93 Year-Old Inventor and Former NASA Langley Engineer Recognized for Developing Weather Hazard Advisory Technology for Private Pilots

Norman Crabill, a retired NASA Langley engineer, is well into his ninth decade but keeps busy with projects.

As an inventor and a part-time employee at V\u00edGYAN, an aerospace research firm in Hampton, Crabill, 93, offered details of his latest masterpiece -- the active ride improvement system.

It’s something that would help with turbulence by adding a device similar to a shock absorber.

“I need to be doing something,” he said.

Crabill, a member of the NACA and NASA Langley Research Center’s Hall of Honor, shared his idea Wednesday surrounded by friends, colleagues and family. They gathered to honor the nonagenarian for his other big invention -- the first pilot weather advisory system for general aviation use.

The tool gives pilots, right from cockpit, lifesaving technology with access to real-time satellite views of the skies and destination airport conditions to help when flying into thunderstorms or other hazardous weather.

After more than a decade of tests, input and development, Crabill and V\u00edGYAN, headed by Sudhir Mehrotra, sold the technology to be commercially produced. It has been on the market since 2002.

“This is not just about me, but it’s about the team, about 20 people on a team, and my appreciation with Sudhir at the top,” Crabill said, choking up a bit. "The reason this worked is that everyone wanted to make it work.”

Mehrotra has led V\u00edGYAN, located in the Langley Research and Development Business Park, for nearly 40 years.

Using a $1 million small business innovative research grant from NASA, the company spent an additional $1.4 million, Mehrotra said, to commercially develop the product that is available to private pilots, mainly owners of single engine planes.

The equipment includes an antenna mounted outside the airplane. Inside there is an electronics box in the cockpit, plus an instrument panel display or an iPad-like device, Richard White, a company spokesman, wrote in an email.

Crabill, who also launched his own consulting firm after leaving Langley, received the patent on his invention in 1993. Before the technology was available, pilots had to research the weather forecast before flying.

Commercial airliners had air traffic controllers to relay weather data to pilots, said Keith Hoffler, who helped V\u00edGYAN market the product. But pilots flying smaller air crafts and private jets really didn’t have anyone to alert them to an oncoming storm, he added.

Back in the 1980s, most single engine planes had multiple gauges in the cockpit to help navigate a fluffy cumulus cloud, for example, Crabill said. But there was nothing that offered weather information.

"You had to check (the weather) before you went and check as you went because things change. … You could call the ground station … and write it all down,” he said.

It also was difficult to hear sometimes.

"The (Federal Aviation Administration) had ground stations … and they would relay off a lot data and you are flying the airplane and you’re like, ‘well what are you saying?’” Crabill said. “You could fly in clouds … but it didn’t give you the weather.”

Drawn to the skies

In 1947, Crabill, an aeronautical engineering college student at Catholic University, received a lucky break to ride in a new type of helicopter \u2015 and it changed the course of his life.

Inspired when he was about to graduate and on the hunt for jobs, he went straight to NASA Langley, then called NACA, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. He was seeking work with helicopters.

“It was so exhilarating,” Crabill recalled. “This is what I wanted to do.”

There were no jobs available in helicopters there, but some six months later he was offered a job in Langley’s flight research division, he said.

Crabill spent nearly four decades at Langley and during his tenure he did extensive research to develop its storm hazards program.

His task was to research and design ways to predict, detect and create procedures involving operating aircraft in heavy precipitation, wind shear, turbulence and lightening, according to a biography about him on NASA’s website.

There was a plea from the National Transportation Safety Board, to many U.S. agencies, including NASA, to investigate and find a way to help prevent aircraft accidents like those in the 1970s, he wrote.

The request ultimately evolved into NASA’s program. But it was only after Crabill retired in 1986, a private pilot himself, and working as a consultant with the Federal Aviation Administration, he realized he had an opportunity to serve a real need.

Crabill was developing weather data systems using new Doppler radar technology. He suggested also making it available in all airplanes, to which he received a “no” from one FAA official, he wrote.

“That sparked my decision to leave that job, go back to Hampton and form Aero Space Consultants ... to develop the Pilot Weather Advisor, with encouragement from another FAA official,” he wrote.

Lisa Vernon Sparks, 757-247-4832, [email protected]

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