Short Description:

Whether you are spraying pesticides or fighting forest fires, local weather conditions aloft can tremendously affect the cost, efficacy, and the safety of what you do. The ability to accurately define and forecast such local conditions depends on the quality of available upper-air data. Because of this, local weather measurements are key; and, using operational aircraft resources to do the job makes the process cost efficient. The AIMMS-20 is your weather-sensing solution to measure such mission-critical data on-board existing aircraft and deliver it either to the cockpit or to ground personnel using satellite telemetry.

Airborne measurement is complicated by the high speed of motion through the air. Wind measurement is an especially challenging problem as the aircraft is moving many times faster than the wind to be resolved. Very precise measurements of air-motion, aircraft velocity and orientation are thus required to derive wind speed with an accuracy of 1 knot (0.5 m/s). This unparalleled precision has been made possible by fusing advanced GPS and inertial technologies, three-dimensional airflow measurement together with advanced correction for aerodynamic errors.

Where/When to use:

Aerial application of pesticides, Wind data critical for monitoring off-target drift potential, Spray optimization (flight line offsets taking wind drift into account to improve targeting of spray)

Components:

• The AIMMS-20 is modular in design wherein each module is responsible for handling a major part of the airborne meteorological measurement problem. These modular components are physically interconnected using a single network cable over a Controller Area Network (CAN) protocol. AIMMS-20 communicates directly with the ADAPCO Wingman Spray Management System to display offset guidance to the pilot in real-time.

  Components Include:

• Air-Data Probe (ADP)
  • Temperature, humidity, barometric pressure
  • Three-dimensional aircraft-relative airflow vector
  • Three-axis acceleration and magnetic field measurement
• Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU)
  • Three-axis acceleration (accelerometer triad)
  • Three-axis angular rates (rate gyro triad)
• Dual processor Global Positioning System module (GPS)
  • Dual antenna inputs for differential carrier-phase measurement
  • Phase data used for precise (0.1 deg.) attitude measurement
  • Three-dimensional position and velocity
• Central Processing Module (CPM)
  • Inertial, GPS phase/position/velocity data converted into precise attitude data (roll, pitch, true heading)
  • Air-data corrected for dynamic / aerodynamic effects
  • Final reduction of air-motion, attitude, velocity data into corrects winds, temperature and humidity
  • Real-time RS-232 broadcast output for simple external integration
  • Internal data log for independent operation and recording

Application Considerations:

• The AIMMS-20 generates a serial output stream of meteorological data, including wind speed and wind direction.This information can be integrated with a variety of existing in-cockpit spray navigation systems to provide timely wind condition updates. New developments in this market include integration of drift model calculations to add actual drift estimates and optimized swath offsets to the cockpit navigation display.

Features/Benefits:

• Provides real-time measurement of mean winds and RMS turbulence metrics
• Provides temperature, humidity and pressure data
• Includes output of high-precision aircraft attitude data (bank angle, pitch angle and true heading)
• A fully integrated package with all components necessary for stand-alone operation or integration with the ADAPCO Wingman System.
• Full support for aerodynamic calibration to minimize the time and effort necessary to analyze flight-calibration data
• Unrivaled price-performance ratio for airborne meteorological observation
• Easily integrated with other data systems, or it operates independently using an internal data log

Manufacturer:

Aventech Research Inc.