Edwards brain dump (lots of Global Hawk stuff)


Message posted by gary on October 23, 2000 at 01:02:20 EST:

I didn't manage to link up any DLRers, but maybe next year. Incidentally, Verizon wireless works in digital mode on base.

Lots of things were flying, and not just airplanes. The wind was so bad that hats were flying over the fence on to the flight line. Fortunately, I knew it was going to be windy so I wore a BDU cap. [Battle Dress Uniform, accept no substitutes.]

The Joint Strike Fighter was ashamed to show it's ugly body to the public. I would of liked to see it in person, but they must of hid it somewhere. [All the posts on this list seem to indicate the plane was on base.]

They had a B2 and F22 there for viewing, but not flying.

The wind was so bad the parachute team decided not to jump, so the Stoli Migs filled in for them. Then later they did the same show again in their regular time slot. [Hint: maybe it would be better to just speed up the show rather than do the same routine twice, though personally I like the Stoli's, so if you had to do one event twice, the Stolis were a good choice.]

Now the real interesting part. The "pilot" of the Global Hawk was there, and boy did he know it inside out. One interesting thing is the Global Hawk "talks" to ATC just like any other plane, using callsigns Ryan1 or Hightech [a civilian and military call sign]. The voice that is heard is that of the "pilot", who is actually on the ground. The voice is relayed via satellite from the pilot to the Global Hawk, then the Global Hawk relays this on standard UHF radio. The voice is digitized on the satellite link, but in the clear (obviously) over ATC, so somebody in the right place could monitor the Global Hawk.

Regarding what the Global Hawk (GH) sees optically, I think the pilot underestimated the capabilities of the plane. He said from 65000ft it could differentiate between a car and a SUV, but not better detail than that. I suspect they can do much better than that, but that's my opinion from using a telescope at that distance. The GH also has a land imaging radar on it's belly. Much of the plane is radome (plastic transparent to radio waves). One radome is for the land imaging radar, and the other radome is the top of the plane near the front, which hold the dish for contacting the satellite.

The GH isn't remotely piloted, but uses its navigation system to fly a pre-programmed path. It can land without human intervention. The pilot can over-ride the programming if needed. During one live test where the GH interfaced with some fighter planes, the pilot requested imaging of a certain area as part of the test. The GH flew there, then took the photo, relayed it via satellite to the ground, somebody on the ground fiddled with it a bit (my speak, not the pilots, whose exact words I forget), then relayed the image to the plane in a 10 minute turn around.

The GH is designed to be cheap, well cheap for the military. It has 100Gbytes of non-volital memory, all from commercial grade flash cards. Most of the electronics are commercial grade, not military, to keep the cost down. It is interesting that the insides of the GH are pressurized to make the electronics happy. It turns out it is hard to regulate the temperature of air at the density found at 65000ft, so they pressurize the air to make the environmental control task easier.

Speaking of cheap, the plane uses many parts from other planes. For instance, the nose gear is from a T39. I forget the other planes they scavenged (sp), but the goal was to use existing parts where possible.

I also took a trip to x33 launch site (Haystack Butte). I found a spot near highway 395 where you can see it quite well from a distance of about 8 miles. If this project ever gets off the ground, viewing the launch will be pretty easy. I made an attempt to view the Edward's tunnels I posted previously, but it turns out the spot I picked to view the area is on private land.



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