Abstract: A method of obstacle avoidance for a rotary wing aircraft includes detecting an obstacle proximate to the aircraft and commanding a servo to generate a force to an input control device in a direction that tends to preclude the aircraft from contacting the detected obstacle, the command having lesser authority than a pilot input command.

Abstract: A safety enhancement warning system includes an avoidance system which communicates with a multiple of geographical positional systems. A geographic algorithm of the avoidance system utilizes a recursive algorithmic to determine if the aircraft will enter a sensitive area. If the aircraft distance to a sensitive area decreases below a predefined minimum threshold, then an audible and/or visual warning is issued. For certain sensitive areas, aircraft RF emissions are silenced or reduced in power when the predetermined minimum threshold breaches the sensitive area. The use of the avoidance system enables usage of relatively inexpensive UWB radar for the proximity sensor suite to assure avoidance of interference with particular delicate instruments and thereby meet regulations such as those propagated by the FCC.

Abstract: A communication system with an antenna array having a respective antenna for each of a multitude of communication modules and a control system which seiectiyely reassigns communication over a first of said multitude of communication modules to a second communication module of said multitude of communication modules in response to identification of a predicted interference within a predetermined interference matrix.

Abstract: A safety enhancement warning system includes an avoidance system which communicates with a multiple of geographical positional systems. A geographic algorithm of the avoidance system utilizes a recursive algorithmic to determine if the aircraft will enter a sensitive area. If the aircraft distance to a sensitive area decreases below a predefined minimum threshold, then an audible and/or visual warning is issued. For certain sensitive areas, aircraft RF emissions are silenced or reduced in power when the predetermined minimum threshold breaches the sensitive area. The use of the avoidance system enables usage of relatively inexpensive UWB radar for the proximity sensor suite to assure avoidance of interference with particular delicate instruments and thereby meet regulations such as those propagated by the FCC.

Abstract: RF energy received by an antenna (10) of a radio direction finding system is evaluated for determining the presence of a RF signal transmission source at bearing values at which the received RF energy is statistically strong (33) and which have a relatively stable signal strength (35). The scanning pattern (sequence) ( 12, 15) of the antennae is altered to increase the dwell time of the antennae at bearings having a statistically strong and relatively stable signal strength combination, and decrease the percentage of time spent scanning the remainder of the 360 degree search spectrum. External sensors (30) are used to sense changes in antennae orientation with respect to a fixed reference to thereby reduce bearing errors (27) during changes in the attitude and heading of the platform carrying the radio direction finding system.