RAPID - A Data Acquisition And Processing System For Flight Test Cost And Schedule Improvement

RAPID - Real-time Acquisition and Processing of In-Flight Data - is a Sikorsky test data acquisition and processing system that is essential to meeting the demanding schedules and budgets of the YCH-53E, UTTAS and other major ongoing programs. The heart of the RAPID system is a SYSTEMS 86 computer with a full complement of standard and special peripheral devices. It digitizes and reduces FM, PCM, and PAM test data resulting from telemetry or on-board recordings. Its extensive software inventory provides the test engineers with real-time displays, quicklook plots and printouts, final reports, and library recall. The engineers use these capabilities to concurrently process data from 3 flights, expedite data validation and test status decisioning, generate final reports, and selectively access extensive data libraries. RAPID has already demonstrated features necessary to meet major program schedules. On the ABC wind tunnel tests, two hour turnaround on decisioning data was achieved. In the S-67 Fan-in-Fin flight test program, final reports were produced in six hours. In YCH-53E tail rotor development test, an 80% reduction in the test schedule was achieved by on-line stability monitoring.