Equipment Installed On Law Enforcement, News Helicopters

Garmin International told attendees of a joint news conference Thursday the company recently helped equip six helicopters used around its local Kansas City aviation community with Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) avionics.

"Garmin has proven its commitment to ADS-B by participating in the development of innovative avionics equipment to enhance flight safety as part of the FAA’s SBS Program Office and Alaskan Capstone projects," said Gary Kelley, Garmin’s vice president of marketing. "Our ADS-B enabled products have embraced the FAA’s vision and made real-time textual and graphical weather, TFR status information and traffic information in the cockpit a reality."

The GDL 90 is aviation’s first certified ADS-B UAT datalink transceiver. Designed as a remote-mounted unit, the GDL 90 broadcasts position, velocity and vector information and receives ground and air based data and transfers that data in the form of real-time weather, traffic and TFRs to the Garmin GMX 200 multi-function display. The GDL 90 is the first TSO C154-certified Universal Access Transceiver (UAT) and includes a TSO C145a WAAS GPS sensor that offers outstanding position accuracy and integrity. Garmin has delivered over 1,800 GDL 90 transceivers since the first delivery in 2004.

In addition to the GMX 200, other cockpit display of traffic information (CDTI) options for the GDL 90 include the G1000 integrated flight deck, the popular GNS 430 and GNS 530 panel mount products as well as the GPSMAP 396 and 496 portable products.

Garmin recently announced the GTX 330 and GTX 33 transponders with 1090 MHz extended squitter (ES) capabilities that are ADS-B compatible, so that general aviation aircraft can automatically transmit position, velocity and heading information. The 1090 MHz ES (TSO-C166a) builds upon the existing system by transmitting pertinent aircraft information independent of being interrogated.

"We encouraged and assisted the Kansas City Police Department and four local TV stations to install ADS-B equipment because we believe this technology is indispensable and lifesaving," said Kelley. "When a breaking news story or accident occurs, news and law enforcement helicopter pilots must fly in the exact same airspace. Previously, they relied on visual contact and progressive radio calls to maintain in-flight separation but now they can see each other using the ADS-B equipment, which we believe will significantly increase the overall safety."

The FAA is beginning to implement a nationwide ADS-B infrastructure of ground stations to improve traffic efficiency and improve situational awareness in the cockpit. The ADS-B ground stations can track aircraft movement and will eventually be used to provide radar-like traffic separation services.

Additionally, these ground stations will broadcast graphical and textual weather information via the FAA’s Flight Information Service (FIS-B), traffic targets being tracked by air traffic control (ATC) via the FAA’s Traffic Information Service (TIS-B), and graphical TFR information in real time. The federal government currently plans to offer all of these services free of charge to general aviation and commercial operators.

FMI: www.garmin.com, Read More About ADS-B