The magazine contains a detailed article by Debra Werner about No Fault Found entitled "A maddening, costly problem" and starts with a case study of a Flybe Q400 aircraft incident in 2012 that resulted from an NFF and intermittent fault chain of events.  

"Maintenance personnel routinely pull suspicious parts from aircraft, only to discover that they test just fine in the lab. Air crews and managers are left to scratch their collective heads about the true origins of what looked like a part failure in mid-flight. Instances of no fault found are wasteful and potentially dangerous, which is why the industry has grown more serious about addressing the problem." 

Intermittent Fault Emulators delivered to NCMS

Published 08 Sep 2014

Following an intensive 6-month development programme, Copernicus Technology Ltd (CTL) is pleased to announce we have successfully delivered Intermittent Fault Emulators (IFE) to the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS) in the USA. 

CTL visited NCMS and United States Department of Defense (US DoD) staff at Naval Air Station Lakehurst, New Jersey in late August (pictured) to deliver the IFE operator training course.  

NCMS has procured IFEs from CTL for the US Navy and the US Air Force, and the US DoD will be using the IFEs to validate No Fault Found test equipment with intermittent fault detection capability.  The US DoD’s focus on intermittent faults is being driven by a joint services working group, the JITWIPT, whose charter begins with the following statement:

"The impact across the Department of Defense resulting from the removal and replacement of Line Replaceable Units/Weapon Replaceable Assemblies which subsequently test No Fault Found during depot testing and are turned right around back to the field, is $2 billion annually."    [JITWIPT Charter, Feb 2012]

As part of their work to tackle No Fault Found the US DoD is compiling a Military performance standard (MIL-PRF-32516) which testers used for intermittent fault detection purposes will need to meet.  In due course the IFEs will be used to evaluate testers against that performance document. 

CTL’s original design for a 128 channel intermittent fault simulation system provided the starting point for development of the NCMS-specification IFE.  The IFE was then successfully verified, independently, by the No Fault Found research project team from the Cranfield University-based EPSRC Through-life Engineering Services research centre.  The resulting IFE features 256 test channels on which it can generate combinations of random or user-defined ohmic variations as simulated individual or burst ‘faults’ on any test channel, and with ‘fault’ durations from nanoseconds to milli-seconds. 

Overall the customer was delighted with the performance and user-friendliness of the IFE and the team at NCMS are now planning which test equipment types will be evaluated using the IFEs.  This NCMS/USDOD-specification of IFE is available to purchase from CTL, and customer-specification IFEs can also be designed and built to order. 

Follow this link to download a technical summary of the IFE

Contact us today  for further details, call us on 01343 842406 or email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

About NCMS

Copernicus Technology is a member of NCMS, which is a non-profit, member-based consortium.  NCMS’ main objective is to drive the global competitiveness of North American Manufacturers through collaboration, innovation and advanced technologies.

Copernicus Technology Ltd (CTL) is playing their part in this exciting relationship, because DIT-MCO International now supplies the portable Intermittent Fault Detection (IFD) ‘Voyager’ test set as jointly developed by CTL and USC.  Now available as the DIT-MCO Voyager™ (pictured right), orders are being taken with immediate effect and in June the DIT-MCO sales team completed their familiarisation training (pictured below right) with the attentive support of the USC team.

Rick Thompson, DIT-MCO International, President and CEO said “Together, DIT-MCO and Universal Synaptics will provide an unbeatable combination of advanced diagnostic capability to the wiring test and diagnostics community. DIT-MCO’s long history of delivering proven effective and unique solutions to tough wiring maintenance challenges continues and our partnership with Universal Synaptics further demonstrates our commitment to our customers’ needs and diagnostic requirements”.

CTL supply the same IFD test capability to the EU, Australia and NZ markets in the form of the Ncompass-Voyager™.   To find out more about how this test technology saves millions of dollars, reduces testing time by 75% and keeps LRUs on-wing for 300% longer visit the Ncompass-Voyager™ product page or download the leaflet and technical specification.

Published 16 Jun 2014

Roo Hornby, 49, the recently appointed Business Development Director at Copernicus Technology Ltd (CTL), received a major accolade in London last month.  He was awarded the status of Master Air Navigator, having been nominated for the award by his supervisors shortly before he left the RAF in 2012.  

The award is an honour to a pilot or navigator (civil or military) in recognition of long service and consistently high standards in the profession: it is only awarded to those aviators who have displayed those skills and character which have brought honour and respect to the profession over a number of years. 

The award ceremony, hosted at the prestigious Mansion House in London, was held by the Honourable Company of Air Pilots & Air Navigators (formerly the Guild of Air Pilots and Navigators) and was followed by a dinner in the company of HRH the Duke of Edinburgh.  Roo is pictured above receiving his award from the Master of the Honourable Company, Diane Saul-Pooley LLB(Hons) FRAeS.  

Roo’s 30 year RAF career was mainly forged in the Moray region of Northern Scotland on Maritime Patrol Aircraft (MPA).  His RAF career highlights included the unique distinction of achieving aircraft captaincy as a navigator on two separate aircraft - the Shackleton and Nimrod - by the age of 30; as well as holding numerous training and supervision roles culminating in being responsible for Standards and Quality Assurance across all Nimrod MPA aircrew at RAF Kinloss.  He was extensively involved in numerous operations around the UK and in the Mediterranean, Balkans, Middle East and Caribbean.  

Roo, who lives in Lossiemouth, joined CTL in January 2013 to establish its Maritime Patrol Aircraft training and consultancy division.  While building that client base he has become fully involved in Business Development across the reliability and maintenance activities of CTL, who specialise in cutting-edge fault finding test equipment and repair data analysis solutions in Aerospace and other technology industries.  

Following his successful start in these roles Roo was then appointed as CTL’s Business Development Director in April this year.  Speaking about his appointment, Managing Director Giles Huby said “We are genuinely delighted to welcome Roo to the CTL Board.  He brings a fresh perspective and a wealth of experience from multi-disciplinary aviation activities from around the globe and these are valuable skills for him to apply in support of growing the company.  Not only that, I’d like to offer him our congratulations on behalf of the whole team following his well-deserved recognition by the Honourable Company of Air Pilots & Air Navigators.  The Master Air Navigator accolade is not awarded lightly so this is a clear indication of precisely the calibre of professional that Roo is.  I’m glad he’s on our team!”.

Find out more: CTL provide specialist training and consultancy support solutions in Maritime Patrol Aircraft (MPA) & Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance (ISR) operations and support.  Contact us to find out what we can offer: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.