The Martin-Baker Aircraft Company Ltd (MBA) is pleased to announce the first Centre of Excellence (COE) award to the escape system maintenance facility of Marcos Bernasconi Associates S.A. (MBA S.A.), Argentina.
MBA S.A., a private company, has its offices in Buenos Aires and its maintenance facility at FAA Base Las Higueras Rio IV, in Rio Cuarto, near Cordoba. Since 1996, MBA S.A. has carried out overhaul and maintenance activities on over 600+ ejection seats, including the: J5D, RM4, BR8LC, JM6, APO6A, BR10LCX and AR10LM seat types. They support the Argentine Armed Forces and many other customers within the Latin American region with spares, tooling, training, test equipment calibration and technical assistance.
Martin-Baker’s vision of a COE organisation is a facility devoted to obtaining the highest standards of achievement in escape system maintenance, being focused on using best practices with regards to standards, methodologies, tools, supply chains and knowledge which are considered as typical approaches to maintenance.
Martin-Baker has a reputation for quality, reliability, service and value in providing its customers with an affordable high quality product in accordance with customer specification and requirements for Escape Systems. MBA also values these qualities in its representative organisations, such as MBA S.A. who carry out escape system maintenance on its behalf.
John and James Martin presenting the Centre of
Excellence plaque to Marcos Bernasconi and
Mabel Fernandez of MBA S.A. at the
Farnborough International Airshow 2010 |
Mick Cameron, Senior After sales Executive (left) with the
MBA S.A. maintenance team at Rio Cuarto, Argentina. |
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MARTIN-BAKER AND BREMONT ANNOUNCES A PARTNERSHIP TO BUILD THE ULTIMATE AVIATION WATCH
Martin-Baker and Bremont Watch Company have announced a partnership to design and build the ultimate aviation watch. The alliance will produce a unique aviation watch that will embody all that is meant by ‘Made in Britain’. The watch is on display on the Martin-Baker stand ( Hall 2B, Stand E93) here at Le Bourget, Paris.
As the inventor of the Ejection Seat and supplier to over 70% of the Western worlds’ air forces, Martin-Baker is at the pinnacle of British engineering. The new partnership combines Martin-Baker's knowledge of testing, materials and design with Bremont’s watchmaking skills. The goal is to challenge conventional mechanical watch design, by applying to it the standards which determine the integrity of a device that truly define ‘a matter of life and death’.
An Ejection Seat may sit for 40 years, but the day it is used, it has to work. As a Company, their testing facility is unique, and one of its facilities will endow the new watch with a trial found nowhere else: the ability to simulate 30 years of aircraft life through a vibration machine, during a 4-hour test. |
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A combined Bremont/Martin-Baker team has been formed to design and test the new watch, to be called the MB1. Although the movement will be assembled at Bremont’s atelier in Switzerland, all final assembly of the watches will take place in the UK. The MB1 will be Bremont’s first ‘Made in Britain’ wristwatch.
Exclusivity of the first edition of the Bremont MB1 is unparalleled in the watch industry: it will only be available for purchase to those who have been ejected using a Martin-Baker Ejection Seat. Martin-Baker seats have saved over 7283 lives to date; each watch will be engraved with the individual’s ejection number.
The second edition of the watch, Bremont MB2, will be available for sale alongside with the full range of Bremont watches, but – as with all Bremont timepieces – the annual production will be very limited.
Testing, which has been taking place over the last six months, includes live ejection seat launches. This is the first time that Martin-Baker has ever ejected a watch on one of their live launches.
The watches will be launched at a live ejection in Summer 2009. Further technical information and high-res images of the MB1 will follow at the end of Q3 2009.
Martin-Baker
With facilities spanning the globe, Martin-Baker has established an extensive range of unique, specialist engineering capabilities to support the task of ensuring that all martin-Baker products are of the highest quality and reliability and will always perform as designed – first time, every time.
Past and continued success have defined Martin-Baker as the number one choice for over 93 air forces throughout the world, with their Ejection Seats being fitted to over 80 aircraft types. Martin-Baker appreciates fully that this equipment may represent the crew member’s last chance to survive and that there can be no compromise. Every facet of the safety system must work perfectly to safeguard a precious life.
Furthermore, aircrew members must reach the ground uninjured, especially in a hostile environment, if they are to have the best possible chance of survival. With such an understanding at the core of their manufacturing, supported by 60 years of experience, dating back to the first live ejection test in 1946 and first life saved in 1949, it is no surprise that Martin-Baker is the only Company worldwide that can offer a fully-integrated escape system that satisfies the very latest in pilot operational capability and safety standards.
Only Martin-Baker has saved over 7,283 aircrew lives for more than 93 Air Forces.
Martin-Baker
Higher Denham
Near Uxbridge
Middlesex
UB9 5AJ
www.martin-baker.co.uk
info@martin-baker.co.uk
+44 1895 836658
Bremont
British watch brand Bremont was founded in 2007 by two brothers who were inspired by their late father’s aviation career and their joint lifetime love and passion for aviation and flying. In this spirit, they have introduced a range of masterful timepieces which embody the needs of genuine pilots.
Bremont watches are made using only the finest-quality Swiss components and are hand-assembled by Bremont’s team of skilled watchmakers in an atelier in Switzerland. They exude a specific character which no comparable timepiece can emulate, let alone match: an air of quintessential Britishness derived from the background of the brand's founders, Nick and Giles English.
All Bremont timepieces are tested above and beyond the demands placed upon conventional wristwatches. They are designed to be handed down from generation to generation, and to withstand the extreme conditions that explorers and pilots have put to the test. As a result, the stainless steel case of each Bremont watch is made to an exceptional hardness of 2000 vickers – nine times as durable as an average steel case.
Despite the company’s relative youth, Bremont had the honour of being awarded the Walpole Award for ‘Best Emerging British Luxury Brand’, at the 2008 Walpole Awards for British Excellence.
This Award recognises the considerable success that Bremont has achieved since its launch in July 2007. It took more than four years of research and development to bring the first series of Bremont watches from the drawing board to reality. During 2008, Bremont saw meteoric growth, launching the brand in over 25 of the best retailers across the UK, respected retailers including Harrods, Watches of Switzerland and Hamilton & Inches. Bremont also successfully launched their range of chronographs and time-only watches in the US.
Continuing this rapid growth, Bremont is now looking at expanding into Asia.
Bremont Watch Company
PO BOX 4741
Henley-on-Thames
Oxfordshire
RG9 9BZ
www.bremont.com
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April 2008 saw Martin-Baker reach another milestone in its illustrious history with the 1000th US16LA (JPATS) seat being manufactured in Denham. The JPATS programme was selected for the, then Raytheon, now Hawker Beechcraft T6A/B Texan II aircraft. Martin-Baker has produced on average approximately 10 seats per month since the first production seats were completed in December 1997. To date, 6 aircrew lives have been saved by US16LA seats. This seat marks the beginning of the light weight Mk16 era which has now developed in to many different variants.
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Martin-Baker recently received a $39.7 million firm-fixed-price contract for 172 Navy Aircrew Common Ejection Seats (NACES), including 70 for the US Navy's F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and E/A-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft; 20 for the US Navy's T-45 Goshawk trainers; 22 for the US Marine Corps' F/A-18A+ Hornets; and 60 for the Government of Canada who also flies F/A-18A+ Hornets. In addition, this contract provides for associated component parts and production support for the U.S. Navy production aircraft, and for the Government of Switzerland (F/A-18 C/Ds).
Work will be performed in Middlesex, England; Johnstown, PA; Northridge, CA; and Ronkonkoma, NY (5.5%), and is expected to be complete in December 2008. |
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On 15th December 2006, Martin-Baker celebrated a major milestone with the maiden flight of the F-35 Lightning II (AA-1).
The F-35 Lightning II is fitted with the US16E ejection seat, the latest of Martin-Baker’s Mk.16 range of ejection seats which will be common to all F-35 aircraft variants. This new ejection seat is the culmination of more than 50 years of escape systems experience and technological research.
Martin-Baker would like to congratulate the JSF Team and its many international partners and suppliers on this remarkable achievement. The entire Martin-Baker workforce is immensely proud to be able to have delivered this state-of-the-art technology for this prototype which will benefit the pilots of the 21st century.
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