AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - July 2017 - 32

PILOT BRIEFING
PILOT PRODUCTS |

Head-up display for light GA
Bright, portable, iPad-based technology
B Y D AV E H I R S C H M A N

HEAD-UP DISPLAYS (HUDs) have improved
situational awareness and safety among
military pilots for years, but their exorbitant costs have left them out of reach for all
but a few general aviation aircraft.
Epic Optix, an Annapolis, Maryland,
engineering firm, intends to change that with
a portable HUD designed to fit on aircraft
glareshields and project critical information
to the pilot's natural line of sight.
"The beauty of a HUD is that it gets the
pilot's eyes outside the cockpit and keeps
them there," said Chuck Nash, a former U.S.
Navy pilot, who has spent two years developing the non-TSO HUD. "There's no need to
constantly look up and look down and divide
your attention between the instrument panel
and the outside world. You get all the information you want while looking outside."
The Epic Eagle projects images from an
iPad or iPhone app onto a clear glass "combiner" directly in front of the pilot. The
HUD can show images from virtually any
aviation app, and Epic Optix says it has been
in touch with many app designers to customize products for their HUD.
Avidyne Avionics has been working
especially closely with Epic Optix because
officials at the Massachusetts firm believe
their IFD series nav/coms are particularly
well suited for the HUD. Each Avidyne
IFD has an internal air data computer that
transmits information via Wi-Fi. Any iPad
or iPhone can receive that data-which
includes indicated airspeed and barometric altitude-and display it (via Bluetooth)
on an Epic Optix HUD.
Steve Jacobson, an Avidyne executive
and former U.S. Air Force A-10 pilot, said
he's long sought a cost-effective way of
bringing HUDs to GA cockpits.
"I could put a bullet through the window of a moving truck two miles away with
a HUD because they allow you to fly so

32 | AOPA PILOT July 2017

precisely," he said. "For GA pilots
flying instrument approaches, the
biggest advantage is that they can
'see' the runway while they're still
in the clouds. The transition from
flying on the gauges and then
switching to visual references also
gets minimized because you're
looking outside throughout the
entire approach and landing."
A big part of tweaking
Avidyne's iPad app to display on the HUD
screen has been paring down the information to essentials. "It's got to be helpful. It's
got to be cool. And it's got to be safe," he said.
"That's not always an easy combination."
In a demonstration flight with Jacobson
the HUD was easily readable, even in strong
sunlight, and its colorful presentation differed
from monochromatic military HUDs. "We're
only beginning to scratch the surface of what
we can do with color in a HUD," he said.
On approach to Runway 29 at Hanscom
Field Airport, for example, the HUD outlined the runway edges in magenta, which
made the surface easy to identify and line
up from a distance. Avidyne's app contains
a green dot "velocity vector" that extends
the airplane's current flight path forward.
"At the final approach fix, you just
put the velocity vector on the runway

threshold," Jacobson said. "Do that, and
the needles will remain centered. You'll
never have to chase them again."
Jacobson also held out the possibility
of a low-cost "enhanced vision" feature
in which the HUD displays a video feed
from an airplane-mounted infrared camera. The runway would be visible on the
HUD in real time during the final phase of
any approach, and a velocity vector would
allow pilots to fly to it with precision.
Epic Optix plans to begin manufacturing HUDs this year and will set an initial
retail price of about $2,000.
"There's a learning curve that takes place
when you first start training and flying with a
HUD," he said. "But once you get accustomed
to a HUD, you'll never want to fly without it."
EMAIL dave.hirschman@aopa.org
AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - July 2017

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