Flight Recorder For The Little Guy

I've also witnessed a half-dozen accidents in 50 years of flying, and I can guarantee there's nothing attractive about the process. Contrary to some nonpilots' belief, flying is an inherently safe process, but if you spend a half century hanging around airports and attending air shows and air races, you're almost bound to see some unfortunate collisions between airplanes and ground.

I've lost several friends in unusual circumstances, and we'll never know what happened. Larry and Elaine were killed in 2002 when the tail of their V-tail Bonanza separated in Northern California. Though there were witnesses and Larry had installed the required tail beef-up kit, the NTSB was uncertain what caused the accident.

More recently, another friend crashed under less dramatic circumstances, and the cause of his accident is still partially a mystery. Bud flew a Pilatus PC-12 into the ground near the Butte, Mont., airport, and again, weather apparently wasn't a contributing factor. The coroner suggested he may have suffered some physical incapacitation. The details aren't important here, but the airplane wasn't equipped with any kind of flight recorder, so we may never know exactly what happened.

And therein lies the rub. Without any onboard device to record the events leading up to an accident, there's no way to know for sure what caused a crash.

Flight data recorders date back to the early 1940s, but the first major effort to make such devices mandatory in airliners was initiated by the British, a result of the series of de Havilland Comet crashes in the early 1950s. Those first systems recorded both flight parameters and cockpit voice conversations (CVRs). The units were film based, and the interiors of the containers were painted solid black to help preclude light leaks, thus the nickname "Black Boxes." (Today's black boxes are actually bright red or orange, so they'll be more visible in the debris field of an accident.)

All airliners are required to carry flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders that run on a loop, preserving all flight parameters and conversation for short periods of time, usually one to several hours.

By definition, flight data recorders are expensive, and for good reason. They must be built tough to withstand the often high G-loads of an aircraft crash and the possible postcrash fire. Additionally, they're technologically sophisticated in that they must record and preserve virtually every flight parameter, typically a minimum of 88 such indications on modern airliners to comply with ICAO requirements. Most FDR/CVR units are mounted in the aircraft's tail, where impact forces aren't as severe.

A dedicated flight recorder isn't something most general aviation pilots would buy voluntarily for their airplane, because by definition, its use might be most obvious after we're gone. The trick would be to find another, more economical and entertaining application for a flight recorder, one that might actually make the idea of recording the parameters of flight more attractive.

Small cigar cams with surprisingly good resolution have been de rigueur in television journalism for years. They gradually trickled down a while back to a variety of sports enthusiasts, from motor sports such as Formula 1, NASCAR, drag racers, off-roaders, motorcycles, snowmobiles and boaters, to helmet cams in skydiving, skateboarding, dog sledding and a hundred other pursuits. More recently, they've been modified to work as aircraft flight recorders. If only someone could come up with a dual-purpose device that would allow fun applications and the secondary function of data recording.

Fortunately, someone has done just that. Hal Shevers of Sporty's Pilot Shop in Batavia, Ohio, now offers a system called Nflightcam GPS, which may

be mounted practically anywhere inside an aircraft. In addition to the obvious benefit of providing a personal log of your trips, it can record all radio/intercom communications, GPS position (lat/long and altitude, as recorded by the camera's own sensor) and even instrument/radio indications if the camera is focused on the instrument panel. The standard lens is a wide angle that will record an image 135 degrees wide. Standard memory is one hour, but you can buy as much memory as you wish relatively cheaply.

Using anything from simple suction cups to one of the remarkably flexible RAM mounts, the system may be mounted virtually anywhere in the cabin---or even outside it, if that's your preference. You could mount it looking back from the panel at the pilot and copilot, or on top of the glare shield to record the pilot's view. You also could attach it to the aft cabin roof structure pointed forward to show the two front seats and some instrument indications. Some aerobatic pilots mount an Nflightcam on an outside strut, looking back at the cockpit.

The system is extremely portable, delivers 1080p resolution, weighs only about five ounces and has a laser-level feature to align with the aircraft's longitudinal axis. The intercom interconnect is silly simple. It plugs directly into the aircraft headset jack and records all tower and cockpit communication.

It's certainly not a flight recorder in the traditional sense---it's not hardened to withstand a crash or fire---but it allows you to bring home personal video of your trip, and some flight instructors even use the footage as a training aid for student pilots.

The Nflightcam GPS is a relatively painless method of recording your flight for posterity, a fun investment that could provide hours of entertainment long after the flight is complete.

I'm not advocating the government-mandate installation of such devices on general aviation aircraft. No one argues that transponders weren't a good idea when they were introduced as mandatory equipment for operation in certain congested airspace. Unfortunately, they're a little like mandatory TCAS and weather radar, a second engine and a full-airframe parachute---also good ideas, but more than the mission requires.

Let's hope a video camera in your airplane would never need to be used to help determine probable cause.