Scaled Analytics launches the FRED Editor for Windows. An application for editing FRED files.
What is FRED?
The Flight Recorder Electronic Documentation (FRED) specification is a standard for interpreting flight recorder data. To make sense of flight data you need two parts: The flight data itself, and a “data map” which describes how the data is stored.
For several decades, companies have written their own closed, proprietary data map formats which has made collaboration difficult between government organizations, airlines, and aircraft manufacturers.
Engineers at Transport Canada took the first steps towards establishing an open standard for storing flight data map information. Originally known as the Flight Recorder Configuration Standard (FRCS), it was formalized through ARINC working groups and was officially specified as ARINC 647.
Switching to an open XML-based format brings several benefits:
- File changes can easily be compared using standard text comparison tools.
- The FRED standard contains sections for customization such as mathematical functions and algorithms unique to your data encoding needs.
- Open standards promote improved collaboration between organizations.
Consulting Services
Scaled Analytics has significant experience in the use of flight data for investigating aircraft incidents and accidents.
FDR Readouts
Sky Analyst FDR can simplify the process for completing your annual Flight Data Recorder (FDR) readout serviceability checks.
Aircraft Maintenance
Sky Analyst AOG is a cloud-based flight data analysis system that allows maintenance personnel to troubleshoot aircraft issues.
Hi Keith,
Thanks for downloading and trying out the FRED Editor. Would you mind describing the problem you’re experiencing?
Could not find the main class: freditor.FREDITORMain. Program will exit. Java Virtual machine error code.
Fixed the Microsoft.net issue than I was getting the JVM error
Hi Keith,
I suspect you might be using an application called “FREDitor” (not associated with Scaled Analytics) which came out several years ago and is Java based.
One of the reasons for creating a new FRED Editor was to have a modern tool that doesn’t require Java.
Will have to double check this
thanks
I have the tool up and running. Is there any way to import files to get a baseline started in the tool vs. doing everything by hand
Most of the formats out there from our competitors use proprietary (often binary) formats which makes it challenging to bulk convert to an open standard like FRED.
Do you know the source (vendor) of the data you’re trying to import?
Actually I have a excel file I have filtered. I used with the old FRED tool. Is there a user manual or help file for thus tool
We haven’t released any formal documentation yet. We wanted to share it with the community before everything was finalized to gather feedback.
As for converting Excel to FRED, I’d suggest exporting the Excel file to CSV, then writing a script to convert the basic parameter conversions from CSV to FRED (XML).
The remaining header information can then be added manually through the FRED Editor without much effort.
If there’s enough interest we can look at creating a CSV (Excel) import capability built into the FRED Editor.
FRED Editor 1.0.0.9 is now available for download.
What about ARINC 767 FRED?
Hi Dmitriy,
We plan on supporting ARINC 767 (Boeing 787) by the end of the year. There hasn’t been a huge need for it compared to ARINC 717 so far.
Cheers,
Nick