Aircraft Sound/Music
Troy Asher: Why RC models are important to us in the test pilot business is the first
time you climb aboard one of those airplanes to go do something that may have never been
done before, it's actually been simulated and been flown a lot and scaled down and tried on many
different platforms.
Jim Less: Rarely do test pilots just go out and
hop in an airplane and give it a whirl and see what happens.
David Larson: Sometimes it's just too unsafe to go fly that aircraft in that flight regime. When
we first start out, maybe we test a concept on a smaller scale.
>>If you want to try a new shape of a wing or you wanted to try a new whole airplane
concept, it's much cheaper and easier, you can do it for orders of magnitude less.
>>Model testing is a stepping stone towards a full-sized aircraft.
Music
>>Hi, I'm Red Jensen, chief pilot for sub-scale
research aircraft here at Armstrong Flight Research Center, welcome to my lab.
Here at Armstrong, we use a variety of subscale aircraft to test out new and emerging technologies
that may or may not make it to the full-scale world. And we've been doing this for a very
long time.
Music/Model Airplane sounds
>>As you can see, these are not your normal model airplanes. This is our DROID aircraft,
and this is really a flying testbed and the backbone of the model lab. We can use this to test
out many different technologies. For instance, we currently have ADS-B onboard, and we also
use this as a tow plane for our towed glider project. This is our twin-glider air launch
concept. The idea here is to tow a rocket up underneath, with a payload on it, and launch
it from about 40,000 feet. This will reduce our launch cost to orbit. This is Photo-1,
which is an octo-copter, and we use this for a variety of filming applications around the
center.
This is HUGH, which is basically an RC airplane, except that we're testing an
experimental flight computer, which allows researchers and students alike the ability
to customize flight control systems.
This is PRANDTL, and this is research into lowering
induced drag, or a new way of thinking about wing design.
Wind
>>Here in the model lab, one of
the cool things about us is we're a one-stop shop. Here is where we configure and maintain
our autopilot and data acquisition systems. Over here, we have a 3D printer. Almost everything
we build here is a one-off, so this allows us to build parts instantly, right here in
the lab.
And when it's time to fly,
we have a completely self-contained mobile ground
control station that allows us to operate in any austere environment.
Music/Background Noise
>>We're gonna do the control check-
>>Left roll? >>Right roll?
>>Right rudder? >>Yep.
Mechanical Sounds
>>We're ready to hook up the fibers.
Background Noise
>>Let's go back to the control algorithm one
more time, I want to get it to its neutral position.
>>Yaw left? Yaw right? >>Roll right?
Background Noise
>>We're good!
>>Ok, from a pre-flight standpoint, are you guys ready to go?
>>We're ready. >>We're ready.
>>Good to go!
Airplane motor starting
Airplane Takeoff
>>Take off at 7:20.
>>Thank you. >>Edwards Tower, NASA UAS is airborne, UAS
work area surface to 3,000 feet.
>>All right, Red, I moved the radius, 500
foot radius, and I moved it closer to you. >>Perfect.
>>Holding 55 knots, capturing...climbing to 3,000.
>>Handoff to pilot. >>...and, I got it.
>>In a lot of people's eyes it's not as glamorous, not an F-18 or an F-15 or something like that.
It's a small airplane. But what a lot of people don't realize is you can get an amazing amount
of data and testing done very quickly with a model aircraft rather than waiting years
to see if your full-scale article is gonna fly.
Music
>>Standby for auto...
>>Ready for auto... >>3...2...1...auto
Background Noise
>>The autopilot is capable of getting the standard accels, airspeed, altitude, position
through GPS, things like that; some of the aircraft have an additional data system onboard.
For instance, the APV-3 FOSS aircraft has a fiber optic strain sensing network in the
wing, where we're measuring bending deflection to do real-time gust load alleviation. How
much does the wing bend? And how much do we have to deflect the control surface to neutralize
or minimize that bending moment?
Music
>>HUGH has an open-architecture type autopilot which means it's not locked to a certain configuration.
The beauty of that is you can make HUGH behave like another airplane simply by changing the
control laws. If you wanted to make it fly like a Cessna 310, or a T-38, or something
like that, you can emulate these different types of aircraft, and the advantage of that is again,
low cost, rapid development, and much quicker to fruition.
Music/Airplane Sounds
>>I like to say that we do the stuff that's
either too dangerous, too boring, or not enough money for. For instance, the TGALS, it's kind
of a wild concept, you would never build a manned airplane right off the bat, so we build
a subscale model, prove the concept, and then go forward with that technology.
Music
>>Another thing is the auto ground collision
avoidance system, where you're flying an aircraft at a blind canyon and let a computer take
over, and avoid the obstacle. Well that's obviously very risky to do in a manned aircraft,
so it makes perfect sense to do it in a sub scale aircraft, where if something happens,
well there's no harm to any person.
Music/Airplane flyby
>>I feel that Armstrong uses sUAS to enhance the Center's capability. Somebody can have
some wild, hare-brained idea, they can come to the model lab, we can either fit the technology
in an existing platform, or we can build an all-new platform to test this thing.
The sky's the limit.
Airplane motor winding down.