L-1011 Trainer Installation: Flight Director Integration Tests

L-1011 Flight Director Integration Tests

The ADIs in the L-1011 simulator incorporate Flight Director (FD) bars for Pitch, Roll and Yaw. Today I worked on moving Flight Director information from X-Plane to the ADIs. To do so, I am using ARNIC 429 Label 170, 171 and 172. The Flight Director bus is a slow speed bus and FD information is passed to the ADI at 12.5Kbps. For the first few tests tonight I focused on the roll and pitch data. X-Plane actually does not have Flight Director data for guided yaw, however, that information can be derived from a number of other X-Plane data points.

The video below is a short demo of a Flight Director guided roll to the left to heading 225 and then we see a flight director guided roll-out at the target heading. Watch the HSI and the ADI in particular:

p.s. Ignore the erratic Localizer indicator on the ADI, it's only getting test data.

Avionics Bending: End-To-End Test of the ADI, HSI, VSI and ALT with X-Plane

L-1011 Trainer Installation - X-Plane to ARINC End-To-End Test

Today Jim and myself reached another important millstone with the L-1011 project. We performed a complete end-to-end test of the ARINC 429 compatible primary flight instruments. This now finally tests all of the components in the loop for both the Captain's as well as the F/O station. The instruments tested today are:

• Altimeter (ALT)
• Vertical Speed Indicator (VSI)
• Attitude Director Indicator (ADI)
• Horizontal Situation Indicator

All in all we are transmitting 46 ARINC 429 labels over 8 discrete transmit buses. 4 of the buses are 100Kbps buses and 4 are 12.5Kbps buses. Of the four 12.5Kbps buses two are standard ARINC 429 buses and two are ARINC 575 compatible buses (so no SSM information on the label word). The video below is a short demonstration of flying the L-1011 sim in a very basic mode with no trim and only basic functions enabled, again, the test if for the ARINC instruments and not for the A/D conversion of the control inputs. 

In addition to the ARINC and X-Plane end-to-end tests we also installed the left hand side audio side panel. 

L-1011 Left Hand Side - Audio Side Panel

L-1011 Trainer Installation: Captain's and F/O ARINC 429 Instrument Tests

We are slowly ramping up the number of ARINC 429 labels sent as test data to the simulator instruments. The test data set has now enlarged from 26 to 48 labels sent over a total of 6 different buses; 3 buses on the Captain's side and 3 buses on the F/O side. Both sides will receive different data sets just as they would on the actual aircraft, this way we will be able to simulate complete subsystem failures. The video above show generic test data being sent to the Capt ARINC 429 instruments as well as to the F/Os instruments.