VME Based Ground Stations at Mcdonnell Douglas Aerospace Flight Test

Abstract

The ability to dynamically configure our ground stations to support a wide array of fighter/attack aircraft programs has lead McDonnell Douglas Aerospace (MDA) to seek alternatives to commercially available ground stations. Cost effectiveness and fast response time to these widely varying needs is paramount to staying competitive in today's current defense environment. VME (Versa Modular European) architecture has provided a platform that fulfills these requirements while requiring a minimum of in house designs which can be expensive and time consuming to implement. MDA is now in its third generation of VME based ground systems. These systems are highly extensible due to their reliance on software and programmable hardware systems and are inexpensive due to their use of commercial grade VME cards. This paper describes the current generation TM/Quicklook Ground Station and the Data Editor (Preprocessor) Station and it also provides a perspective of how the designers solved some common problems associated with VME architecture. These stations are now in use at MDA test sights in St. Louis, Patuxent River NAWC, Edwards AFB, and Eglin AFB.