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.