What is the purpose of this test equipment?

[evansb]

http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r68/convair640/AA1016261.jpg

[johngreen]

Maybe this is part of your answer.

G-AIPA,Anson 1,ex RAF EF866,built 1942,withdrawn from use April 1960,Derby Aviation Ltd/Canadian Air Service which was a subsidiary company specialising in magnetometer research,aircraft had trailing monitoring equipment.


Small picture on this page (near bottom on left hand side) and heaps of other fascinating information about all sorts of other historical aircraft....

WINGS OVER WARWICKSHIRE Interesting aircraft movements and news for Aviation in Warwickshire (http://cloudancer1.tripod.com/)

jg

[A-FLOOR]

Not sure about the English name for this device, but in Dutch it's called a zoghark.

Basically it's a vertical row of dynamic pressure sensors (pitot tubes) placed behind the trailing edge of an airfoil, to get an idea of the characteristic of the wake of this airfoil in flight. I've never seen one on a real aircraft before, only in wind tunnels.

Anyway, there you go. I'm sure someone can come up with the proper English term.

[sycamore]

It`s called a `pressure rake`, as A-F says; not necessarily to do with magnetometer work,more aerodynamics.

[Lightning Mate]

Basically it's a vertical row of dynamic pressure sensors (pitot tubes)

I've seen it before, but pitot tubes cannot "sense" dynamic pressure since static pressure is present also.

I think the experiment was to analyse downwash behind the wing. It required the use of a very accurate static pressure sensor.

[evansb]

Thanks Gents! I had no idea!

[Double Zero]

I'd imagine such crude but informative things as filmed wool tufts and in a perfect ( but rare ) world small smoke generators would have also been useful in such a situation ?

Of course we're straying into the Flight Testing thread / world now, and I can think of someone who'll be champing at the bit to tell us the REAL way to do it - that's not taking the 'p', I really do mean the proper way !

DZ

P.S,

Originally for some reason I didn't get the photo' of the kit you mention; wouldn't all the structure of this short relatively thick section tube interfere aerodynamically ?

[VX275]

Of course the real question raised by this photo is ' What is it doing on an Anson?' :\

[T-21]

Anson 1's G-AIPA,IPC and IPD were flying laboratories with the then College of Aeronautics at Cranfield.

[A-FLOOR]

I've seen it before, but pitot tubes cannot "sense" dynamic pressure since static pressure is present also.You are absolutely correct, which is why the ambient static pressure for the rake is usually obtained from a common source and provided to the other side of each transducer. This leaves you with the dynamic pressure differential across the rake :ok: