aviast
Well-Known Member
Last week I read a blog about a guy who's started using Arduino, which I had known nothing about:
http://r-video-tutorial.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/displaying-spatial-sensor-data-from.html
Arduino seems to be a computer-board-based platform which allows you to make gadgets. Specifically, this guy says:
At around the same time as I read this blog I was on a flight testing course and we were talking about, among many other things, how expensive basic flight test equipment is. Really expensive.
As soon as I read the blog I immediately saw how this could be applied to make a low-cost package for flight testing homebuilt aircraft. I would envision a unit that is built by an EAA chapter (or SAAA in Australia) and can be borrowed by chapter members for testing their aircraft. The unit would have a Kiel probe out the front, alpha and beta sensors on the body, and a retractable trailing static cone. This could be used for calibrating the "ship set" instruments, if nothing else, but for myself I would want to run through a flight test regime and gather data for so that I could put together a flight manual.
I've been thinking about this sort of stuff over the past few months as I've been keeping a very close eye on the Thatcher CX5 flight testing. Two things were pointed out during testing: the altimeter needle is bouncing around like crazy because the static source is in a poor location, and the airspeed indicator had a different reading from a photo plane during a air-to-air photo shoot (they were trying to maintain 90mph but the photo plane complained that the CX5 was doing 97mph). So I think there may be a need for something like this.
Is this feasible? Would it be useful?
Or am I just dreaming?
http://r-video-tutorial.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/displaying-spatial-sensor-data-from.html
Arduino seems to be a computer-board-based platform which allows you to make gadgets. Specifically, this guy says:
At around the same time as I read this blog I was on a flight testing course and we were talking about, among many other things, how expensive basic flight test equipment is. Really expensive.
As soon as I read the blog I immediately saw how this could be applied to make a low-cost package for flight testing homebuilt aircraft. I would envision a unit that is built by an EAA chapter (or SAAA in Australia) and can be borrowed by chapter members for testing their aircraft. The unit would have a Kiel probe out the front, alpha and beta sensors on the body, and a retractable trailing static cone. This could be used for calibrating the "ship set" instruments, if nothing else, but for myself I would want to run through a flight test regime and gather data for so that I could put together a flight manual.
I've been thinking about this sort of stuff over the past few months as I've been keeping a very close eye on the Thatcher CX5 flight testing. Two things were pointed out during testing: the altimeter needle is bouncing around like crazy because the static source is in a poor location, and the airspeed indicator had a different reading from a photo plane during a air-to-air photo shoot (they were trying to maintain 90mph but the photo plane complained that the CX5 was doing 97mph). So I think there may be a need for something like this.
Is this feasible? Would it be useful?
Or am I just dreaming?
