Aspen Continues To Fill In Their Expanding Product Line

I've had a ball watching the folks at Aspen take a couple of good ideas and go forth to build a serious avionics company around them... increasing their product line and market penetration with startling speed. And best of all... they show NO sign of slowing down as the continue to spool up to become a solid force in the avionics world.

One of the latest additions to the Aspen line, certified last October, is the EA100 -- a product that provides a digital-to-analog data conversion capability between the EFD1000 and an aircraft’s attitude-based autopilot system. The adapter enables the Evolution Flight Display’s AHRS to provide accurate and reliable attitude information directly to the autopilot. Aspen customers now have the option to remove aging (and expensive) legacy attitude mechanical gyros when they install Evolution Flight Display Systems.

In either the Evolution 2000 or Evolution 2500 Package systems, the EA100 can be installed to receive attitude input from both the EFD1000 Multi-function Flight Display and the EFD1000 Pro Primary Flight Display. The redundant AHRS sensors in these multi-display configurations provide dual AHRS inputs that can independently monitor autopilot performance. Aspen is the only avionics manufacturer to offer this level of autopilot integration and reliability.

The EA100 has the added capability to immediately disengage the autopilot if an AHRS fault is detected. This represents a safety improvement over legacy designs where an autopilot would continue to respond to attitude commands from the gyro, even if that gyro’s performance had become degraded or otherwise inoperative.

The first version of the EA100 allows for the replacement of the popular Bendix/King KI-256 attitude indicator and will support the KAP 100/200 series, the KFC 200 series, and other Bendix/King autopilots that require input from that model of gyro. Future versions of the EA100 Adapter will support additional Bendix/King, Collins, Cessna/ARC and Sperry autopilot systems. The EA100 Adapter is available from Aspen Avionics authorized dealers and is priced at $2,495.00.

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