Our airplane has pretty much been broke all afternoon, and it is still broke. The captain’s side instruments are not getting the correct heading information and displaying flags saying it is unreliable. Maintenance replaced one of the AHRS, and still no luck yet. However, I did get an excellent picture of one of the AHRS.

Take note to the yellow sticker on it. I think I need to develop one of those and put it on my iPhone! What do you think?

Now what is an AHRS? I wikipediaed it! It gives a way better explanation on what it does than I ever could explain!

What is AHRS? (Taken from Wikipedia)

Attitude and Heading Reference Systems or better known as Attitude Heading Reference System (AHRS) are 3-axis sensors that provide heading, attitude and yaw information for aircraft. AHRS are designed to replace traditional mechanical gyroscopic flight instruments and provide superior reliability and accuracy.

AHRS consist of either solid-state or MEMS gyroscopes, accelerometers and magnetometers on all three axes. Some AHRS use GPS receivers to improve long-term stability of the gyroscopes. A Kalman filter is typically used to compute the solution from these multiple sources. AHRS differ from traditional inertial navigation systems by using magnetometer and/or GPS data to correct the raw gyroscopic data.

AHRS have proven themselves to be highly reliable and are in common use in commercial and business aircraft. Recent advances in MEMS manufacturing have brought the price of FAA certified AHRS down to below $15,000. AHRS are typically integrated into Electronic Flight Information Systems (EFIS), which are the central part of so-called glass cockpits. AHRS are often combined with air data computers to form an “air data, attitude and heading reference systems” (ADAHRS), which provide additional information such as airspeed, altitude and outside air temperature.