Promote your company to the global vertical aviation industry through the VAI Member Spotlight, a free benefit for VAI member companies. Want to be featured? If you’re not already enjoying the many benefits our members receive, join VAI today! VAI Member Spotlight: Rapid Imaging Solutions, Utah, USA Veteran-owned company provides design, manufacturing, and installation of imaging equipment for police, corporate, SAR, and ISR operators. By Jen Boyer Based in American Fork, Utah, Rapid Imaging Solutions provides engineering design, lean manufacturing, installation, and certification of major alterations for aerial law enforcement; search-and-rescue (SAR); airborne command and control; and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) operators. The US military veteran–owned company also provides ISR technical support and training. The Rapid Imaging Solutions team has more than two decades of aviation maintenance and alteration experience with a specialization in imaging solutions for collecting, managing, and disseminating video and georeferenced data. The team can also assist with airborne thermal imaging systems, tactical communications, microwave data links, and satellite uplinks, as well as augmented-reality systems integrated within an airborne network. Consulting and Engineering Rapid Imaging Solutions offers design consultation services designed to help operators select the ideal system for their missions. Working together with its partners and vendors, the company finds the best solution and manages integration with the operator’s existing technology. The company also provides engineering support for minor and major alterations to airframes under FAA Parts 23, 25, 27, and 29. Engineers from Rapid Imaging Solutions meet with operators to understand mission requirements and then develop a solution and bring it to fruition, from initial design to prototyping and testing. The team works throughout the engineering process to ensure that all designs adhere to FAA regulations, as well as meet to meet customer needs in structural design and analysis, electrical design, systems integration, and repair design and substantiation. The company can also meet European Union Aviation Safety (EASA) and other applicable civil aviation authority requirements. Rapid Imaging Solutions will come to you. The company provides installations and alterations, as well as ISR systems integration, on a variety of platforms at operator hangar facilities around the world. Training and Simulation Rapid Imaging Solutions provides a system-level integrated training package. The company has also partnered with several simulation and ISR training industry providers to provide a custom, realistic virtual training environment. Helicopter Support While many of its products are geared toward fixed-wing aircraft, Rapid Imaging Solutions offers its Payload Retraction System and its RapidIR-8 Pod for helicopter operators. The Payload Retraction System mounts and protects sensitive electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) imaging systems from foreign object debris and other environmental particulates when landing. It can support gimbal payloads up to 12 in. in diameter and up to 60 lb. The RapidIR-8 Pod, the company’s simplest and most cost-efficient ISR system, is designed to quickly clamp on, power up, and go. With modular architecture, the pod is customizable, offering options for an up-to-8-in. EO/IR sensor, radar, laser scanner, or other small system. Jen Boyer is a journalist and marketing communicator specializing in aviation. She holds commercial, instrument, flight instructor, and instrument instructor ratings in helicopters and a private rating in airplanes.
