Clamar IQ™ Increases Flight Safety by Helping Pilots Avoid Common Amphibious Landing Pitfalls
Clamar Floats today announced the Clamar IQ System™, a family of electronics designed to increase the safety of amphibious seaplane operations by assisting pilots during critical phases of flight when distractions can have disastrous consequences. The current release helps pilots avoid the two most common landing mistakes; improper gear position and improper landing techniques over glassy water. The IQ System™ provides aural, visual and tactile feedback to the pilot during these operations to ensure gear is in the proper position for the intended landing and announcing height above the landing surface during final approach. These systems are tightly integrated into Clamar’s family of composite floats and extend the company’s position as the leader in high performance floats for the experimental aircraft market.
The Landing IQ System™ is a radar altimeter embedded into the float which measures the height above the landing surface (water or land) beginning at 30’ AGL and continuing to 1’ and announced aurally through the pilot’s headset. The audio connection can be direct or routed through the ship’s audio panel based on installation preferences. The automatic system requires no input from the pilot allowing undistracted attention to these challenging landings and significantly reduces the likelihood of “flying into” or “stalling onto” the water. Increased situation awareness reduces landing distances which provides additional margins of safety. The system is available throughout the Clamar product family and only requires an audio connection.
The Gear IQ System™ is a gear selection, actuation and annunciation system which reduces the possibility of incorrect gear position during water or runway landings by prompting the pilot to select the intended landing type when the aircraft is placed into a landing configuration. The landing configuration is determined by a selectable airspeed setting and optional flap position monitor.
Once the landing configuration is detected the pilot is prompted visually and aurally to select a water or runway landing by pressing an illuminated pushbutton on the panel mounted instrument. The tactile selection step reduces the “expected response” errors which can result from distractions during familiar operations. The Gear IQ System™ integrates gear actuation, indication and annunciation into one standard 3” panel mounted instrument.
“The Clamar name has been synonymous with quality and innovation for decades” states Paul Richards. President of Clamar Floats. “High performance composites, thermally molded foam cores, vacuum infusion and electric gear actuation are a few of the innovations we’ve invested in to increase value for our customers, but what is more valuable than safety? We feel an obligation to provide not only the highest quality, but the safest floats in the industry and the Clamar IQ system is a huge step forward. The Gear IQ and Landing IQ address the two most critical challenges in amphibious operational safety and we wanted to address these first….but there will be more to come in the Clamar IQ™ family so stay tuned.”
The Clamar IQ System™ is available now for delivery on new float packages and will be made available as a retrofit on existing installations beginning Q3 2019. The system will be on display at Booth N091 at Sun and Fun 2019.
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