Providing comprehensive, real-time graphical weather products in the general aviation (GA) aircraft cockpit, in a manner useable by the broad spectrum of GA pilots, has been identified in numerous GA forums as a necessary condition to creating a small aircraft transportation system (SATS) and revitalizing the GA industry. ARNAV and NCAR propose to create a system to assist the pilot, including the less experienced GA pilot, in making safe flight planning and replanning decisions. This system will present intuitive weather graphics integrated with other operational factors to yield an "expert" cockpit decision aid. Objectives in Phase I are: I. Employ NCAR research on weather forecast models to create a high resolution (60 km) and rapidly updated (1 hour) "nowcast" of key weather variables in a gridded format, by "fusing" data from ground based weather radars and wind profilers, with weather sensed by aircraft and automatically data linked to the ground. II. Convert NCAR research on graphical ground based displays of gridded weather information to intuitive graphical cockpit displays of the key weather variables, wind speed and direction, temperature, clouds, icing conditions, lightning, convection, etc. III. Use ARNAVs proven data link system to transmit this information up to the aircraft, ARNAVs human factors and computer processing expertise to create a "weather expert" system which combines these data and identifies hazardous weather in relation to the planned flight path, and ARNAV's color LCD display expertise to depict the weather situation and any "no fly zones" overlaid on a moving map displays with the aircraft's position. IV. Demonstrate feasibility by validating the system results for accuracy and reliability.
Potential Commercial Applications: The expert fused weather graphics cockpit display has immediate commercial potential at a projected cost that is affordable by many of the 175,000+ general aviation aircraft today. The long term market will reach new aircraft in forward fit applications, and take advantage of the new demand curve of aircraft production, as recently announced by Cessna, Piper, Cirrus, Raytheon, and others.
