Further Details

The Oxley survivolite helicopter emergency egress lighting system is designed for use on military and civilian helicopters to provide visual guidance to an escape hatch from any location inside the fuselage of a crashed or ditched aircraft.

The Oxley system typically comprises of the following components and configuration is amended to suit individual aircraft requirements:

• Control Unit - one per exit
• Inertia switch - one per Aircraft
• Water Switch - two per Aircraft, high and low locations
• LED Lighting Pods - 5-12 pods per exit

The system integrates with 2 x aircraft generator signals and a cockpit mounted select switch. Escape hatches are often on aircraft doors, where aircraft power is unavailable; this is a complete self-powered system. It has a number of triggers which illuminate a set of high intensity LED pod lights, designed to penetrate the most adverse conditions of turbid water and dense smoke. The high intensity point-sources minimise absorption and scatter and maximise optical penetration. Water rushing into an aircraft cabin carries escaping hydraulic fluid, oil, fuel and accumulated grime which adds to the attenuation through sea water alone and may then appear very black and optically dense. Refraction of light and the myopic effect on the human eye caused by the water pressure places serious requirements on the design of the emergency egress lighting system that only high brightness LEDs will satisfy.