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IABG facilitates flight test for Saab Aerosystems

IABG helped to carry out the technically demanding “hot and high” campaign for the SAAB JAS39 C Gripen in Granada (Spain). Flight test expertise tapped from Fairchild Dornier was thus successfully integrated into the IABG portfolio.

The flights and ground tests carried out between mid-July and mid-August serve to verify the benefits of aeroplane subsystems and to identify possible weak points in the overall system at extremely high temperatures.

The airport in Granada is the best site for such testing. Not only because of the reliably good weather and extremely high summer temperatures - during the four-week campaign temperatures of over 45 °C were recorded on several occasions - but particularly also due to its ideal infrastructure. IABG provided Saab with one large hangar, 17 air-conditioned office containers and two conference and telemetry rooms. A “reserved” airspace of approximately 120 x 80 km in the immediate vicinity over the Mediterranean, enabled a wide range of test flights to be carried out, including tests in the ultrasonic range in particular.

In addition to the overall organisation of the campaign, which included obtaining all the required approvals, IABG provided a permanent S-band telemetry station in Granada and a mobile station with two antennae and reception systems on the Mediterranean coast. “Autotracking” antennae were used, which independently trace the signal in the “reserved” airspace, as well as antennae which receive commands via the GPS position of the aeroplane. Furthermore, IABG audiosystems (flight radio for communicating with the pilot) also supplied special equipment for brake testing and heavy weight takeoff and landing, including a mobile weather station to ensure accurate weather and climate data.

The different systems and subsystems in an aeroplane are often stretched to their limits during tests of this kind. These conditions also make great demands on the availability and reliability of data transmission. On the one hand, the high data rate telemetry (in this case, considerably more than 2 Mbit/s) must be reliably transmitted. On the other hand, the high dynamics of the test aeroplane make extremely high demands on the technology during this fighter jet test. Speeds reaching the ultrasound range, very low flights to just several hundred meters above water, and climb flights of up to 16 km in height, combined with dynamic flight manoeuvres, place high demands on telemetry and data processing. The <link internal-link internen link im aktuellen>flight test ran without complications. This means that the GRIPEN can be used with optimum safety and reliability on an international scale.

IABG obtained the telemetry equipment/components, sensors and a stationary ground station for implementing the flight test from Fairchild Dornier AeroIndustries (FDAI) in February 2005. Meanwhile, at the IABG site in Oberpfaffenhofen, construction and renovation of the flight testing facilities is near completion.