Curved Precision Approach Flight Tests with GPS Integrated into State-of-the-Art Avionic Suite

Victor Wullschleger, Reuben Velez, Brian Schipper, Scott Snyder, Larry Villot, Randy Hartman, Brett Helgeson, Steve Serfling, David Maahs, M. Bakry El-Arini, Ronald Braff and Patricia O'Donnell

Abstract:	The FAA Satellite Program Office and industry are participating in joint efforts to investigate the potential of GPS to provide three-dimensional guidance for precision approaches to runways in the National Airspace System (NAS). The first efforts of this investigation, Phase I and II of a five-phase flight test program involving the FAA, Honeywell Commercial Flight Systems and Northwest Airlines have been completed. These flight tests, conducted at the FAA Technical Center, consisted of descending curved approaches in a Honeywell owned Gulfstream IV (G-IV) aircraft, where the avionics suite included GPS, Different&l GPS (DGPS), Inertial Reference Unit (IRU), digital air data computer (DADC), and flight management system (FMS). Approaches were flown in the autopilot coupled mode, and included a fixed radius turn onto the extension of the runway centerline, at 3 nautical mile (nmi) from the runway. The paper covers the design of the avionics suite, the design and analysis of the flight experiments and presents a set of detailed results. Specifically, the following are included in the paper: 1. Block diagrams of the avionics suite on the G-IV aircraft, and modifications for flight test; 2. details of the curved precision approaches; 3. design and analysis of experiments that yield the data needed to evaluate various sensor combinations of GPS, barometric altimeter, DGPS and DGPS/IRU. 4. results of the tests conducted with selective availability (SA) on and off.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 5th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1992) September 16 - 18, 1992 Albuquerque, NM
Pages:	363 - 371
Cite this article:	Wullschleger, Victor, Velez, Reuben, Schipper, Brian, Snyder, Scott, Villot, Larry, Hartman, Randy, Helgeson, Brett, Serfling, Steve, Maahs, David, El-Arini, M. Bakry, Braff, Ronald, O'Donnell, Patricia, "Curved Precision Approach Flight Tests with GPS Integrated into State-of-the-Art Avionic Suite," Proceedings of the 5th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1992), Albuquerque, NM, September 1992, pp. 363-371.
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