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Why should the airlines be the only ones to get all the new technology?

That’s what pilot Dan Schwinn asked himself after noting how little general aviation cockpits had advanced over the decades. Meanwhile, airlines were updating their jets with expensive displays.

Schwinn’s answer was to found Avidyne in 1994 with the goal of modernizing avionics for small aircrafts. The company later teamed with upstart aircraft manufacturer Cirrus to make a complete integrated Flat Panel Display avionics suite that set a new standard for general aviation aircraft of this class.

Today, the Lincoln, Mass.-based company employs about 65 people in Melbourne. Almost all of them are engineers working for the firm’s Communications, Navigation and Surveillance programs. In addition to working with Cirrus, Avidyne avionics go on Piper, Adam, Eclipse and other aircrafts.

“You have a lot of less experienced fliers who can immediately benefit in safety from intuitive, easy-to-use avionics,” said Gus Kyriakos, who heads the Brevard County operations for Avidyne.

The company takes the array of dials and indicators that confront the pilot in the cockpit and transforms them into a readable LCD display. With the touch of a button, pilots can check an instrument reading, view the terrain below, glance at a map with their route superimposed, and more. Each pilot has an individual display. Some aircrafts are equipped with a third in the center for even better situational awareness and functionality.

“User friendly is the theme,” Kyriakos said. The company’s goal is to make displays intuitive and easy to use, as well as highly integrated to offer more information without adding size or weight or complexity.

“You can make things so complicated that pilots make mistakes,” Kyriakos said. “If you only fly once every two weeks, you need to be able to get in and go without reading a manual to remember how everything works again.”

Avidyne’s displays incorporate the normal aircraft indicators typically used, as well as situational awareness displays that feature moving maps to show position and navigational route, terrain, weather and other airplanes in the area. The easily accessed information reduces mistakes and increases safety, Kyriakos said.

The timing was right to develop general aviation electronics. Technology had advanced and the costs had fallen. “We had to make it affordable and still reliable,” Kyriakos said. LCD technology eliminates many of the potential mechanical failures associated with dials and their moving parts.

While many industries took an economic hit after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, general aviation saw a surge. Individuals and corporations focused on the advantages of private planes over the security issues involved in commercial air travel. The market continues to grow.

Through June of this year, shipments of general aviation airplanes totaled 1,843 units, up 19 percent over the first half of 2005, according to the General Aviation Manufacturers Association. Billings rose by 35 percent to $8.8 billion, a record for the first half of any year, according to the association.

Business is growing locally for Avidyne. The company opened its Melbourne location in 2002 when the company expanded into radio communications, navigation electronics such as global positioning, and surveillance technology, such as transponders that let air traffic control track aircraft locations in the air.

Avidyne wanted to jump on the Federal Aviation Administration’s call to develop the next generation of communication radios for airplanes. Honeywell and Rockwell Collins make them for the large aircraft, and Avidyne won the contract for general aviation. The product is a digital software radio with the same performance, but in a smaller package, than the large radios – and, Kyriakos noted, Avidyne got a later start but delivered to the FAA before the big contractors.

The FAA has delayed deployment of this new technology to 2014.

The company is expanding into manufacturing locally for that and other contracts. It’s operating a 12,000-square-foot facility on West Drive in Melbourne and expects to add a second shift by January.

Meanwhile, the company is hiring in manufacturing and engineering areas.

For more information, please visit www.avidyne.com.