Conference Proceedings

By  John L. Minor

Morning Class A

The sensor systems carried aboard an unmanned aerial system are typically called “the payload”.  The sensor payload may contain a single sensor, or a number of sensors that are integrated to work together, or can be operated separately. The sensor payload is typically designed to meet the requirements for a specific remote sensing mission such as 3D mapping, precision agriculture, or the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) mission.   Payloads can be one of the most expensive systems to design, develop, build, and integrate onto the UAS, often costing millions of dollars for military applications.  The payload is so important that the mission could not be performed without a payload that is designed for the mission, integrated into the unmanned vehicle, and adequately tested to ensure it meets all mission requirements.  This short course discusses the payloads commonly found on commercial UASs and how to test and evaluate them for commercial applications. 

By Al Lawless & Clay Harden

Morning Class B

Presents an approach for using only aircraft data to determine winds during flight or taxi – including sideslip conditions.  This aircraft-based wind (ABW) method can use flight test or production instrumentation. Included are theoretical and practical discussions based on experience using test data, and comparison between ABW vs. ground-based wind measurement. ABW may complement or potentially replace traditional methods used for crosswind or field performance testing, and may enhance accident investigations.

By Dr. Ralph Kimberlin

Afternoon Class A

Today we see more aircraft concepts involving propulsive lift devises. This course will cover the theory and flight test results of the Ball-Bartoe Jetwing aircraft. The Ball-Bartoe Jetwing was a single engine upper surface blowing concept which achieved supercirculation lift and STOL performance by ducting all engine air through the leading edge of the wing and ejecting it over the top surface of the wing through a slot nozzle. This nozzle extended along approximately 70% of the wing span. A Coanda flap was mounted at the trailing edge of the blown portion of the wing. In addition to the main wing, a smaller wing panel was mounted above the slot nozzle. The air passage between the main wing and the smaller upper wing acted as an ejector to reduce installed thrust losses. For high speed applications that concept could be used without this upper wing. A thrust reversing method was also incorporated into the concept. The thrust was reversed by rotating the top of the slot nozzle so as to close the nozzle and open a reverse flow path. While this program occurred over 30 years ago, the results and lessons should be re-examined prior to flight testing today’s concepts.

By Glenn Rosenthal

Afternoon Class B

This workshop exposes the attendee to the methods used in flight test for telemetry monitoring. The course covers in the aircraft from the monitoring sensors, data acquisition, serial PCM encoding and RF transmission on the aircraft to the ground. The discussion will continue with ground receivers, clock recovery and bit recognition in varying environments, frame alignment of the data and then decommutatation of the PCM stream back to the original parameter words including a discussion for advanced frame and word decommutation techniques. Finally, different methods of real-time analysis of the decommutated words will be discussed with examples shown from user real data PCM streams.