Airborne Electronic Hardware Design Assurance

Randall Fulton has more than 36 years of electrical engineering experience in software and electronic hardware development and verification. He holds a BS from the Pennsylvania State University and earned his FAA DER credentials in software and programmable logic devices while working at Boeing Commercial Aircraft. As a DER, he has had approval authority for programmable logic devices since 1997 and has worked numerous Part 23 and Part 25 certification programs with field programmable gate arrays, ASIC, and software. Randall, along with Roy Vandermolen, taught the DO-254 practitioners course for RTCA in Washington, DC from 2006 to 2009. Randall has also taught the Airborne Electronic Hardware Job Functions class for the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City. He currently works as an FAA consultant DER through his company SoftwAir Assurance, Inc. Roy Vandermolen is an electronics design engineer with more than 35 years of experience ranging from vacuum tubes to programmable logic devices, but has spent the majority of that time designing and verifying programmable logic devices and the circuit cards that employ them. Roy holds a BS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is currently a staff engineer and certification manager for electronic flight control systems at Moog Aircraft and an airborne electronics hardware OBAR for Boeing Commercial Aircraft. Roy has worked in a variety of research laboratories, educational institutions, military R&D facilities, and commercial aircraft flight controls manufacturers. At Moog Aircraft, Roy has been involved in the design, verification, and certification of numerous Level A flight control systems. Roy, along with Randall Fulton, taught the DO-254 practitioners course for RTCA in Washington, DC from 2006 to 2009.

Introduction to RTCA/DO-254. Regulatory Background. Planning. Requirements. Validation. Philosophy 101—Design Assurance through Design Practice. Verification. Process Assurance. Configuration Management. Additional Considerations. Summary.