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Dual Unit Test Flight
In this test, two STXe units were tested side-by-side on the same rocket flight. The STXe units were set to report position information at 4Hz. The two different STXe units tested were using different GPS engines from GPSFlight:
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UB1 - STXe with a 4Hz GPSFlight High Performance GPS engine updating with Baro and GPS altitude every 250ms
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GM2 - STXe with a 1 Hz Standard GPS engine updating with GPS only every 250ms, but changing position info only 1Hz.
The rocket is a 5" diameter 6' tall rocket with TWO of the STXe transmitters in the booster section payload area. The electronics were switched on with a single switch and powered by 2 battery packs of 700mah (4xAAA).
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The rocket flew on a K-185 which burned for more than 5 seconds at 80lbs of thrust against a 10 lb rocket. The flight dynamics maxed out at only 6.7Gs as reported by onboard AED RDAS Flight Computer.
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Data Comparison
Comparing the onboard RDAS flight computer downloaded the next day, with the data seen in real-time from the rocket in flight, we can see very close reporting between all the sensors flown on this test flight:
| Standard GPS time to apogee |
00:25.00 |
| HP GPS time to apogee (GPS) |
00:20.00 |
| HP GPS time to apogee (Baro) |
00:18.25 |
| Rdas time to apogee |
00:17.70
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| Max Standard GPS |
4,759.51 Realtime |
| Max HP GPS |
4,538.39 Realtime |
| Max Baro |
4,627.09 Realtime |
| Max RDAS |
4,698.00 Download |
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| RDAS Delta from Each Unit: |
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| Standard GPS |
61.51 |
| HP GPS |
(159.61) |
| HP GPS Baro |
(70.91) |
As shown above, the real-time data download coming from the rocket in flight was extremely accurate. Recovery was made .38 miles away in deep sage.
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As shown here, the rocket's electronics bay contained two STXe units wrapped in bubble-wrap to help offset the G-forces. Neither STXe was mounted to the airframe, but both were snug inside the avionics bay.
The STXe units were both still sending data from the ground once the unit hand landed.
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Here is the TracID reporting window just as the rocket passes apogee.
10/2005
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