Truly Portable Telemetry Systems

The Challenge: Field a lightweight, portable telemetry system for flight tests that can be transported on commercial aircraft.

Flight testing of manned and unmanned (UAV) aircraft and missiles requires a ground station that can receive, record and display telemetry data from the aircraft. In today’s environment it is not unusual for a test program to use multiple flight test ranges separated by thousands of miles.

This need has resulted in van-based, mobile ground stations that are driven to the test location. The mobile ground station usually consists of a van to hold laboratory-type receiving, decommutation and computer processing gear and a roof or trailer-mounted tracking antenna. These systems are expensive and have a number of disadvantages particularly when testing is done on multiple ranges. There is the expense of purchasing and maintaining the van. The mobile system must be driven to and from the test location adding to the expense. The size of a system may be such that permits are required to use public highways and movement is restricted to specific routes and hours.

What if the same system was built around a suitcase sized tracking antenna and a laptop computer. JDA offers a truly portable system weighing less than 80 pounds that can be transported on commercial aircraft and operated from a laptop computer.

The antenna is VuTrack’s VT-004, a 0.4 meter tracking antenna with quadrapole, GPS, trajectory and manual tracking modes. It has a centerline camera with video displayed on the operator console. The tracking head folds onto the base and with the cover installed and transport case makes a compact, 60 pound, transportable package.

The VT-RC-70 is a rugged, compact FM telemetry receiver covering the S and L bands. The small size allows it to be installed in or near the telemetry antenna reducing signal cable losses. It provides two IF and Video outputs. The bit sync and decom are JDA’s BSYS2 and USB-SD2 providing data rates up to 20 Mb/s per channel. Using VuSoftNT software with Windows XP makes a fully functional telemetry recording and data display system.

The system is controlled from the PC Laptop and data from the decom output to the PC Laptop by USB 2.0. One USB port is used for each of the antenna and bit sync/decom. Don’t be fooled by the small size of this portable system. Performance is equal or better than much larger laboratory-type systems. And compared to laboratory-type systems its economically priced.