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April 19, 1:32 EST
CANBERRA, Australia -- Officials of the Royal Australian navy are using Emergency Avionics Systems 3000 (EAS3000) deployable flight recorders from DRS Flight Safety and Communications, a unit of DRS Technologies, in Carleton Place, Ontario, for their medium- and heavy-lift helicopter fleets.
DRS engineers will provide more than 30 EAS3000 deployable cockpit voice and flight data recording systems for the Royal Australian navy's Sea King SK-50, -50A and -50B, and Sea Hawk S-70B-2 helicopters, DRS officials say. The systems will include DRS's latest Aircraft Monitoring Unit technology, which constantly monitors the performance and condition of the aircraft's operational systems, including engines, avionics, and dynamic and structural components, company officials say. The award was received from Raytheon Australia Pty. Ltd., a unit of Raytheon, located in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia.
Deliveries of the EAS3000 systems are expected to be completed by the end of this year. Under earlier contracts the Royal Australian navy also installed DRS's EAS3000 systems on its SH-2G Super Seasprite helicopters, DRS officials say.
"The EAS3000 is the world's most advanced deployable flight recorder for rotary-wing aircraft," claims Mark S. Newman, DRS Technologies' chairman, president, and chief executive officer. "These systems separate from the aircraft at the time of an incident, escaping the devastating effects of a crash. They also float indefinitely in water. Widespread use of these unique systems for commercial aircraft could save millions of dollars in recovery efforts and expedite search and rescue missions. These products are the most advanced combination of flight data recorder and emergency locator beacon system available today."
The EAS3000 is a modular, deployable beacon system that uses advanced data storage technology in a single crash-hardened unit developed specifically for use on military and commercial helicopters, DRS officials say. Designed, qualified, and certified to the requirements and standards of the United Kingdom Civil Aviation Authority, Transport Canada Airworthiness, Federal Aviation Administration, and the European Organization for Civil Aviation Equipment, the EAS3000 integrates a cockpit voice and flight data recorder with a crash-survivable emergency locator beacon for fast recovery of flight data and an increased success rate for search and rescue teams. The recovered data, which provide detailed information of the events during an incident, are utilized for accident investigation, training, aircraft and avionics design and manufacture, and flight safety procedure development, company officials say.
The recovery rate of DRS's deployable systems exceeds 95 percent of reported incidents, DRS officials claim. The retrieval rate of data in recovered systems has been 100 percent, far exceeding the recovery and data retrieval rate of commercial flight recorders currently in use, company officials say.
For more information about the DRS EAS3000 deployable flight recorder, contact the company on the World Wide Web at http://www.drs.com.
Military & Aerospace Electronics
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