ITC/USA 2010 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Sixth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 25-28, 2010 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / One of the most important characteristics of an aircraft is its capability to return to its stable trimmed flight state after the occurrence of a disturbance or gust without the pilot intervention. The evaluation of such behavior, known as the aircraft stability, is divided into three sections: Lateral; Directional; and Longitudinal stabilities. The determination of the stability of an experimental aircraft requires the execution of a Flight Test Campaign (FTC). For the stability FTC the test bed should be equipped with a complete Flight Test Instrumentation (FTI) System which is typically composed by: a Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) Data Acquisition System (DAS); A sensor set; An airborne transmitter; and A data recorder. In the real-time operations, live data received over the Telemetry Link, that are processed, distributed and displayed at the Ground Telemetry System (GTS) enhances the FTC safety level and efficiency. The due to the lack of reliability, recorded data is retrieved in the post mission operations to allow the execution of data reduction analysis. This process is time consuming because recorded data has to be downloaded, converted to Engineering Units (EU), sliced, filtered and processed. The reason for the usage of this less efficient process relies in the fact that the real-time Telemetry data is less reliable as compared to recorded data (i.e. noisier). The upcoming iNET technology could provide a very reliable Telemetry Link. Therefore the data reduction analysis can be executed with live telemetry data in quasi-real time after the receipt of all valid tests points. In this sense the Brazilian Flight Test Group (GEEV) along with EMBRAER and with the support of Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos (FINEP) started the development of several applications. This paper presents the design of a tool used in the Longitudinal Static Stability Flight Tests Campaign. The application receives the Telemetry data over either a TCP/IP or a SCRAMnet Network, performs data analysis and test point validation in real time and when all points are gathered it performs the data reduction analysis and automatically creates Hyper Terminal Markup Language (HTML) formatted tests reports. The tool evaluation was executed with the instruction flights for the 2009 Brazilian Flight Test School (CEV). The result shows an efficiency gain for the overall FTC.

ITC/USA 2009 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Fifth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 26-29, 2009 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / In an experimental flight test campaign, the usage of a real time Ground Telemetry System (GTS) provides mandatory support for three basic essential services: a) Safety storage of Flight Tests Instrumentation (FTI) data, in the occurrence of a critical aircraft failure; b) Monitoring of critical flight safety parameters to avoid the occurrence of accidents; and c) Monitoring of selected parameters that validates all tests points. At the operational side the test ranges typically works in two phases: a) In real time where the GTS crew performs test validation and test point selection with Telemetry data; and b) In post mission where the engineering crew performs data analysis and reduction with airborne recorded data. This process is time consuming because recorded data has to be downloaded, converted to Engineering Units (EU), sliced, filtered and processed. The main reason for the usage of this less efficient process relies in the fact that the real time Telemetry data is less reliable as compared to recorded data (i.e. it contains more noise and some dropouts). With the introduction of new technologies (i.e. i-NET) the telemetry link could be very reliable, so the GTS could perform data reduction analysis immediately after the receipt of all valid tests points, while the aircraft is still flying in a quasi-real time environment. To achieve this goal the Brazilian Flight Test Group (GEEV) along with EMBRAER and with the support of Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos (FINEP) started the development of a series of Decision Aid Tools that performs data reduction analysis into the GTS in quasi-real time. This paper presents the development and the evaluation of a tool used in Air Data System Calibration Flight Tests Campaign. The application receives the Telemetry data over either a TCP/IP or a SCRAMnet Network, performs data analysis and test point validation in real time and when all points are gathered it performs the data reduction analysis and automatically creates HTML formatted tests reports. The tool evaluation was carried out with the instruction flights for the 2009 Brazilian Flight Test School (CEV). The results present a great efficiency gain for the overall Flight Test Campaign.