engineer’s knee to form the Human Machine Interface
(HMI) for the NIFTI system.
“The data acquisition gateway is a fully-modular
system with huge bandwidth, to ensure any future
customer requirements can be accommodated. We have
thought about things like bandwidth and power
requirements,” explains Defence Innovations’ chairman
and NIFTI program lead, Warren Canning.
“With the iPad you can individually determine the
bandwidth of sensors and determine which sensors are
on or off. You can pre-configure all your test points for a
sortie and while in flight, if you hit just one icon, the
system completely reconfigures for your next test point.”
The lead customer for NIFTI is the AWC, which
enjoys full visibility of the development process. Warren
Canning credits the transparent relationship between
defense and contractor as one of the
fundamental keys to NIFTI’s success.
“So many great technologies never
become great products, because the people
developing that technology are so convinced
that they understand everything about it,
they don’t listen to the customer,” Canning
explains.
“We have collaborated closely with the
customer since day one, because it is that knowledge
within the customer of what flight test instrumentation
both needs to do and how it should work, in terms of that
HMI, that makes a 21st Century flight test system.”
FLIGHT TESTING
NIFTI was initially developed over an eight-month period
during 2015, a process that included early proof of
concept flight tests using a civilian YAK-52. This led to a
further series of concept demonstrations using an ARDU
Pilatus PC-9/A in October 2015.
1 // The means of interfacing
with the NIFTI system is via
an iPad Mini, strapped to the
knee of the test pilot or flight
test engineer
64 JUNE \\ AEROSPACETESTINGINTERNATIONAL.COM
2
1
2 // A NIFTI sensor
attached to the weapons
pylon of an F/A-18B
before a flight test
The PC-9/A test aircraft was instrumented with 12 tri-axial
accelerometer sensors, held on with double-sided adhesive tape, and a
Data Acquisition Gateway installed in a supersonic camera pod on an
underwing hardpoint all within an hour.
Phase two of the flight test evaluation followed in May 2018, when
an operational F/A-18B Hornet was fitted with NIFTI in a process which
took around four and a half hours. The Hornet then flew two supersonic
sorties, up to Mach 1.27 and the entire NIFTI kit was removed by a
squadron technician with no prior experience of the system in 45
minutes, with no damage to the aircraft’s surface or sub-surface
“With the iPad you can
individually determine the
bandwidth of sensors”
data acquisition
4.5 hours
time taken to fit NIFTI system
for the first time on a flight test
on a F/A-18B Hornet
/AEROSPACETESTINGINTERNATIONAL.COM