Appareo’s AIRS-400 can do all of the data acquisition and recording to show compliance to a variety of ED-155 requirements by itself; however, to show full compliance to the standard, the camera needs to be hooked up to another module. We will further discuss why a second module may be required for some installations. But, for the overwhelming majority of AIRS installations a second module is not required, because the AIRS camera is:
- Capable of surviving the most of aircraft accidents without one; and,
- In most of the world there is no regulatory requirement to be equipped with such a recorder.
Below we discuss the ways in which AIRS-400 alone is not compliant with the ED-155 standard, and we provide a list of combinations of AIRS-400 and other products that can be used for full compliance to the ED-155 standard.
ED-155 | Non-Compliant Appearance
AIRS-400 is not compliant with ED-155 section 2-1.14.4. This portion of the standard requires that the recorder be bright orange in color with black letters that say “FLIGHT RECORDER.” In general, Appareo finds our customers prefer a less obvious, intrusive color for a product mounted within the cockpit in plain sight. It would be possible to create a variant of our AIRS that would be bright orange and marked in this manner, but Appareo finds that our customers believe it looks bad in the cockpit.
ED-155 | Non-Compliant Survivability
AIRS-400 is significantly more survivable than our previous cockpit camera, Vision 1000. The product is not, however, compliant with ED-155 section 2-4.2.4. Compliance with the flame survivability standard requires the presence of a phase change material, a material that is used to absorb the heat energy in the event of a fire. The mass of phase change material that is necessary to absorb the amount of heat energy products are subjected to in this test is roughly four times the volume and four times the weight of AIRS-400. This creates a large, unattractive product package for mounting into the ceiling of a cockpit or flight deck. For a customer that requires ED-155 or ED-112 flame survivability, a recoverable memory module mounted in a more convenient location for a large, heavy product is the right architecture for deployment of a flight data recording system. This provides the optimal flight data acquisition capability, with a visually attractive and high-performing camera solution providing digital data to a large, less attractive, recoverable module buried out of sight in the aircraft.
ED-155 | Achieving Full Compliance Using Appareo’s New Recorder
Achieving full compliance with ED-155 is possible with AIRS-400 in a number of ways. The first, and perhaps easiest, is to connect the camera to a recoverable memory module. For example:
- AIRS-400 could be used to generate data on an analog aircraft, using its internal sensors, and send that data to a large orange flight recorder (which may have no internal sensors, and on an aircraft with limited or no digital instrumentation) to provide the ED-155 ADRS function needed to comply with ED-155 (refer to TSO-C197).
- AIRS-400 could be used to acquire image data and send that data to a large orange flight recorder to satisfy both the AIRS and ADRS requirement on a modern, digital, aircraft that are not factory equipped with a cockpit/flight deck image recorder.
- AIRS-400 could be used to provide ADRS data and the ambient area microphone function to a large orange flight recorder that provides CVFDR functionality on an aircraft with primarily analog instrumentation, greatly simplifying that recording system’s deployment.
There are many different ways that AIRS-400, with its high survivability and alignment with ED-155 data acquisition/generation requirements, can help our global customers show compliance to regulations and standards that may invoke full or partial compliance to the ED-155 standard. The table below summarizes some of the ways in which this compliance can be achieved.
After reviewing this write-up and the above table, if you’re still trying to understand the standard, your requirements, and how to show compliance, please contact Appareo at [email protected].
David Batcheller
President & CBO