What if you had an electronic flight bag (EFB) that doubles as a backup multifunction display with airspeed, altimeter, attitude and heading indicators in case your glass-panel cockpit goes completely dark on a stormy night? And even better, what if that backup system could guide you down an approach to minimums with an intuitive highway-in-the-sky (hits) path overlaying a 3-D synthetic picture of the outside world with real-time weather and traffic display?
These are exactly the questions engineers at Mercury Computer Systems in Chelmsford, Mass., asked, and the system they developed in response does all that for about $7,000 including optional features. VistaNav is more than an EFB with moving-map software guided by an external GPS. “I don’t like the term EFB,” said Jeff Simon, VistaNav senior product manager. “An EFB has no nav functions; it’s the equivalent of your paper flight bag but easily updated. Technically we are an EFB because we have approach plates, but we view VistaNav as a synthetic-vision product; it’s a navigational aid.”
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