"Orbits" Parts 1

One of the biggest requests from our European and other foreign customers is the ability to download satellite weather. We here in the US have been blessed with XM weather but that does not extend beyond our boundaries. Orbits was our internal code name for the project that installs the Garmin GSR56 satellite transceiver that uses the Iridium satellite network and integrates it into the Perspective system. This option is called the Perspective Global Connect by the sales and marketing group. We use code names to make it easier to describe internally, to give some security to the project and it is just fun coming up with names as a project kick-off exercise.

This project took about 9 months to complete, and although on the surface it may seem to be easy (it's just box and some wires right?) or that FAA certification causes a big delay, the truth is, to find a place to put the product, run the wires and test it enough to insure it meets Cirrus standards takes some time.

So the first step for us was to find a place to put the antenna. Anyone who has looked at our airplane lately realizes that there isn't room for any more antennas on the airplane. The antennas need to be spaced apart from one another to ensure they work properly. In this case we identified a combo antenna (with GPS 2) to use, and put it in the same spot as the existing GPS 2 antenna.

Of course we now have to verify the performance of GPS 2 in a bunch of different conditions to ensure there wasn't any interference or performance degradations due to the new antenna. Also since this is transmit/receive based system we have to ensure performance during both modes.

Then we had to find a place to put the actual GSR56 box. The console is full, all the under floor space has long been used up and the shelves in the aft equipment bay are also full. We ended up creating mounting locations on the back side of the CAPS bulkhead. It is accessible through the access hole on the side of the airplane. This required structural changes to the bulkhead and we used a mock-up to ensure we could actually install the bracket and box during production and in the field, and assessing the weight and balance impact.

Having this box in the back of the airplane also meant a long harness connecting it to the Perspective system in the cockpit. So once again, we had to ensure that the long harness didn't create any RF noise issues.

That summarizes the high level design considerations we had to go through. Stay tuned for Part 2 which will describe some of the test articles, the affects of the audio panel, and some funny stories that happened along the way.