Flight Data Collection for General Aviation Aircraft Simulation Validation

Abstract

A data acquisition system was developed for the recording of flight test data of a Cessna 172 S general aviation aircraft. The proposed system required the ability to reliably acquire data suitable for a validation database for general aviation simulation. The quality and content of the data had to be sufficient to be implemented in an engineering simulation with very good fidelity. The data acquisition system components, their operation, and flight test procedures are described in the present paper. Sample results from the flight test, their analysis, and comparison with simulation results are also presented.