ITC/USA 2011 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Seventh Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 24-27, 2011 / Bally's Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada / Nowadays, with the development of the electronics, a video camera can produce hi-resolution and hi-speed images with a very good sensitivity. A typical application is the execution of the Air Data System (ADS) Calibration Flight Test Campaign (FTC) using the Tower-Fly-By method, where the aircraft reference altitude is computed from video frames. To improve efficiency, safety and effectiveness for this FTC, the Flight Test Research Institute (IPEV) developed a near real-time video processing application to compute the aircraft altitude from 720i video frames at up to 400 fps. This development was executed as Master Science dissertation along with Itajubá State University (UNIFEI). Tests results demonstrated satisfactory performance for this tool compared to Ground Telemetry System (GTS) and Global Positioning System (GPS).

This thesis presents the calibration processes of the pitot-static system, which is a part of the air data system of a military transport aircraft through flight tests. Tower fly-by method is used for air data system calibration. Altitude error caused by the position of the static port on the aircraft is determined by analyzing the data collected during four sorties with different weight, flap and landing gear configurations. The same data has been used to determine the airspeed measurement error. It has been shown that both the altitude and airspeed errors are within the allowable limits specified by FAR 25. Same method is also used for trailing cone calibration that is used for high altitude test flights for RVSM certification.