Avionics News June 2023 - 21

THE VIEW FROM WASHINGTON
Continued from page 17
Smithsonian Magazine, Joseph Stromberg quoted Harold
Wallace, then curator at the American History Museum,
that " the research that led to the transistor replacing
the vacuum tube was based on work done during World
War II; not long after the war ended, the transistor was
developed at Bell Labs in 1947. "
When I entered aviation in the early 1970s, radio
technology was similar to what we have today: UHF,
VHF, HF, and FM. On the navigation front, for shortrange
navigation, we had VOR, DME, and TACAN
(tactical air navigation); for long-range navigation, we
relied on LORAN initially, then followed with OMEGA
and inertial navigation systems throughout the 1970s.
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, we saw the
introduction of several new avionics systems, which
seem antiquated today. This includes not only OMEGA
and INS but also ground proximity warning systems and
flight management systems.
It is hard to believe the pace of technological change
that has taken place over the past five decades. For
example, did you know the global positioning system is
celebrating its golden jubilee this year? Yes, GPS turns
50. The original U.S. Department of Defense project
was created in 1973, with the first satellite launched five
years later in 1978. It took nearly two decades for the full
constellation of 24 satellites to become fully operational.
At this year's AEA New Product Introduction session
in Orlando, there were a number of products with
connected cockpits and cabin management systems. It
was interesting to consider the advancements in this
technology as well.
In the late 1970s when I wrote my first flight data
computer program and was managing our computerbased
maintenance management software (via
the U.S. mail), we had just implemented this new
digital technology called a modulator-demodulator
(MODEM). With its blazing speed of 1.2 kbps, it was
" revolutionizing " computerized maintenance recordkeeping.
It seems mind-numbing that in 40 years we
have increased the typical digital speed of an office by a
factor of more than 250,000. Comparing this to today's
in-flight Wi-Fi from Gogo with a range of options from
3 Mbps to 25 Mbps, the lowest in-flight Wi-Fi is 2,500
times faster than our early land-based modems.
Do you know what other technology is celebrating
its golden jubilee this year that was highlighted in this
year's New Product Introduction session? Think about
the pocket computer with the GPS-driven moving
map - yes, the cellphone. Motorola introduced the first
mobile cellphone in 1973. Although ATT had introduced
a " mobile " phone 30 years earlier, Martin Cooper, a
Motorola engineer, is credited as being the father of
the cellular phone. It took another 10 years before
Motorola would produce the first portable cellphone
for consumers using a 1G (G is for generation) analog
cellular system. It took another decade before we
began to see cellphones adding internet capabilities.
Today, many of the over-the-air products produced by
AEA member companies bring data into the cockpit
utilizing 4G technologies. Arguably, in 40 short years,
we have gone from the introduction of a cellphone
with 30 minutes of talk-time and 10 hours to charge, to
using digital cellular broadband to upload flight plans
and charts, and to communicate with onboard avionics
systems.
As we look at the technologies in the rearview mirror
with today's pace of new technology, what enhancements
are just beyond the horizon? I guess we will have
to wait another year for the 2024 AEA Convention's
New Product Introduction session for the answer. I look
forward to seeing you in Dallas, March 19-22, 2024. q
Something simple...
Smart, Manageable, Simple:
AEA's solution to SMS.
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avionics news * june 2023 21
http://www.aea.net/sms
Avionics News June 2023

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