NASA/Princeton digital avionics flight test facility

Abstract

This paper describes a general-aviation digital avionics flight-test facility being jointly developed by the Flight Dynamics Laboratory of Princeton University and NASA/Langley Research Center. This facility consists of the Princeton avionics research aircraft (ARA) and NASA/Langley's digital avionics research (DARE) system. The ARA is a fully instrumented five-degree-of-freedom fly-by-wire aircraft. The DARE system contains a state-of-the-art flight computer system and receiving equipment that permits use of the NASA/Wallops Flight Center's position-tracking ground-based display-generation and ground-to-air digital-data-link equipment. The DARE/ARA system will be used for flight evaluation of advanced control, guidance, and display concepts developed as part of NASA/Langley Research Center's general aviation terminal area operations program.