PBS has been manufacturing Auxiliary Power Units (APU) Safir 5K / G MI for 18 years. This year, it has been 20 years since the beginning of manufacturing and in Octobe, a 1000th piece of this best-selling final product of PBS has been made.
PBS has been developing and manufacturing aircraft technology for over 50 years. These are turbine propulsion units, auxiliary power units (APU) and Environmental Control Systems (ECS) for various types of aircraft and helicopters. PBS is one of only 4 companies in the world that has development, manufacturing and maintenance certificate from European Agency EASA. Existing PBS APU configurations guarantee continuous operation for up to 6 hours and rank among the world leaders in the power category up to 100 kW. In total, almost 6,000 installations of PBS Auxiliary Power Units have already been implemented.
History of Safir
The beginnings of Safir 5K/G MI development date back to 1969, but afterwards, installation of a more powerful engine started being consider as well as the possibility of reconstruction of the air generator to the auxiliary power unit. Additions to the initial product were planned out and the official development of an auxiliary power unit labeled Safir 5M started in 1980. In 1977, company Czech company ‘Let Kunovice’ requested from PBS the development of an auxiliary power unit for the projected L 610 aircraft, which was supposed to fit 40 passengers. Due to technical requirements, changes had to be made to the previous version of Sapfir 5M, and so the development of APU Safir 5K began. A total of 25 units were manufactured, out of which 12 were prototypes for certification and flight tests. The Safir 5K unit received permission from the State Aviation Inspection to use the product for civil aviation in June 1994.
The development of the L 610, however, was not completed by certification and the aircraft unfortunately did not get into mass production. These problems were to be solved by version L 610G, which required the modification of the APU Safir 5 K. That is why in 1999, a new variant of the APU Safir 5 K/G was created, and afterward successfully certified. However, L 610G was also not certified and there was no serial production due to problems with project financing. This created APU, which excelled in great features, but unfortunately had no application yet. All of this led to the production of 1000th piece of APU Safir 5K/G MI, in October 2019.
PBS invests long-term in the development of modernization of its products. As a result, for example, the Safir 5K / G MI can continually increase the overhaul intervals and thus increase its competitiveness.
Advantages of PBS auxiliary power units:
- more than 50 years of experience in aviation and defense
- nearly 6.000 APUs delivered
- proven in demanding climatic and environmental conditions
- top fatures, compact dimensions
- flexibility in development according to customer requirements
- own development, production and testing of APU
- certification by EASA and other global certification authorities
- delivery of complex solutions, e.g. APU + ECS