By Jill Wojciechowski

Capt. Ray Kennedy and Capt. David Oliver have safely transported millions of commercial airline passengers to their final destinations for a combined total of more than seven decades.

Time and again, these veteran pilots have made the manual weather radar adjustments necessary during flight to help them determine when to maneuver away from thunderstorms and other inclement weather deemed potentially hazardous for those on board.

These decisions – oftentimes made during a busy phase of flight with only a two-man crew on board – were the result of years of experience and intensive radar training that was becoming increasingly expensive for airlines to afford.

The introduction of new, sophisticated airplanes at the turn of the 21st century also was prompting additional required pilot knowledge and workload.

"Manual weather radar was very work intensive," said Kennedy, a chief pilot for Taiwanese airline EVA Air. "If you know how to use it, you'll never have a problem. But, it demands a high level of operational skill."

It's no wonder that Kennedy and Oliver, a chief technical pilot for Australian-based Qantas Airways, were among the first to buy into Rockwell Collins' concept for a more standardized, automated tool introduced to the marketplace in 2000 as MultiScan™ weather radar.

"The (MultiScan) system was a quantum leap in technology and provided us with a new method for detecting and filtering the weather," said Oliver. "It had characteristics – such as look-ahead and over-flight protection – unlike anything we had seen in the past."

Listening to our customers

Soon after the concept for MultiScan was introduced at the Farnborough International Airshow in the summer of 2000, Rockwell Collins Principal Systems Engineers Dan Woodell and Roy Robertson ramped up their development quest. Their ultimate goal was to provide pilots with more complete information about weather hazard avoidance.

"Thunderstorms are oftentimes embedded in clouds, so you really can't see them," said Woodell, who is the mastermind behind what has since become one of our company's most notable products. "You could be flying into a cloud and not know what you're getting into. That's what we were trying to eliminate."

The Boeing Business Jet leased by Rockwell Collins for a series of flight tests around the world approaches the runway at Majuro International Airport in The Marshall Islands.
Photo courtesy of Roy Robertson, Cedar Rapids, Iowa

After working closely with several airline customers during the two-year course of development – identifying their problems and assessing their needs – and testing the radar during a trial flight over North America and the Gulf of Mexico, Woodell and Robertson stood proud as the product was released into service.

With several senior airline executives and celebrities on board, a brand new Qantas airliner outfitted with the MultiScan system set out on its maiden voyage from Seattle, Wash., across the Pacific Ocean and along the equator, to Sydney, Australia.

According to Robertson, that's where the real story begins.

"I'll never forget the day … it was Oct. 30, 2002," recalled Robertson. "Qantas was our first delivery customer and they loved our radar. But when this new airplane flew over the Pacific Ocean and into a line of thunderstorms, the radar didn't work."

As a result, Robertson caught the first possible flight from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to Sydney, where he entered a room of disgruntled airline customers. Like those who were looking to him for answers, Robertson had no idea what was going on.

"We were completely taken by surprise," said Robertson. "We expected (the radar) to work like gangbusters. We knew there were thunderstorms out there, but they couldn't see them when using the radar in automatic mode and none of us understood that."

Committed to providing our customers with the best possible product, Woodell soon joined Robertson in Australia, and the engineering duo spent time visiting with Australian meteorologists, looking for clues to explain what had happened.

That's where they learned about Ed Zipser, a research meteorologist and professor at the University of Utah, who had been studying the vertical buildup of thunderstorms all over the world using radar data from NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite.

"We read Dr. Zipser's research paper and that's when it all began to make sense," recalled Woodell. "We realized that storms don't behave the same way everywhere. Thunderstorms at cruise altitude over the United States versus thunderstorms at cruise altitude over the Pacific Ocean near the equator might have less radar returns by 200 to 1. That's a dramatic difference."

Developing our product

That knowledge started a nine-month period in which Woodell and Robertson, along with several of their weather radar team colleagues, began gathering information via our commercial airline customers, primarily Qantas, Eva Air, and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.

"We were using our customers to help us develop our product," explained Robertson. "Our company didn't have the capability to fly over the central Pacific and over the equator; we didn't have airplanes that could do that. So, we installed prototype units on commercial airliners and tried to evaluate fixes during delivery flights."

During the next four years, our engineers gathered a multitude of information that not only helped fine-tune the radar system for use in the United States, but also helped answer questions about how to achieve full functionality in today's global environment.

Although MultiScan had become extremely successful during this time, customers who flew international routes continued to request better solutions.

"We had reached a point where using our customers' airplanes simply wasn't good enough," said Robertson. "It was very difficult to do our evaluations in an airline environment, and the data we were collecting about weather characteristics in various regions was limited."

In September 2006, everything changed. During a Pilots Advisory Council meeting, several of those in attendance suggested our company lease its own long-haul airplane and fly in the respective environments. This would ultimately allow our engineers to gather critical data about how the automatic radar performs against thunderstorms in different regions.

Throughout the next three months, Woodell and Robertson worked extensively on a plan that would ultimately take them and their colleagues on a trip around the world.

A flying radar test bed

After determining a global route that would best help resolve the issues raised by our customers and deciding what equipment needed to be installed, Woodell and Robertson began searching for a suitable airplane.

Our company ultimately decided to lease a Boeing Business Jet (BBJ), and fly a series of global flight tests over the Pacific, Australia, Southeast Asia, Iceland, Europe, Africa, South America and the Caribbean, as well as the North and South Atlantic.

Ed Sevilla, a technician from Clay Lacy Aviation in Van Nuys, Calif., installs a weather radar antenna and pedestal on the Boeing Business Jet used by Rockwell Collins during a series of flight tests around the world.
Photo courtesy of Roy Robertson, Cedar Rapids, Iowa

It was an out-of-plan, multi-million dollar funding decision that Woodell and Robertson, along with Commercial Systems colleagues Steve Paramore, Keith Stover and Steve Brookshire, needed to address with senior leadership. And, in a corporate culture where out-of-budget costs are oftentimes frowned upon, Robertson admits he wasn't sure what type of an answer to expect.

"I was surprised when we were told to proceed," said Robertson. "When a company stands up and does the right thing … that really means a lot."

In early February 2007, our weather radar team boarded the Rockwell Collins Sabreliner for limited oceanic work off the coast of Seattle, Wash.

Later that month – after turning the BBJ into a flying radar test bed complete with a flight test equipment rack, a tail-mounted video and a nose-mounted WXR-2100 MultiScan radar – the group embarked on the second in a series of three global flight tests. This one began on Sunday, Feb. 18, and concluded 26 days later.

"We flew from southern California to the Marshall Islands, to Darwin, Australia, and then to other parts of the Asia-Pacific Region including Singapore and Taiwan," said Woodell. "We arrived prior to monsoon season so we saw several thunderstorms and we ran into Tropical Cyclone George."

The group also flew into Anchorage, Alaska, and searched for weather along the mountainous range between Anchorage and Juneau.

The final test of the MultiScan radar took place in June, when engineers spent a three-week period studying data collected over Iceland, Europe, Africa, South America and the Caribbean, as well as the North and South Atlantic.
"It took a tremendous team effort to pull this off," said Robertson. "From the moment we took off during that second flight test, we began gathering data that was never before possible. We knew right away that this was definitely the right thing to do."

Demonstrating vision, commitment

Members of the Rockwell Collins weather radar team pose for a photograph in Juneau, Alaska. Pictured (from left) are: Nathan Meyer, Dan Woodell, Flight Attendant Stephanie Hanson, Venkata Sishtla and Chuck Dickerson; (front) Greg Koenigs.
Photo courtesy of Roy Robertson, Cedar Rapids, Iowa

New algorithms developed on these flight tests will help our engineers perfect the geographic smarts the automatic radar needs to provide the best performance regardless of the region.

The improvements will be done by the time the first Boeing 787 enters service next year with the radar as standard equipment. Those same improvements also are being rolled into a new product that was announced in late September – RTA-4100 MultiScan™ weather radar for business jets.

"Rockwell Collins has demonstrated a clear vision and commitment to continually evolve and improve its weather radar product," said Capt. Oliver, who has been with Qantas for 27 years. "Their engineers have been receptive to user input, and have taken that input and designed a system that meets the requirements of operators around the world."

According to Kelly Ortberg, executive vice president and chief operating officer for Commercial Systems, his decision to allow this series of flight tests will undoubtedly result in a return on investment for our company. He also hopes it sends a message to the more than 19,000 people who work at Rockwell Collins.

"I hear a lot of our employees say that management isn't willing to spend money and nobody listens to us. Here's a case that's quite the opposite," said Ortberg. "We listened intently to our employees when they came to us with a problem that they didn't create, but were trying hard to resolve. In the end, we made quite a large investment and we did what needed to be done to ensure we have the best possible product performance."