Avionics News September 2016 - 25

Photos courtesy of EAA

This three-part synergy came together because the
FAA was interested in pursuing a more focused approach
to improving safety and affordability, the EAA had the
motivation and STC experience, and Dynon, with its
decades of performance data in the experimental market,
was the perfect pathfinder to prove the efficacy of the
new avenue to an STC.
Elliott emphasized that, "EAA is the facilitator. We're
not picking winners or losers; we're finding low-cost
options for our members and partnering with as many
companies as we can to achieve that." The organization
founded a fully-supported subsidiary, EAA STC LLC,
which offers the inaugural Accessible Safety STC to
EAA members for $100.
There are more to come, according to Elliott. Acknowledging that the EAA is working with a number of companies on similar efforts, Elliott smiled and shook his
head when asked to name a few. "A lot of companies
have shown interest," he said. "Some have a pedigree
similar to Dynon, and others don't. EAA wanted to
develop the educational process to help those companies that don't. For right now, avionics is the focus,
but that's not the be all and end all."
The D10A STC "appears to be an overnight success," said Robert Hamilton, Dynon president. "But
we've been working with the FAA for years on a
variety of projects, including a TSO, as well as membership on the Part 23 Advisory Rulemaking Committee and an ASTM group."
Dynon was looking at different ways to attain certification for some of its products, Hamilton noted.
"We ran into the typical hurdles. Even the FAA was
frustrated with its own systems (until we) worked
out a plan with EAA and FAA where we met all the
intent of the regs by approaching them differently."
The most challenging of them all was DO-178,
Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and
Equipment Certification, according to Ian Jordan,
Dynon's chief systems architect. Technically, it provides
the guidelines dealing with the reliability of safetycritical aviation software, but many see it as the de facto
standard because it provides the path of least resistance
to software certification. "It is a relatively prescriptive process that, as anyone who's dealt with it knows,
involves a lot of overhead costs," Jordan said.
In the process of developing products for the experimental market for the past 15 years, Dynon has devel-

oped and refined its own software test processes. "We've
shown the world that they work by fielding a variety of
projects made that way," Jordan added.
Working ASTM, about 18 months ago, Dynon and
other industry partners developed a different method of
software verification. It satisfies the same FAA safety
and reliability requirements as DO-178, but it takes an
alternative path with lower overhead costs, according to
Jordan. The resulting specification, ASTM 3153-15, is
the method Dynon used for the EFIS-D10A software for
the EAA STC.
Certification rules require an acceptable method of
showing compliance, they do not proscribe it, Jordan
noted. "The FAA is open to other standards, especially
other industry standards because it means multiple smart
companies have agreed that it's reasonable. We proposed

A maintenance technician installs the Dynon EFIS-D10A in the panel of the
EAA Employee Flying Club's Cessna 172, the STC's test bed aircraft.

(the ASTM standard), and the FAA was open to it, partially because Dynon has a history of using it, and now
we have that standard available."
Jordan emphasized that the D10A is not a new product
and does not run on software developed specifically for
the STC. In more than a decade of service, the experimental market has well proven its reliability, and the
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september

2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Avionics News September 2016