School of Aeronautics

Well informed Man Power in the Field of Avionics
If we look back a decade or two, we will notice that avionics was just limited to a few black boxes for communication and navigation installed on aircraft. But with passage of time avionics in the field of aviation has undergone a tremendous change. Integrated Digital Avionics as it is, referred to, has blossomed into a third dimension for aerospace vehicles, first two being airframe and engines. Any new advancement in electronics has tempted the A/C designer to add a new dimension to this avionics package. As a result, the avionics of today encompasses the aircraft flight control (fly by wire) also engine control (fully automatic Digital Electronics control), the integrated flight and fire control, cockpit displays and even utilities management in addition to communication and integrated navigation. Multiple roles are also being carried out in a truly integrated manner through the use of common digital format for data. This enables avionic systems to share data from a bank of common sensors and data links has permitted additional redundancies in hardware resulting to higher reliability and higher flight safety. Thus multi role aircraft are available with more reliability due to increased role of electronics. This has led to increase in cost of maintenance and manufacture of A/C. We know that avionics of today share 40% of the cost of military A/C and almost 55% of airforce budget.

The major escalation in cost of present day A/C is due to more advanced and developed avionics. Because of advancement in electronics/Avionics we have multi role a/c these days. Even present day helicopter carry a more modern fire control radar and digital avionic flight management computers. Some of present day A/C have advanced auto pilots and common digital automatic flight control and ground proximity warning system (GPWS). The stress these days is vastly on avionics updates which improves performance. Head up display is a new growth area being used on light transport a/c (LTA). The market of avionic is on the increase both in military and civil sectors. The new trend of increased role for avionic is definite to result in increase share of avionics in the local market also.

The training and educational institutes are also updating their course coverage accordingly to deliver the trained manpower and handling and maintenance of developed avionic system in the field of aviation. To fulfill the need of trained manpower in the field of avionics the endeavour of this institute is to update the training programme to generate reasonable level of self sufficiency in the field of Avionics. Presently there are about 47 institutes approved by DGCA to train man power for acquiring AME licence, out of these only 7 are approved to train AMEs for avionic systems and ours happens to be the first institute in Delhi Region approved by DGCA for Avionic System.

Total number of students coming out from these 40 institutes which are training the students in the field of Airframe and Engines, are approximately 2400 per year, whereas number of students coming out with avionics training are only around 420 per year and so they are in great demand in the industry due to short supply and more development of avionics industry.

Suggested Procedure

On completion of the semester II (1 year’s completion) an AME student is advised to appear for the Basic Paper I of the AME Licence Examination conducted by the DGCA, New Delhi and at the end of two years for Paper II.

Similarly, on completion of the Semester V (2 ½ years’ completion), an AME student is advised to appear for the Paper III on Electrical System/Instrument System, for which the minimum age limit of 21 years to hold an AME Licence is not applicable.