Senior Project, recording equipment, and economic stimulus.

RAS,

I graduate with a degree in Aerospace Engineering in December. Ive
decided to entitle my senior project: "Flight Test Evaluation of a
Cherokee II Sailplane"

It makes perfect sense to me that the culmination of my education
should involve me flying my glider, and perhaps allowing me to improve
my flying (yea right). Mostly, I just want it to involve some
flying. I had a short chat with Dick Johnson at the SSA Convention
about his technique. He mentioned his stopwatch method that has
worked for years, but also said that on his most recent flights he has
taken a flight recorder with him and the results matched pretty well.

Id like to generate the drag polar for my glider. I talked to my
project advisor briefly and he had me check out http://www.eagletreesystems.com/
which makes data recorders for RC aircraft. The cool thing is that I
could get airspeed and altitude readouts for the entire flight, and
then find the polar from that.

President Bush will be mailing me a pretty nice economic stimulus
check at the end of the month. I plan to do my civic duty and spend
it. are there any igc approved loggers that i could use not only for
records/badges/OLC etc. but also that would give me the flight
information that I need to do my senior project?

You all are the experts on the logger stuff. Ive breezed over the
million post threads so it must be so. What do you recommend?

wrote:

Id like to generate the drag polar for my glider. I talked to my
project advisor briefly and he had me check out http://www.eagletreesystems.com/
which makes data recorders for RC aircraft. The cool thing is that I
could get airspeed and altitude readouts for the entire flight, and
then find the polar from that.


The data is easily available from almost any modern vario and GPS.
It would be wonderful if it were that simple. Unfortunately the air you
are flying through moves too.


--
Regards,

Adrian Jansen adrianjansen at internode dot on dot net
Design Engineer J & K Micro Systems
Microcomputer solutions for industrial control
Note reply address is invalid, convert address above to machine form.

On May 23, 6:50 pm, Adrian Jansen wrote:
wrote:
Id like to generate the drag polar for my glider. I talked to my
project advisor briefly and he had me check outhttp://www.eagletreesystems.com/
which makes data recorders for RC aircraft. The cool thing is that I
could get airspeed and altitude readouts for the entire flight, and
then find the polar from that.

The data is easily available from almost any modern vario and GPS.
It would be wonderful if it were that simple. Unfortunately the air you
are flying through moves too.

--
Regards,

Adrian Jansen adrianjansen at internode dot on dot net
Design Engineer J & K Micro Systems
Microcomputer solutions for industrial control
Note reply address is invalid, convert address above to machine form.

obviously the air moves. flights would have to be done just after
sunrise or near sunset when the air was the most calm. test would be
repeated to try to work out errors. so which loggers will provide the
data and fit the badge/record/OLC requirement for the best price?

On May 23, 6:05 pm, wrote:
repeated to try to work out errors. so which loggers will provide the
data and fit the badge/record/OLC requirement for the best price?

All this off the top of my head as I sit at work waiting for a test to
finish....

I've heard the 302 will spew a raw data stream from all sensors to the
serial port after one issues a magic command. The IGC file does not
include any of this info though.

I think the SN-10 is capable of adding airspeed info to the IGC file,
but it is not IGC certified FR.

Borgelt B50 can mix airspeed info into a FR's data stream for
consumption by PDA software.

It's possible that a manufacturer might provide you with a firmware
"upgrade" that you could use for data capture for your project, then
you could reinstall the official firmware for badge flying.

-Tom

wrote:

RAS,

I graduate with a degree in Aerospace Engineering in December. Ive
decided to entitle my senior project: "Flight Test Evaluation of a
Cherokee II Sailplane"

It makes perfect sense to me that the culmination of my education
should involve me flying my glider, and perhaps allowing me to improve
my flying (yea right). Mostly, I just want it to involve some
flying. I had a short chat with Dick Johnson at the SSA Convention
about his technique. He mentioned his stopwatch method that has
worked for years, but also said that on his most recent flights he has
taken a flight recorder with him and the results matched pretty well.

Id like to generate the drag polar for my glider. I talked to my
project advisor briefly and he had me check out http://www.eagletreesystems.com/
which makes data recorders for RC aircraft. The cool thing is that I
could get airspeed and altitude readouts for the entire flight, and
then find the polar from that.

President Bush will be mailing me a pretty nice economic stimulus
check at the end of the month. I plan to do my civic duty and spend
it. are there any igc approved loggers that i could use not only for
records/badges/OLC etc. but also that would give me the flight
information that I need to do my senior project?

You all are the experts on the logger stuff. Ive breezed over the
million post threads so it must be so. What do you recommend?

Well, you have a problem. First of all the only loger I know of that
will satisfy your desire to be nice to Bush and provide some relevant
information is Cambridge Instruments CAI302 All others are not US
made. Second of all they are designed to be IGC loggers so they do not
log things you want. You will need to combine logger and some NMEA
logging software. You can roll your own, or use GPS_LOG WinCE which
will provide a log of data you want, but not in IGC format (coma
delimited). Second problem is that you need to get a logger that
provides you with output of IAS. Cambridge CAI302 provides output of
true speed, but no temperature data (?). At best you will have to
altitude compensate TAS to IAS. Borgelt devices, some LX navigation
devices and I believe Westerboer 921 do provide IAS.

Hope that helps.
Henryk Birecki

On May 23, 6:29 pm, Henryk Birecki wrote:
wrote:
RAS,

I graduate with a degree in Aerospace Engineering in December. Ive
decided to entitle my senior project: "Flight Test Evaluation of a
Cherokee II Sailplane"

It makes perfect sense to me that the culmination of my education
should involve me flying my glider, and perhaps allowing me to improve
my flying (yea right). Mostly, I just want it to involve some
flying. I had a short chat with Dick Johnson at the SSA Convention
about his technique. He mentioned his stopwatch method that has
worked for years, but also said that on his most recent flights he has
taken a flight recorder with him and the results matched pretty well.

Id like to generate the drag polar for my glider. I talked to my
project advisor briefly and he had me check outhttp://www.eagletreesystems.com/
which makes data recorders for RC aircraft. The cool thing is that I
could get airspeed and altitude readouts for the entire flight, and
then find the polar from that.

President Bush will be mailing me a pretty nice economic stimulus
check at the end of the month. I plan to do my civic duty and spend
it. are there any igc approved loggers that i could use not only for
records/badges/OLC etc. but also that would give me the flight
information that I need to do my senior project?

You all are the experts on the logger stuff. Ive breezed over the
million post threads so it must be so. What do you recommend?

Well, you have a problem. First of all the only loger I know of that
will satisfy your desire to be nice to Bush and provide some relevant
information is Cambridge Instruments CAI302 All others are not US
made. Second of all they are designed to be IGC loggers so they do not
log things you want. You will need to combine logger and some NMEA
logging software. You can roll your own, or use GPS_LOG WinCE which
will provide a log of data you want, but not in IGC format (coma
delimited). Second problem is that you need to get a logger that
provides you with output of IAS. Cambridge CAI302 provides output of
true speed, but no temperature data (?). At best you will have to
altitude compensate TAS to IAS. Borgelt devices, some LX navigation
devices and I believe Westerboer 921 do provide IAS.

Hope that helps.
Henryk Birecki

As Tom says the C 302 can dump data in LOG mode, LOG 12 gives you
everything in raw format but you have to process/decode yourself. Data
rate is fixed at 1 sample per second. See the dataport guide at
http://www.cambridge-aero.com/300series.htm.

Darryl

Henryk Birecki wrote:
Cambridge CAI302 provides output of
true speed, but no temperature data (?).

The 302 will output outside air temperature.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA
* Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

* Updated! "Transponders in Sailplanes" http://tinyurl.com/y739x4
* New Jan '08 - sections on Mode S, TPAS, ADS-B, Flarm, more

* "A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation" at www.motorglider.org

Eric Greenwell wrote:

Henryk Birecki wrote:
Cambridge CAI302 provides output of
true speed, but no temperature data (?).

The 302 will output outside air temperature.

In a fashion. It outputs it as some raw number in LOG 12 mode, but
unless you know all the calibration data, this mode does not do much
good.

Henryk

Henryk Birecki wrote:
Eric Greenwell wrote:

Henryk Birecki wrote:
Cambridge CAI302 provides output of
true speed, but no temperature data (?).
The 302 will output outside air temperature.

In a fashion. It outputs it as some raw number in LOG 12 mode, but
unless you know all the calibration data, this mode does not do much
good.

Well, darn it, I was hoping for some easy way to display it on my PDA. I
can look at it on the 302 itself, but it's 10 button presses and 5 knob
clicks to get to it. A real nuisance.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA
* Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

* Updated! "Transponders in Sailplanes" http://tinyurl.com/y739x4
* New Jan '08 - sections on Mode S, TPAS, ADS-B, Flarm, more

* "A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation" at www.motorglider.org

Eric Greenwell wrote:
Henryk Birecki wrote:
Eric Greenwell wrote:

Henryk Birecki wrote:
Cambridge CAI302 provides output of
true speed, but no temperature data (?).
The 302 will output outside air temperature.

In a fashion. It outputs it as some raw number in LOG 12 mode, but
unless you know all the calibration data, this mode does not do much
good.

Well, darn it, I was hoping for some easy way to display it on my PDA. I
can look at it on the 302 itself, but it's 10 button presses and 5 knob
clicks to get to it. A real nuisance.

The other thing the 302 fails to output in normal operating mode is
indicated airspeed (it provides only true airspeed), which one would
definitely want for flight test evaluation purposes...

Marc