Pilot Evaluation of TCAS in the Long Ranger Helicopter

This document is disseminated under the sponsorship of the Department of Transportation in the interest of information exchange. The United States Government assumes no liability for its contents or use thereof. A specially modified version of the Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) was installed in a Bell Long Ranger helicopter in order to investigate the feasibility of TCAS operation in rotorcraft. This installation employed TCAS air-to-air surveillance to provide automated traffic advisories that were displayed in the cockpit on a color cathode ray tube display. As part of this study, 12 subject pilots evaluated the utility of the installation through brief test flights in the vicinity of a major airport. Among the topics investigated were the rate of alarms, the computer logic for issuing advisories, the bearing accuracy, and the display symbology. Several recommendations for adapting TCAS to the rotorcraft environment resulted from the testing.