Project summary

The École nationale d'aérotechnique (ÉNA) and the Centre technologique en aérospatiale (CTA) have been accredited by Transport Canada as an Approved Maintenance Organization (AMO), enabling CTA aircraft maintenance technicians to carry out maintenance and modifications on the CTA Piper Chieftain.

The drafting of the documents required to obtain this accreditation - notably the maintenance policy manual, the internal procedures manual, the associated forms and the quality assurance manual - was mainly carried out by CTA, in close collaboration with ÉNA's quality assurance department.

Thanks to its status as an Approved Maintenance Organization (AMO) by Transport Canada, CTA is authorized to carry out maintenance and modifications on its flight test aircraft. Our projects have included equipping our Piper Chieftain with a Garmin G600 TXi avionics suite, and obtaining three Supplemental Type Certificates (STCs) for this aircraft:

• STC no. Q-LSA19-027/D: Design of a support for the installation of a larger alternator on the right-hand engine.
• STC no. O-LSA25-010/D : Integration of a ground data acquisition and transmission system via LTE.
• STC no. O-LSA20-133/D: Installation of an electrical distribution system dedicated to flight test equipment.

In addition, thanks to a $2 million grant from the Canada Foundation for Innovation's College Fund and the Ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur, the Centre technologique en aérospatiale (CTA) is modifying its Piper Chieftain flight test aircraft to make it remotely operable. The aim of this ambitious project is to transform the aircraft into a genuine test platform for the aircraft systems of the future.

One of the main objectives is to enable remote control of the Piper Chieftain's autopilot. A direct link between a computer and the autopilot has already been established via the aeronautical communication protocols RS-232 and ARINC429, enabling precise in-flight instructions to be sent, as well as real-time information on the aircraft's status to be received. This communication is part of a complex technical architecture, in which the autopilot continuously exchanges data with the GDU-1060 (Garmin Display Unit) and GCU-485 (Garmin Control Unit), enabling remote control of the aircraft.

Gallery