Vertical Power is ready to fly
by Bob Collins

(May 2007)- When Marc Ausman was building his RV-7, he realized there were some things about general aviation electronics that didn't make sense. Ausman, who calls himself a "small company kind of guy," had been involved in several start-up companies, enjoys working with computers, and has a pretty complete knowledge of aviation and technology, thanks to having a dad who flew 747s for PanAm, a mom, who was a flight attendant, and seven years in the Navy.

He had kept his eye on solid-state control systems, principally how they're used in home automation, the automotive industry, recreational vehicles (the kind with four wheels), yachts, and newer commercial aircraft, but knew that none of that had made its way to general aviation aircraft, let alone homebuilts like the RV.

So he, along with co-founders Jake Dostal and Kevin DeVries (learn more), invented it and the final product will be born within weeks.

When he was building his RV, "I probably went down the path everyone else does: Bob Nuckolls' book (AeroElectric Connection), " Ausman said in a phone interview from his Albuquerque headquarters this week. "It's a wonderful book and Bob has made a remarkable contribution to experimental aircraft. But when you compare (homebuilt electronic systems) to other areas, there's just better alternatives out there than fuses and circuit breakers. So we started knocking around how to make this technology to make it not only easier to wire the airplane, but also to enhance the pilot experience."

That "knocking around" has produced the signature product for Ausman's latest company, Vertical Power. The VP-200 is so revolutionary, some people who are clamoring to buy it (it's not available yet) don't even know what to call it.

"How do you answer the question 'What's that?' when somebody points at the VP200 on your panel?" asked John Hults, a Lancair owner on the Vertical Power Web site's forums section recently. "The Dynon D10A is an EFIS. The MVP-50 is an engine monitor. The VP200 is a .............? I've been trying to explain the VP200 to people and keep getting stuck on the 'but, what is it?' question.

"You've got to admit, it does WAY more than an engine monitor, or an electronic bus controller, or whatever! I've been calling it an Airframe Control System (ACS). Or perhaps an Electronic Airframe Control System (EACS)...pronounced "eeeks". Or the Integrated Airframe Control System (IACS)," Hults wrote.

"Around the office, we just call it 'the gizmo,'" Ausman jokes, saying he favors "intelligent control system."

The company's mailer goes further, "The VP-200 series gives you a full graphical interface to interpret and control all aspects of your electrical system. Features include a graphical engine monitor and real-time electrical system display, configurable emergency response system, manual and automatic electrical control, coded engine starter lock-out and, magneto control switch."

Oh.

Let me try. You know how your CFI beat you senseless with the words "fly the plane"? And you nodded your head and said, "Yeah, duh!" And you know how you read the articles in magazines about how people die in plane crashes doing stupid things like not flying the plane because they're distracted with something gone wrong? This thing, as near as I can tell, does all that fumbling that pilots kill themselves doing, and you fly the plane.

Now do you want one?

Let's take it from the top. As Marc said there are two elements of this system -- the new approach to how the electronics are installed in your RV, and the managing of those electronics while flying.

"We set out to just make it a lot easier to install the wiring and all the complexity is built into the system," Ausman says.

If you're like me, you've read all the electronics books for homebuilts and you're still wondering where to start. Vertical Power offers a prepackaged way to do this -- a preplanned load worksheet. "Plan out what your mission is, what you need to support that mission, what kind of electrical buss, load analysis etc. If you spend the time up front planning this out, you can save a lot of time and hassles," Ausman says.

"One of the first things we did is put the installation manual on the company's Web site. Even if you don't install the system, there's a lot of generic information in the manual that you can use." In fact, the Web site is one of the finest sites for electronics information for homebuilders I've seen. And last week a video was added showing the product in action.

Using the Vertical Power system, the homebuilder spends time up front figuring out what they want for electronics in the plane, determining how much current they draw, making sure the loads are correct, and "we put together the wiring harness and it's just a connector with lots of long wires. Lay them into your plane and then the electrical boxes are installed -- three boxes you have to install -- and then you go into the menus and configure it to the documents you put together earlier."

It's a five-step process to get people on track with their plane's electronics design. "We give you the process and you just walk down the process and you'll have a well-functioning aircraft with very advanced electrical features," he says.

At the heart of the system is "the red box," a control unit. Rather than lots of circuit breakers etc., wires are connected directly from the control unit to the avionics, lights, flap motors, trim motors, switches and contactors. A display unit is wired to the control unit, and a switch panel connects the control unit and mags.

"All the modules you had strewn about the aircraft are now in one box," says Ausman. In a typical set-up with Vertical Power -- let's use the pitch-trim system -- you would take a 5-conductor wire from Ray Allen (included) and you run the five wires back to the servo. "The colors match up, you hook the wires together and the servo is hooked up. You run a wire from your pitch-up switch and one wire from your pitch-down switch and that's your system. And then you go ahead and configure the system."

Set-up menus on the display system are used to configure your system. According to the mailer, "you tell it what devices you have, what the circuit break values are, and when each device should turn on or off. You configure the engine parameters, external switch inputs, and various behaviors (like whether or not to raise the flaps after engine start)." And any of these values can be changed at any time.

The goal with the system is the flying, of course. The Vertical Power system
require you to tie in one wire to a GPS and another into an engine monitor. "We use the GPS and engine data to determine one of 10 different modes the aircraft is in," according to Ausman. "Flying is a repetitive process. You're taught to do the same thing over and over again on every flight. That's why we have checklists. Even when you go out and play around, it's still generally the same pattern.

"Anything you can do to reduce pilot workload -- the Holy Grail -- is important. You fly into busy airspace or the weather is bad or something is wrong with the airplane, you need the help," he says.

After the engine starts, the unit determines you're in "after-start" mode. So it turns on the alternator field, and the avionics, and other electronics. Forward motion of your plane sends the unit into "taxi mode," and your primary engine instrument display changes to oil temperature and RPM. The unit knows you're doing your run-up and if you've configured the checklist to appear, it will. At takeoff, the landing lights and boost pump come on. At 60 knots, for example, the lights begin to wig-wag. In a retractable, the gear circuit is enabled. In cruise mode, the landing lights go off, the pitch trim sensitivity is reduced, and the boost pump goes off. At landing, the boost pump goes on , and the lights are in wig-wag. At shutdown, you pull the mixture and the avionics are turned off, the flaps come down, and the master is shut down at a time of your configuration.

And what are you doing when all of this is going on. Repeat after me: "flying the airplane."

"If you leave your switch in the left mag while trying to take off, it'll give you a visual and aural alert. I've taken off with a mag in the left position before, and I've forgotten to put the alternator field on, and I've left the master switch on when I've shut down. Usually it's because you get distracted: a plane is taxiing the other way or something is going on with the controller, or a friend comes over to your plane and you forget to turn the master switch off," Ausman says.

Where the system has the greatest potential may be in handling emergencies.

"It wasn't an initial design goal," Ausman says. "It came about because we wanted to have a really robust way to handle emergencies and not fiddle with soft keys and rotary knobs. There's a big red button that says "emergency." Just hit the red button and on the display it lists four different emergencies - alternator failure, engine fumes, engine fire and electrical fumes. With just two button pushes, you can handle an emergency."

If a primary alternator fails, the system begins load shedding, switches to a backup alternator, and brings up the alternator failure checklist.

And what are you doing all this time? Flying the airplane.

This system, of course, has worked well in commercial aircraft. There's another person in the seat next to you doing a lot of this. But, still, at first blush, it sounds almost Hal-like, as if the pilot is giving up "control" of something. It's all so… electronic. But, actually, Ausman says, the pilot has more control than in a traditional aircraft configuration because you can control each device individually, including several back-up methods.

"There are a lot of people scared of electrons. It's understandable. It took me longer to get comfortable with rivets than wiring," Ausman admits. "In the last five years, electronics in the aircraft are a lot more important than they were a few years ago. Used to be you had manual flaps, manual trim, the electrical system maybe powered some radios and that was it. Nowadays you 've got electric trim, flaps, engine monitors, PFD, AHRS, your six-pack, GPS moving map and, so, there's a whole lot of electro-whizzies that make things more complicated. Then you look at flap positioning systems, overvoltage and undervoltage alerts, runaway trim and flap protection circuits, backup controls and it gets to be pretty difficult pretty quickly."

And makes you wonder what happens if your little electronic first officer goes belly up.

"If your box fails, it depends on how it fails," Ausman says. "You've got a lot of single points of failure now. If one of your magneto fails, are you going flying? If your graphical engine monitor fails, are you going flying? Depending on the type of flight, if your com radio isn't working, are you going to go flying? There are a lot of things that can break to keep you from flying. The way our system is designed, we put a lot of effort into that concern. If any one of those three boxes fails, the other two will continue to operate. It's not like if the display unit fails, the whole unit shuts down. We designed flap/trim systems to be integral part of the control unit. The 'red box' is 40 or so individual circuits running in that box. If one of those fails, it doesn't mean the whole box is going to fail; you're going to lose that one function."

The most likely scenario is a failed processor. With this system, according to Ausman, if you reboot, it comes back online in the state it was in before you lost it. There are two override circuits in the system (see the manual online). "A builder can always wire directly from battery to a fuse to switch to an input switch; that will power two different circuits directly from the battery so no matter what happens to the box, you will have power to the instrument," he says.

Ausman had already started his RV-7 before this idea came to fruition. "While I was building the plane, I matured the idea. I was working fulltime elsewhere. Nights and weekends, I knocked the idea around. Then I decided to pursue this fulltime and quit the other job; that was right around the time I finished the RV. When I finished the RV and started flying it -- it was a conventional aircraft in term of the electrical system -- we initially built a proof of concept, cobbled together with off-the-shelf stuff to see how it would work, we really liked what we came up with, we put some formal requirements and started."

And that brings us to right now. The goal is to start shipping units in August, but beta testing is already underway. One of the testers, Alan Adamson of Atlanta, has recently started a blog to document his progress. His boxes arrived this week.

Which leads us to: how much? According to the company Web site, the VP-200 will retail for $6,495. A duo unit for just under $10,000. The wiring harness for the 200 will run you $795, but the company will rebate the cost if you order the harness by the end of July.

Ausman, and two of his team -- Jake Dostal and Kevin Devries -- will be at Oshkosh, setting up in Hangar B. They'll also be taking their turn at the RV Family Reunion BBQ, flipping burgers and answering questions at the same time.

Let's see a "gizmo" do that!

Related Link:
Download a podcast of our interview with Marc Ausman (right click to save)

Bob Collins is building an RV-7A, is online news editor of Minnesota Public Radio, and writes the Letters From Flyover Country column in the RV Builder's Hotline. You can follow his complete ineptitude on all things electrical, as well as other thoughts on RV building on a daily basis on his blog, Letters from Flyover Country. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.