PDAS

The Portable Data Acquisition System (PDAS) is a portable, high-performance data acquisition system for aeronautics research. It is designed to quickly and easily integrate on a fixed or rotary wing aircraft and provide high quality flight data to support analysis of vehicle performance, dynamics, and control. PDAS features:

  • 200 Hz sample rate
  • High accuracy GNSS-aided INS
  • 12 ultra-low noise analog channels with configurable gains
  • Air data measurement and estimation
  • IADS interface for real-time displays and analysis
  • Simple configuration, flexible power options

Rapid Flight Testing

PDAS was developed with the International Test Pilots School (ITPS) to facilitate test pilot and flight test engineer training and rapid flight data collection on ITPS and customer aircraft to support aeronautics research, aircraft analysis, and certification efforts. PDAS is ideally suited for flight test organizations, providing a rapid means of collecting high quality flight data and enabling organizations to move through the flight validation process more quickly.

Technical Specifications

  • 200 Hz sample rate
  • Size: 162 x 131 x 43 mm
  • Configurable digital low pass filtering on each channel
  • INS
    • Pitch/Roll accuracy: 0.1 deg
    • Heading accuracy: 0.3 deg
    • Horizontal position accuracy: 8 ft
    • Vertical position accuracy: 16.5 ft
    • Inertial velocity accuracy: 0.1 knots
  • Pitot-static
    • Range: 0 - 340 knots
    • Accuracy: 1 knot, typical
    • Integrated estimation of:
      • IAS, EAS, TAS
      • Pressure altitude, AGL altitude, density altitude
  • RTD Outside Air Temperature
    • ­Type: 2-wire, 3-wire, and 4-wire
    • ­Resistance: PT10, PT50, PT100, PT200, PT500, PT1000
    • ­­Excitation: 5µA, 10µA, 25µA, 50µA, 100µA, 250µA, 500µA, 1A
    • ­­Sense Resistor: 2kΩ
    • ­­­0.1C accuracy over full temperature range
  • Analog
    • ­16-bit resolution
    • ­CH 0 - 5: Configurable gain of 1, 10, 100, or 1000
    • ­­CH 6 - 11: Configurable gain of 1, 2, 4, or 8
    • ­­Differential and single-ended input available on each channel
    • ­­­Anti-alias filter cutoff frequency: 55 Hz
    • Ultra-low noise +5V source on each channel
    • Configurable polynomial coefficients for converting voltage to engineering units
  • Maximum Ratings:
    • Acceleration: +/- 16 g
    • ­Rotation: +/- 2,000 deg/s
    • ­­Airspeed: 0 to 340 knots
    • ­­Altitude: -10,000 to +70,000 ft
    • ­­­Temperature: -10 to +50C

Documents

  • Brochure: one page PDAS brochure.
  • User Manual: describes the PDAS, specifications, operations, and data.
  • IADS PRN File: a file specifying the data packet sent by the PDAS to an IADS client. Used by the Symvionics IADS software to setup the PDAS as a data source for building real-time displays and analysis tools.
  • PDAS Data Converter: a stand-alone executable for the Windows operating system. This software converts PDAS generated data files to CSV or MAT format. Please contact support@bolderflight.com for a copy of this software.