Flight Data Monitoring - Have you flown with it on board?

[opopie]

Have you flown a light/medium helicopter equipped with a Helicopter Flight Data Monitoring (HFDM) system under VFR? If so, I would like to hear about your experiences.

I am a pilot (rotary/fixed) and am also conducting a study towards a MSc. in Human Factors and System Safety. At several conferences I have had the opportunity to speak with operators, manufacturers, HFDM vendors and data analysts. However, the voices of everyday pilots have been largely absent from the discussions of integrating this technology. For this reason I am very interested to speak with VFR pilots who are flying with HFDM on board.

My goal is to explore the following question:
"What are pilots’ lived experiences with HFDM systems, while flying non-routine flights in light to medium helicopters operating under VFR?"

I am looking to talk with 5-8 pilots (~30 minutes each) either in person, by telephone or Skype. All interviewees will remain anonymous; names of pilots/employers/vendors will be kept confidential.

Please send me a personal message or email at [email protected]

Owen

[GPS user]

recent posting on another forum might be interesting to you.

"
I heard a story recently a large northern mustering company had started fitting those flight data recorders to their machines that record obviously hours and and all other measurements like ERPM / RRPM and MAP, operating temperatures , this guy told me that when they fitted it just runnng it up on the pad with a boss pilot for 5 minutes it recorded 14 exceedences. Must be just faulty software but you have to wonder are there a lot of those little exceedences that go on all the time that the human system cant detect but digital recorders can. Like the lag that can be in a MAP gauge perhaps Helicopter manufacturers accept these analogue undetectable measurements as an acceptable tolerance. Does anyone here have any thoughts on this.''

[JimL]

opopie,

What hypothesis are you testing in your dissertation/thesis?

Jim