A Full Data and Communication Link between Caselle and Decimomannu Flight Test Sites

Franca Borelli, Alenia Aeronautica - Flight Test, Caselle, Turin, Italy
Gennaro Vitalone, Alenia Aeronautica - Flight Test, Caselle, Turin, Italy

Abstract

The last years have seen a significant evolution in the role played by Flight Test, mainly because of the increased complexity involved in developing new programmes. More in general, aeronautical industries operate within a scenario which is continuously moving, due to the influence of several concurrent factors, such as market trend, economical forces, financial constraints, technological innovation, and enhancement of strategic and operating needs. All these factors exert their pressure along the entire life cycle of the new products, without excluding anyone of the intermediate phases, here included testing activity. Because of the consequent rapid and continuously changing requirements, a tremendous effort is then needed to deal with both the technical and managerial aspects of the programmes in order to create adequate solutions to cope with the increasingly more difficult challenges.

One of these challenges is to optimise the test flights by using the limited, dedicated resources in the most effective and efficient way in order to keep the development programmes on schedule and within budget. To address this issue, Alenia has enhanced and expanded the Flight Test facilities in Caselle (Turin) and in Decimomannu (Cagliari) with a double control room in both sites capable of monitoring two separate flights simultaneously. The original and the new control rooms are now configured with the newest state-of-the-art equipment. With two control rooms at each site, four independent flights can be monitored simultaneously, two in Caselle and two in Decimomannu. However, the most significant changes for improving efficiency have been achieved by adding the ability to the remote site at Decimomannu and the main site at Caselle to permit transferring the live telemetry stream from the remote site to the main site in real-time, and conducting bi-directional voice communication between the two sites. These enhancements have greatly improved the capability of real-time data analysis during the actual test flight and remote flight test monitoring by specialists who are not located at the site where the test flight is being conducted. As a result, there is a significant cost reduction and an increase in the number of test flights in a given period. In effect, these enhancements cause the two control rooms in Caselle to become an extension of the two control rooms in Decimomannu, which permits the team of specialists to participate in more test flights without the need of travelling to the remote site. Instead, all of their time can be spent focusing on their speciality. Although it is still necessary to have some specialists at the remote site, the other specialists can do their job from the comfort and convenience of their normal work environment. The ability to involve two teams of specialists from the two sites creates a work environment synergy that was not possible previously, and it greatly improves the availability of the most important resource of any project, the human resources. The adopted solution requires technical capabilities, oriented skill, and managerial attitude to coordinate and to integrate interdisciplinary teams.

The aim of this paper is to describe, very briefly, some significant aspects related to a technical solution adopted by Alenia Aeronautica Flight Test Centre and to highlight the subsequent implications due to team managing.