________________________________________________ Appendix C-Flight Test Data
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The Flight Test Department at AGUSTA has the task among others to prepare, perform and analyse flight tests for the development and certification of all AGUSTA helicopters.
Every time a new model is going to be certified, a series of flight tests are necessary to be performed. All different kinds of configurations (kits) at all kinds of flight conditions needs to be tested and evaluated. The scope is to achieve the final certification from the competent authorities, who certify the reliability and the flight security of the new helicopter model. A great number of flights are necessary to allow the engineers to have an overview of the flight behaviours. The flight tests are usually divided in six main categories as follows:
• Performance
• Handling qualities
• Load survey/vibrations
• Engines installation
• Avionics systems
• Cooling margins
Usually, a flight test is conducted with at least two persons, the pilot and the flight test engineer (FTE). While the pilot is performing the manoeuvres at the specific conditions, that has been requested in advance by the engineer, the FTE fill in a certain flight test form of the requested tasks for that particular flight. Every type of flight test is divided in steps and are recorded, called TOP. For every TOP the engineer has to take notes of a series of data such as temperature, height above ground and other more detailed data specific for the manoeuvre. This form is used as a reference system for the latter electronic analysis made with PANDA.
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________________________________________________ Appendix C-Flight Test Data
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The AGUSTA company use an in-house electronic acquisition system of all the flight data.
All flight data are recorded and stored in a database accessible subsequently for later analysis. Access to this database was necessary during this project to be able to do comparisons between the true flight data and the simulated results. Thanks to the PANDA program, which permitted at all times access to the database and the possibility to store data in ASCII files this comparison was possible, see subsequent figures. Panda is a very easy program to learn to know and to use. By searching firstly on the helicopter model and then on the flight test number all significant recorded parameters for the flight become available. They can easily be presented in graphs, were there also is the possibility to check a lot of parameters at the same time to get as good understanding of the flight condition as possible.
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________________________________________________ Appendix C-Flight Test Data
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