US technology developer Honeywell Aerospace has achieved certification from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) for its IntuVue RDR-7000 Weather Radar System.
Designed for business jets, the RDR-7000 Weather Radar is now certified for use on Global Express/XRS/5000, Dassault Falcon 900 A/B, Dassault Falcon EX/LX/EASy, Textron Citation X, Leonardo AW139 (short nose), Cessna Citation Encore/Ultra/Bravo and Lockheed C-130 Hercules, among other aircraft.
Nadya Krisko, senior director of business and general aviation, EMEAI, at Honeywell Aerospace, said, “Achieving EASA certification for the RDR-7000 will ensure our business aviation and helicopter operators get the very best in technology. Operators of these aircraft can now purchase and install the RDR-7000 on their aircraft and take advantage of the system’s safety and operational benefits, including predictive hail, predictive lightning, extended turbulence detection range and forward-looking windshear for aircraft with 18in antennas.”
The automated RDR-7000 Weather Radar System means no manual tilt or gain adjustments are required, enabling pilots to solely focus on flying during bad weather. While some conventional radars scan only a portion of the sky, the RDR-7000 automatically scans from the ground to 60,000ft and as far as 320 nautical miles ahead.
Using 3D volumetric scanning techniques, the system analyzes storm clouds and looks for conditions that could potentially produce lightning, hail, turbulence or windshear, and displays them for the flight crew.
The RDR-7000 can also determine if a second storm front is lurking behind the initial system. The longer and more accurate turbulence detection range provides flight crews with as much as 6-10 minutes to react to approaching turbulence, so they can alert passengers or potentially navigate around it.
A Terrain Database is also loaded into the RDR-7000 internal memory that enables ground returns to be removed from pilots’ displays, further reducing the potential of displaying confusing or irrelevant information while in weather mode. As an added benefit, when ground map mode is selected, the weather return information can be removed from the display, providing pilots with ground return information only.