Wisk Air Helicopters is equipping its Bell 412 and 407GXi helicopters with GPMS International’s Foresight MX health and usage monitoring system (HUMS). Wisk Air, based in Thunder Bay, Canada, provides helicopter utility services for firefighting, powerline, forestry, mining, and remote-access missions.
By combining micro-electromechanical systems sensors with Foresight MX’s predictive analytics, the system delivers more useful information than conventional accelerometer-based legacy HUMS, according to GPMS. “The system monitors sensor health and provides access to the underlying vibration signals so indications can be investigated and validated,” the company said. This improves fault detection and reduces false-positive indications “and the unnecessary troubleshooting they can trigger.”
Wisk Air’s maintenance team receives automatic data uploads and can review aircraft health information via the web. Bell’s product support organization supports Foresight MX, and operators can share data with Bell to help review trends and exceedances and to support maintenance decisions, according to GPMS.
“We’ve relied on Bell’s product support for decades, and its support of GPMS was a major factor in our decision,” said Wisk Air president Mark Wiskemann. “Foresight MX gives us advanced monitoring and a way to connect our team, GPMS, and Bell around the same information. That combination matters when an aircraft is supporting customers far from base, and we need a clear path from an alert to an informed maintenance decision.”
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