Design and Preliminary Evaluation of the r-Gamma Display Concept

The objective of this proposed Phase II SBIR effort is to continue Phase I efforts to develop and assess the feasibility of an innovative new flight instrument proposed to replace the traditional Turn Coordinator (or Turn-and-Slip Indicator) currently found in most general aviation (GA) aircraft. The primary innovation is the inclusion of climb-dive information and gyroscopic heading, in addition to the turn-rate information now available, in one low-cost display. In essence, this new "r-Gamma" display concept will "fuse" flight information on one display that the pilot must now gather and correlate from among five separate indicators whenever the aircraft experiences loss of the Attitude Indicator (AI) and the Heading Indicator (HI) due to vacuum system or gauge failure. The innovative technology that makes this concept feasible and affordable, with a projected cost similar to that of today's Turn Coordinator, is derived from a technique recently developed and flight tested by our firm under an SBIR contract that involved tracking the flightpath of a small USAF sensor vehicle. We firmly believe this concept has the potential to improve significantly the safety of emergency "partial-panel" flight operations in GA aircraft.