Avionics
Hands On: AIN Flies with the Genesys HeliSAS
AIN puts the HeliSAS through its paces.
The view over the desert from a former U.S. Army OH-58A+ Kiowa equipped with an updated Gensys HeliSAS (Photo: Matt Thurber)
The view over the desert from a former U.S. Army OH-58A+ Kiowa equipped with an updated Gensys HeliSAS (Photo: Matt Thurber)

“It was like déjà vu all over again,” as Yogi Berra might have described it.

Five years ago at Heli-Expo 2013 in Las Vegas, I flew a pristine, privately owned Bell 407 with a newly installed Cobham HeliSAS autopilot and stability augmentation system (SAS). Now I was again flying over the Nevada desert in another HeliSAS-equipped helicopter at HeliExpo 2018, also in Vegas. The main differences between these two flights are the company’s name and ownership, the helicopter and a few enhancements to HeliSAS itself.