DRS emergency avionics system certified in U.K.
Officials at the United Kingdom Civil Aviation Authority have certified the Emergency Avionics System (EAS-3000) from DRS Technologies Flight Safety and Communications unit based in Carleton Place, Ontario.
The EAS-3000 is a modular deployable beacon system that uses advanced data storage in a crash-survivable unit. It was developed initially for use on military and commercial helicopters.
Designed and qualified to comply with the requirements and standards of the United Kingdom Civil Aviation Authority and the European Organization for Civil Aviation Equipment, the system integrates a cockpit voice and flight data recorder. It has a crash-survivable emergency locator beacon for fast recovery of flight data and an increased success rate for search and rescue teams, DRS officials claim.
An aircraft automatically releases the EAS-3000 from the aircraft`s outer surface during an accident and immediately emits a locator beacon for recovery by search and rescue teams. In water, the system floats indefinitely. On land, it escapes the crash by separating from the aircraft at the time of impact.
The recovery rate of the system exceeds 95 percent of reported incidents and the retrieval rate of data in recovered systems has been 100 percent, DRS officials claim.
DRS is under contract to provide similar systems for a international commercial and military aircraft and helicopter applications, including deployable flight incident recorders for U.S. Navy F/A-18 Hornet and German Air Force and Navy Tornado aircraft. - J.M.
For more information on the EAS-3000 and DRS Technologies contact Patricia M. Williamson by phone at 973-898-1500, by fax at 973-898-4730, by mail at DRS Technologies Inc., Corporate Head- quarters, 5 Sylvan Way, Parsippany, N.J. 07054, or on the World Wide Web at http://www.drs.com.
