For sixty years, the Safe Flight Instrument Corporation has invented some of the most significant safety and performance innovations in aviation, with their equipment installed on nearly two-thirds of the world’s aircraft. When their Airborne Wind Shear Warning System and Auto-Throttle technology were to be integrated during a large military aircraft conversion program, Safe Flight turned to DDC-I for help with Ada programming tools and expertise.
"When the Air Force contracted Raytheon to convert RC-135s, to a GATM "glass" cockpit, they decided to do a hardware upgrade to Safe Flight’s Wind Shear Warning & Auto Power Systems, to incorporate all flight performance parameters," explains Richard Frost, DDC-I's project lead for the Safe Flight program.
According to Frost, Safe Flight needed to port a large piece of flight management system code to their aircraft performance system. This required the integration of the DDC-I Ada Compiler System with their 80486 target, the development of a simple cyclic executive to manage system tasking and a menu processing architecture to deliver takeoff and landing data to a new Control Display Unit (CDU), followed by porting and compiling Ada and C code to the new CPU.
"After we completed a two-week evaluation of the scope of work required to port the Ada and C code, the work itself went pretty quickly. However, to actually work with the new system there were numerous data tables that had to be changed, since the equipment and engine configuration of the RC-135 varies in terms of weight and balance," Frost continues.
Enter Frost’s colleague Karen Herrera, the DDC-I engineer guiding Safe Flight’s software effort and serving the unusual role of "virtual customer." After several meetings with Safe Flight, the military and the TASC group responsible for flight management code maintenance defined new interfaces and table changes, she began helping the customer integrate the new tables.
"The level of cooperation during the project has been quite high. Other companies would have given us the tools and left. With DDC-I, we could really count on the amount of guidance and support that these kinds of projects demand. DDC-I has been highly involved with the project every step of the way," says Joe Gordon, Safe Flight Senior V.P.of Engineering.
Already in possession of impeccable safety credentials, Safe Flight’s relationship with DDC-I to help migrate their existing investments in mature code to the latest development environment, developed into a solid relationship as they moved steadily toward completion.
For sixty years, the Safe Flight Instrument Corporation has invented some of the most significant safety and performance innovations in aviation, with their equipment installed on nearly two-thirds of the world’s aircraft. When their Airborne Wind Shear Warning System and Auto-Throttle technology were to be integrated during a large military aircraft conversion program, Safe Flight turned to DDC-I for help with Ada programming tools and expertise.
