Santa Barbara, Calif. (November 27, 2023) — Established in 1953, the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) is an international organization of aviation enthusiasts. Since its inception, the EAA has grown internationally, with over 200,000 members and nearly 1,000 chapters globally. As a non-profit organization, the EAA is committed to growing aviation through participation and education, delivering educational offerings and activities that guide new participants and reducing barriers to participation.

To continue to provide unmatched educational opportunities, the EAA recently unveiled a new Education Center at their Oshkosh, Wisconsin headquarters. The two-story, 30,000-square-foot facility is designed to further develop aviation education and training. The $6.2 million project features an innovative Pilot Proficiency Center, a hands-on Youth Education Center and the EAA Conference Center. The Pilot Proficiency Center features a state-of-the-art skill-building and training center featuring flight simulators for general aviation pilots. The 15,000-square-foot Young Education Center provides youths, parents and teachers access to interactive and project-based activities that inspire and nurture the next generation of aviators. The corporate events space features small conference rooms and a larger events space that can be configured based on the size and requirements for private events. These mixed-use facilities allow individuals and groups to experience EAA’s resources everyday of the year.

Arrow AV Group, a family-owned provider and integrator of audiovisual presentation, assisted listening, theatrical lighting and control technologies, was selected to design the audiovisual system for EAA’s Education Center. For over 30 years, Arrow AV Group has provided consultation, design, engineering, installation, training and ongoing service. Arrow AV Group set out to design for both educational and entertainment spaces within the new facility. Arrow AV Group wanted to capitalize on system flexibility to enable EAA to utilize the Education Center for private corporate events. Most importantly, Arrow AV Group had to deliver a fully-functioning system in six months – ahead of the world’s largest airshow, AirVenture.

“The EAA came to us with a short-timeline request to outfit their new educational facility with a full state-of-the-art audio and video system,” said Shaun McClure, CTS, CQD, MTA, systems engineer for Arrow AV Group. “They wanted to showcase the new multi-use facility at their annual summer airshow in 2022. With members and guests worldwide attending, we kicked into overdrive to provide a high-quality and easy-to-use integrated system.”

McClure added, “Our initial design included all AV-over-IP components to ensure future compatibility and ease of infrastructure installation. After approval of the project, however, we learned that the manufacturer that we had designed the project with could not meet the project timelines. We reached out to our contacts at Visionary and they were able to help us redesign the system with available components without otherwise compromising our design.”

Visionary is committed to providing reliable, feature-rich, problem-solving solutions to support integrators, consultants, and end users. The company’s priority is servicing customers and building partnerships during a unique time in the professional AV industry. As a result, Visionary’s PacketAV Matrix Series continues to support the successful completion of near-term projects, like EAA’s Education Center.

Arrow AV Group integrated 21 PacketAV DuetE-2 Encoders and 21 PacketAV D4100 Decoders across all video displays at EAA’s Education Center. In the Youth Education Center, the PacketAV Matrix Series is distributing video to three Panasonic laser projectors, which enables presentations for large groups or three, smaller breakout rooms. Visionary’s PacketAV Matrix Series enables simplified video connectivity in two small conference rooms and a larger events space – all part of the EAA Conference Center. Notably, broadcasting and streaming of video is possible from any room in the new facility, including from the wind tunnel, to accommodate overflow viewing. The new functionality enables EAA to live stream the demonstrations and lessons to classrooms and learning environments throughout the country.

Accommodating tight deadlines and back-ordered equipment, Arrow AV Group was able to execute a functioning system in time for EAA’s biggest event of the year: AirVenture. “Visionary’s quick actions, along with our company’s ability to be nimble and change plans and direction quickly, allowed the project to come in on time and ‘Wow’ the customer and the general public attending the airshow,” explained McClure. “We’re glad to see that something we designed will be used to educate future generations in aeronautics.”

The PacketAV Matrix Series is a cinema-quality, ultra-low latency encoder and decoder solution designed to bypass the constraints of traditional matrix distribution systems. The PacketAV Matrix Series supports USB 2.0 over IP and can be deployed on any industry-standard IP network by harnessing the flexibility and scalability of converged IP networks. Utilizing existing network resources, the encoders and decoders can be rapidly deployed, enabling cost-effective distribution of multi-channel Dante/AES67 audio and video over IP. Find more information on the PacketAV Matrix Series here.

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About Visionary
Founded in 1995, Visionary (formerly Visionary Solutions, Inc.) manufactures audio and video over internet protocol (AV-over-IP) equipment that provides real-time transport of audio and video over IP networks. With SD, HD and 4K encoders that support the latest technology standards, such as Dante, H.264 and JPEG2000, Visionary’s modular solutions are recognized around the world for their outstanding value, performance, flexibility and quality. With a company-wide focus on customer satisfaction through collaboration and hands-on support, Visionary is a trusted partner for high-quality AV-over-IP solutions for enterprise, education, healthcare, government, professional AV, cable, broadband and broadcast applications.