AERODATA FLUGMESSTECHNIK OF BRAUNSCHWEIG, GERMANY, will supply two sets of flight equipment for inspecting navigation aids to the Civil Aviation Authority of Australia under a DM10 million (about $7.1 million) contract. The equipment is to be installed in an Israel Aircraft Industries Astra 1125 jet and a Beech Super King Air B200 turboprop aircraft.
Steel Barrier is a mesh material with a 1/4-in. weave that is designed to prevent infiltration of high-security sites, such as military bases, sensitive research and development installations, radar sites and fuel depots. The material is designed to be impossible to climb or cut. In addition, nothing can be passed through the dense mesh. It is available with vinyl coatings in a variety of colors. Darker colors will allow more light to pass through, while lighter colors will restrict light. Steel Barrier also is available in 3/8 and 5/8-in. weaves. Sonco Worldwide, P.O.
The CP5 Compact PCI Single Board Computer is available with either a 90 or 100-MHz. pentium processor and an industrial version of the PCI bus, which provides fast access to video, disk, local area networks and other high-speed peripherals. The CP5 is intended for computationally or graphically intensive industrial applications. It uses the 3U and 6U Eurocard packaging format common in VME-based computers. The single-board computer features 256 kilobytes of fast secondary cache and up to 256 megabytes of random access memory.
GEC-Marconi Avionics is pressing developments in night vision goggles and helmet-mounted displays to improve the night fighting capabilities for tactical jet aircraft.
SITA, WHICH OWNS AND OPERATES one of the world's largest international aeronautical and travel data networks, will provide global managed data network services to AMR Corp.'s American Airlines and Sabre Computer Services. Under a long-term, $50-million contract covering more than 6,000 locations throughout Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa and Australasia, SITA will link reservations offices and travel agencies that subscribe to AMR's Sabre reservation system. The pact will provide American with a single point of contact for overseas network management.
Don H. Davis has been named president/chief operating officer and a director of Rockwell International Corp., Seal Beach, Calif. He was executive vice presi-dent/COO for automation, automotive and telecommunications businesses. Kent M. Black, also an executive vice president/COO, intends to retire early next year.
U.S. aircraft designers will trade the stress of layoffs, downsizing and mergers this fall for a lighter application of their world-class skills--creating the ultimate paper airplane.
RUSSIAN AERONAUTICAL TEST FACILITIES are exhaustively detailed in a free new report by Anser Corp.'s Center for International Aerospace Cooperation. The 465-page technical document covers the Central AeroHydrodynamics Institute (TsAGI), Central Institute of Aviation Motors (CIAM), Central Scientific Research Institute of Machine Building (TsNIIMash) and Moscow Aviation Institute. Requests for copies should be made by writing to the Anser Corp., 1215 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 800, Arlington, Va. 22202.
MCCLELLAN AFB, SACRAMENTO, and Kelly AFB, San Antonio, and their maintenance depots are among 105 military bases and associated facilities that will be closed (79) or realigned (26) with President Bill Clinton's acceptance under protest last week of the recommendations of the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission (BRAC). Clinton had hoped to spare McClellan and Kelly because of the severe job losses their closure will inflict.
A quick-reaction experimental program has equipped U.S. Air Force C-141 transports flying into Bosnia with a new lightweight, ceramic-composite crew-protection armor.
The successful launch of Helios 1A, Europe's first imaging reconnaissance satellite, will intensify moves to revise European space policy and spur establishment of a formal European military space organization. The orbital performance of the new Matra Marconi spacecraft, however, has yet to convince Germany to join France in development of a Block 2 Helios program and advanced radar satellite to follow the 1999 launch of Helios 1B.
HONEYWELL WILL DEMONSTRATE a modified radar altimeter which also scans forward to give a low-cost terrain and obstacle warning to a helicopter. A microprocessor controls the time sharing of transmissions. The 4.3-GHz. altimeter transmission is converted to 35 GHz. for forward transmission from a separate scanning antenna, covering 50 deg. azimuth and 20 deg. elevation to a range of 3,000 ft. in 1 sec. Tests will be conducted late this year in a NASA Ames Research Center UH-60, as a part of the automated nap of the earth flight demonstration program.
MANUFACTURERS AND AIRLINES REACTED POSITIVELY to Clinton's decision to normalize diplomatic relations with Vietnam, while pointing out that the practical business and economic benefits are some distance away. ``Politically, full diplomatic relations give us a level playing field with everyone else who has full diplomatic relations,'' a Boeing official said. The recognition of Hanoi is largely symbolic, and Boeing already can sell aircraft to Vietnam, she acknowledged, ``but there's always that different status that the U.S.
Celso Alvares De Azevedo has been appointed senior vice president-international direct broadcast satellite services for Hughes Communications Inc. of Los Angeles. He was technical director at SES/ASTRA of Luxembourg.
The Alpha 1 Tri-Color Bargraph System allows display of red, orange and green on light-emitting diode instruments. The display is bright and can be read from virtually any angle due to transparent sides on LEDs. The gauges are field programmable, simple to set and can be adapted for many applications. Options include varying blink rates and reverse video. Color intensity also can be controlled. Round and tape-style gauges are available. International Instruments, Twin Lakes Road, P.O. Box 185, North Branford, Conn. 06471.
DASSAULT ELECTRONIQUE AND ROCKWELL'S Collins Commercial Avionics will work together to develop a product line of ground collision avoidance systems (GCAS). The products will be based on Collins' traffic alert collision avoidance system (TCAS) technology and a GCAS subsystem developed by Dassault. The GCAS concept is to use on board sensors and a worldwide terrain data base to ``look ahead'' of the aircraft flight path to provide warnings of hazardous terrain to the flight crew.
This special report describes innovative avionics research that some U.K. companies are conducting to improve military and civil aircraft. Despite tight budgets, new radars are being developed for tactical military aircraft at GEC-Marconi Avionics' Edinburgh, Scotland, facility, as well as helmet-mounted displays at the company's Rochester, England, facility. Cockpit improvements underway at Smiths Industries include voice-activated systems and small glareshield displays that can be retrofitted onto cramped cockpits.
HELICOPTER PILOTS FOR THE ORANGE COUNTY (Calif.) Fire Dept. are experimenting with a simple and inexpensive technique to make tricky open-water rescues easier, quicker and safer. Once hovering over the victim, the Bell 205A-1's back-cabin observer throws a 1-in.-thick stack of white newspaper, arranged much like you buy it off the newsstand, horizontally out of the helicopter. The papers are blown straight down by the rotor wash, then peel apart and spread themselves out on the water surface.
LOCKHEED MARTIN HAS WON a $650-million contract to build two A2100 satellites for the Asia Cellular Satellite (Aces) system to provide hand-held mobile and fixed-base terminals throughout Southeast Asia, India and China in 1998. Aces is a consortium that includes PT Pasifik Satelit Nusantara of Indonesia, Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. and Jasmine International Plc. of Thailand. Aces joins an increasingly crowded field of competitors to allow people to use the same telephone number for both mobile and cellular telephones as they cross national borders.
A U.S. Air Force Titan 4 booster with a Centaur upper stage has lifted off from Pad 41 here with a classified payload destined for an initial high-inclination orbit, marking the 13th launch of the 41-vehicle Lockheed Martin program.
LONGBOW APACHE OFFERED by a Westland Helicopters/McDonnell Douglas team has won a hard-fought competition to supply the British Army with a new attack helicopter. The contract for 91 antitank helicopters to replace the Westland Lynx is valued at two billion pounds ($3.2 billion). Deliveries could begin about three years after the signing of the agreement.
A 12-year process aimed at simplifying international regulation of overhaul and maintenance activities risks falling short of that mark and leaving airlines and repair stations to comply with strident and redundant sets of rules in North America and Europe. The effort to ``harmonize'' aviation regulations in general in the U.S. and Europe is bogged down by many factors, according to senior governmental and industry officials.
