airplanes is DO-160D.  The tests covered in this document are designed for the express purpose of simulating that environment that equipment installed in various locations throughout the aircraft will be subjected to.  My company is made up of experienced avionics engineers from Honeywell, Rockwell Collins and Boeing, companies that are considered to be the finest in the world.  We have learned and practiced the trade of avionics engineering on several different certification programs and this experience has taught us the value of having industry standards such as DO-160.  This experience has also taught us the level of commitment that we need to bring to the projects we work on.  Several years ago, I was a manager a project in which the program manager was fond of throwing out the question “would you fly your family with it?” whenever the team was debating a design decision.  The point he was trying to instill in the minds of the team, and especially some of the folks who hadn’t been in this field all that long, was that what we did for a living could have serious consequences for our end customers – the folks who flew on the airplanes with our systems installed.  We didn’t design clothes dryers or personal computers; we designed avionics – systems which are relied on to bring our selves, or families, our friends and prefect strangers safely to their destination through rain or shine, day or night, through smooth or turbulent skies.  I even have a few other members from that team on the Op Technologies team today.  We wanted to recruit engineers with experience in avionics engineering because we wanted folks who understood how critical what they did for a living was, and who already had the strong foundation in the trade that we needed to develop leading edge products.  The engineering team we’ve built has been contracted to help certify the WSI Inflight real-time weather receiver, which is now shipping, and to consult on the certification and develop software for the Jeppesen Electronic Flight Bag, which just certified on the Boeing 777.  These customers of our engineering services recognize the experience and commitment that we bring to the table.

Having offered a little background of the culture in my company, I will say with all certainty that we do not recognize any environmental testing other than D0-160 as relevant to our trade.  We could strap a system in a clothes dryer and run it on permanent press for 60 minutes and call it spin testing, but as an avionics engineer, the unit spinning around with my underwear wouldn’t tell me if this system was suitable for installation on an airplane.  Running the unit while its in a meat freezer and then sticking it on a barbeque grill with the meat could be called temperature variation testing, but again, it doesn’t tell me whether the system is suitable for installation on an airplane.  I’ve heard about garage-level tests like this and I have a hard time believing that anyone is suggesting that DO-160 testing is not adequate to simulate the conditions a piece of avionics needs to be designed for and that these garage-level tests do a better job at modeling the airplane environment.  This suggests that the Collins Pro-Line is not safe for IFR flight on a King Air until we get it in a clothes dryer with some underwear or in a barbeque grill with some steaks to “test” it.  I don’t think you’d find anyone in the industry that would agree that the Collins Pro-Line system isn’t safe for the King Air with just DO-160 testing and that it really needs to be put through the garage suite of testing instead, or even in addition to.  I can’t speak to why other companies use garage-level testing – that is their business.  All I can speak to is our business.  That business is avionics and we use the proven standards established for our trade.

As for the Flight Op EFIS, our system has undergone and passed DO-160D testing.  This is true for both the 10.4” and the 8.4” display sizes. 

I have to close by saying that we appreciate the trust that you have placed in us by purchasing our EFIS and MFD.  As I said earlier, we understand what we’re working on every day, and just how important that trust is. 

Dexter Turner

Op Technologies

(503) 690-0800

cell (503) 320-2851