Sandel Avionics of Vista, Calif., has begun pre-certification flight testing of a helicopter-specific terrain avoidance warning system based on its fixed-wing class-A TAWS. The system, HTAWS, will meet or exceed performance for any current class-B TAWS for helicopters, company founder and president Gerry Block told NBAA Convention News. Initial flight testing is taking place at San Diego’s Montgomery Field using a Eurocopter AS 350B2 AStar. Sandel expects to roll out HTAWS in the first quarter next year.
The panel-mounted HTAWS is form and fit interchangeable with existing 3-ATI indicators. Calling it “the only fully self-contained TSO C194- and TSO C151c-compliant HTAWS system,” Block observed that the FAA, responding to the NTSB’s suggested adoption of systems such as TAWS to address the helicopter CFIT problem, last December issued Technical Standard Order (TSO) C194. “That kicked off HTAWS’ final development. For the helicopter TAWS, the new TSO is not quite as definitive as for fixed-wing, so there will be a lot of performance differences between the types of systems. We spent a great amount of time on the whole fixed-wing nuisance-alert issue and we’ve tried to take that into the helicopter arena.”
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