Flight Instrumentation

RESEARCH that was to lead to the application of electronic displays to the flight decks of transport aircraft may be said to have begun seriously in the 1970's with the main centre of UK activity being in the advanced flight deck simulator at British Aerospace, Weybridge. Initially, work on monochrome cathode ray tube (CRT) displays was undertaken and these were in fact, flown for a short while in the trials aircraft. This was soon followed by colour coding however, and two large colour CRT displays were to be developed by Smiths Industries and installed in the left hand instrument panel of the Royal Aircraft Establishment BAC One‐Eleven aircraft. Together with other instrumentation, the full colour displays were fitted during 1981 with the main programme concentrated on the development and integration of these head down instruments with the rapidly evolving flight management system.