IEEE-USA
and AESS Help Celebrate 100 Years By Chris McManes
When Wilbur and Orville Wright produced the first powered flight for 12 seconds near Kitty Hawk, N.C., in 1903, their flyer did not have any electronics. Modern aviation would not be possible without it. “The Wright brothers had a reciprocating engine, propeller, cloth wings and cables, but no electronics,” said Erwin (Erv) Gangl, national awards chairman for the IEEE Aerospace & Electronics Systems Society (AESS). “Today, you couldn’t have the B-2 (stealth bomber) or Boeing 777 flying without computers and electronics as a major component.” In celebration of the 100th anniversary of powered flight, the International Air & Space Symposium and Exposition — the Next 100 Years was held in Dayton, Ohio, (the Wright brothers' hometown) in mid-July at the Dayton Convention Center. The four-day symposium, part of “Inventing Flight: Dayton 2003” (www.inventingflight.com/index.php), was organized by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences. Attendees included astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and John Glenn, and actor/pilot John Travolta. Gangl was the driving force behind ensuring the IEEE’s presence at the symposium. His tireless work resulted in AESS and IEEE-USA jointly sponsoring a booth in the exhibition hall. IEEE-USA President Jim Leonard and IEEE-USA volunteers George Zobrist and Bob Adams joined Gangl in staffing the IEEE display. Leonard, who has worked as an engineer at the Boeing Co. for over 40 years, sits on the AESS Board of Governors. He was pleased to contribute his time and IEEE-USA resources to the IEEE exhibit.
“I felt it was important for IEEE-USA to be here because, even though it’s a professional organization, it is part of the overall IEEE, which includes the societies,” Leonard said. “IEEE-USA works very closely with AAES, as it does with other units of the IEEE in the area of professional activities. Russ Lefevre is president of AESS and vice-chair of the IEEE-USA Committee on Transportation & Aerospace Technology Policy. So we have some things in common in that area. “The first 100 years of powered flight is something that affects people all over the world.” Avionics, or the confluence of aviation and electronics, is the electronic equipment that supports aerospace systems. From radar to radio communication to global positioning systems, IEEE members have contributed greatly to the development of avionics. Gangl was one of the early pioneers in integrating digital computers into military aircraft while working as an electrical engineer at Dayton’s Wright-Patterson Air Force Base from 1965 to 1988. In the late 1960s he was assigned to handle the digital computer requirements in the F-15 program office. “With that came the requirement to set up the inter-communication with all of the other avionic subsystems like the radar navigation controls and displays,” said Gangl, who’s considered by many to be the father of the data bus standard (Mil-Std-1553) that led to plug-and-play digital avionics. “Where in the past all signals were connected by stringing point-to-point wires, resulting in big cables and connectors, it became very frustrating to me that this couldn’t be done digitally. So I recommended that we go to a timeshared digital multiplex data bus concept. The digital conversion is done at the sensor, and a digital signal is sent to the computer via a dual redundant shielded twisted wire pair. This replaced having to have the analog-to-digital converter hardware being part of the computer, and also reduced the number of wire cables needed to connect the computer to the rest of the avionics. “It turned out that the concept was accepted, and we developed the Mil-Std-1553 data bus standard that is still in use today.” (Gangl recounted the history of Mil-Std-1553 in the September 2002 issue of Avionics Magazine: www.aviationtoday.com/reports/avionics/previous/0902/0902interview.htm).
The IEEE’s 10-by-20-foot exhibit (pictured above) included a 100-year avionics timeline researched and assembled by members of the IEEE Student Branch of the Air Force Institute of Technology, a graduate school at Wright-Patterson. Lt. Bryan Smith, Branch president, directed the effort. The IEEE Dayton Section provided the backdrop display. “Funding for this excellent activity was shared between AESS and IEEE-USA,” Leonard said. “It is another example of the cooperation among IEEE organizational units that results in a quality IEEE product.” Leonard was so impressed with the display that he’s working to have it set up at the IEEE/AIAA Digital Avionics Systems Conference in Indianapolis, 12-16 October. The exhibit also included early radio equipment courtesy of Rockwell Collins of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and free copies of IEEE Aerospace & Electronics Systems magazine. Systems Editor-in-Chief Ron Schroer of Georgetown, Texas, stopped by the booth and spoke to attendees. He researched and wrote the July 2003 issue that highlighted the significant developments in electrical and electronics technology that contributed to avionics’ first 50 years. Avionics developments from 1950-2000 were previously featured in the Systems October 2000 jubilee issue.
Other symposium exhibitors included the Boeing Co., Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Rockwell Collins, General Electric, the Air Force Flight Test Center, Raytheon, the NASA Glenn Research Center and Honeywell, among others. "Inventing Flight: Dayton 2003" also featured the Vectren Dayton Air Show presented by Kroger at Dayton International Airport. North America’s three precision jet teams — the Canadian Forces Snowbirds, the U.S. Navy Blue Angels and the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds — highlighted the aerial spectacular. It was the first time the teams performed at the same venue. Fans also caught rare flight sightings of a U2 spy plane, B-2 bomber and F-117A stealth fighter. Links & Additional Reading
Chris McManes is Sr. Marketing Communications/Public Relations Coordinator at IEEE-USA in Washington, D.C.
[ IEEE-USA ] Last Updated: 01 August 2003 |
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