Avionics News February 2012 - 55

The STC Experts In December, the VIH Aerospace shop buzzed with activity. Technicians outfitted a Sikorsky S-92 with a new search and rescue interior, performed a major 9,000-hour inspection on an S-61 and equipped another S-61 with new avionics. Of course, the company’s engineering work continued in tandem. With a background in avionics design and engineering, Arneson has been instrumental in leading the company toward more STC development. “We have a lot of pots in the fire,” said Arneson, who handles the dayto-day business operations of the company. “In addition to two major refurbishment and rewire projects underway, we’ve developed an NVIS lighting system for the Sikorsky S-92. I think it’s only the second STC for night vision equipment on the 92. We’re anticipating having STC approvals at the beginning of 2012. “We’re also developing an external fuel system for the Sikorsky S-92. We have vertical reference windows for doing long lining on the S-92 and search and rescue windows, as well as FLIR and Nightsun STCs for the S-92. We have a Sea-tray, or water dam, that we manufacture for Sikorsky on the S-92. As you can see, we have a fair bit of mission equipment for the S-92.” VIH Aerospace also brings additional capabilities to the Sikorsky S-61 with forward looking infrared, electronic flight instrument system, full instrument flight rules radio packages and an autohover automatic flight control system under development. “In 2002, we completed and certified for IFR the first non-OEM installation of the Kratos NEOAV

500-series EFIS system, installing it in the Sikorsky S-61,” Arneson said. Fast Growing During the last few years, VIH Aerospace has grown substantially, moving from a core business focused on small helicopters with five seats to working on aircraft with 20-to-30 seats. “When we were officially recog-

normally doing slowed down quite a bit. People were really watching their bottom line. We went from doing quite a variety of work to maintaining components and keeping our customers flying. “But, it seems to be picking up now. There’s a lot of drive with what’s gone on in Afghanistan. A lot of helicopters are going over there these days. We’ve been involved

VIH Aerospace completed an IFR avionics upgrade on a Sikorsky S-61, which included Garmin and Honeywell avionics, as well as a Rogerson Kratos EFIS system.

nized within the corporation in 2004, we probably had 15 people working here,” Arneson said. “We went through fairly rapid growth into large aircraft about four years ago. “The weak economy affected everybody to a certain point, including us. We found people were less enthusiastic about having more bells and whistles in their aircraft, so some of the modifications we were

helping our customers get theirs. Of course, we’re excited to continue working on STCs and bringing more capabilities and function to helicopters everywhere.” q
Editor’s Note: To learn more about VIH Aerospace, visit www.vih.com. If you have comments or questions about this article, send emails to avionicsnews@aea.net.
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Avionics News February 2012

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