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Billings-based Aerotronics keeps growing

While the Wright brothers flew by the seat of their pants, today’s private pilots can rely on a sophisticated marriage of global positioning systems and computers.

By DONNA HEALY
Of The Gazette Staff

One of the latest technological wrinkles, "synthetic vision," looks a bit like a video-game screen, but offers pilots rough, three-dimensional images of the terrain ahead while a marker outlines the plane’s flight path.

In the mid-1980s, global positioning systems triggered a revolution in navigation for general aviation pilots. The technological transformation has helped a Billings aviation electronics company grow from a two-person garage operation in the 1960s to a company with 24 employees and branches in Missoula and Redding, Calif.

Aerotronics, http://www.aerotronics.com/ which provides sales and service of aviation electronics, is typically among the top 10 companies in sales of aviation electronics from major equipment manufacturers.

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1651 Aviation Place

Billings Logan

International Airport

Billings, MT 59105

Phone: (406) 259-5006

Fax: (406) 252-4369

http://www.aerotronics.com/

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The company’s core avionics business involves improving navigation equipment on older, general aviation planes. The other half of the business involves creating new instrument panels for "experimental" aircraft, home-built planes made by amateurs from kits or plans.

"The aircraft we build our panels for are $60,000 to a million-dollar airplanes. People build million-dollar garage-built airplanes. They’re sophisticated, state-of-the-art airplanes," said Martin Elshire, the company president, who shares ownership of the business with Steve Vold and Gary Wirrell.

While the installation of each piece of equipment in general aviation planes must be approved by the Federal Aviation Administration, experimental-aircraft builders are free to use unapproved designs and equipment.

"In experimental, you don’t have to do it by the book," Elshire said.

Since Aerotronics branched into assembling experimental-aircraft instrument panels eight years ago, the company has become one of the largest builders of instrument panels for kit airplanes in the United States.

"We have raised the bar on quality in experimental planes," Elshire said.

To prove his point, he shows a photograph of a horrendous wiring job behind the instrument panel in one home-built plane – a riotous jumble of hundreds of wires.

"This looks like a bad hair day," Elshire said.

Aerotronics neatly bundles wires and supplies wiring diagrams and documentation to home plane builders. The company uses only aircraft-approved hardware and parts. Plug-and-play units allow home builders to more easily connect the instrument panel to wires running throughout the plane.

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Wright anniversary

The Billings Logan Airport invites aviation enthusiasts to gather at the airport to mark the 100th anniversary of the first sustained, controlled flights in a powered aircraft by Wilbur and Orville Wright.

Refreshments will be served at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the corridor in front of the airport’s new restaurant, between the ticketing areas and baggage claim.

Members of the Billings Flying Mustangs will answer questions about their model airplanes, which have been on display at the airport for the last year.

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Building each instrument panel takes between 100 and 300 hours. Costs range from $20,000 to $320,000, with the average cost running from $60,000 to $90,000. Aerotronics produces three to five instrument panels a month, with a six-month backlog on orders. Some customers put money down to reserve a time slot, before getting a final bid on the cost.

For most experimental builders, the plane is a hobby rather than a necessity, Elshire said.

"They’ve got ideas and thoughts they’ve had for years and years, and they’re building their toy," he said.

Aerotronics markets its instrument panels at seven air shows each year. The largest gathering, at Oshkosh, Wis., is the Experimental Aviation Association’s Air Venture.

On the general aviation side, technicians work on everything from tiny Piper Cubs to Citations. The company recently finished transforming a U.S. Forest Service spotter plane into a sophisticated aerial control center for battling forest fires. The plane directs movements of men and equipment on the ground, supervises fire-retardant drops and controls the congested air space around a fire. The spotter plane is also equipped to provide training.

Click here to see video of the first commercial airline flight into Billings.
Video courtesy of the Peter Yegen Jr. Yellowstone County Museum.

Ground-based fire control centers already tie together GPS systems with infrared thermal systems and weather mapping to "picture" a fire’s intensity with pinpoint accuracy. Elshire envisions the day when the Forest Service will have the same capability in the air.

While most of the company’s general aviation business lies within a 500-mile radius of Billings, nearly all of the instrument panels for experimental airplanes are shipped outside the state. Elshire, who is president of the Billings chapter of the Experimental Aircraft Association and finished building his own home-built plane, a GlaStar, in 2001, teaches classes on aviation electronics at EAA SportAir workshops across the country.

Aerotronics was founded by Dick VanLuchene in 1962. Elshire, who joined the company in 1967, and Wirrell, who came in 1982, both have military backgrounds. Vold, the general manager, joined the company in 1975.

http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2003/12/14/build/local/70-aerotronics.inc

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