Position and Orientation System (POS)

• Description: Position and Orientation System for Airborne Vehicles (POS/AV)
• Manafacturer: Applanix Corporation
• Model Number: POSAV 310
• Serial Number:
• Measurement: Measures aircraft motion relative to the ground.
• Interface Address: 0x4B00
• Notes: Uses Novatell Serial #312 GPS and IMU Type 2
• POS Version: AV-310,VER,S/N625,HW3.3,SW02.19-Sep23/04,1CD7-2,054251,IMU2,PGP2.SGP50
• GPS Reciever: OEM-3 MILLENSTD SG101010152 HW 3-2 SW 4.503/2.03 Dec 09/99
• POSPAC Key: SN 948-115
• POSGPS Key: SN 3970

Need not record any real-time data with the M300 during the March 26, 2010 flight.

• A straight RS-232 cable was used instead of a null modem cable between the Applanix and M3000.
• Comm port 1 on the Applanix was used instead of Comm port 2.
• The txt.300 table used the wrong formula for the Applanix time.

Installed the correct comm cable and fixed the M300 txt.300 table.

Unable to communicate with the POS AV system (Serial # 625) due to a wrong ethernet cable interface. (Problem first occurred on the 1st of December, 2008.)

Make sure that the crossover ethernet cable that you connect your computer to the POS AV system has the right pin configuration as it is given on the POS AV V4 Installation and Operation Guide, and seen on the Figure1 below.

Figure 1: This figure shows the right crossover cable pin assignments. Ensure yourself that your male plug ends have the right pin-matchings before trying to interface the device.

Following this step, you must configure the TCP/IP settings of your Local Network. Currently, the device has the IP address of 172.16.20.25 as it is seen on its front side. The IP address of the host PC must be set to a different IP address, (the manual recommends this to be 172.16.20.1).(Although this recommendation any address within 172.16.20.* range will work) To complete the configuration, subnet mask must be set to 255.255.0.0, and default gateway section can be left blank as it is. The results of these steps are given on Figure 2. These changes take effect immediately without restarting the system.

Figure 2: IP configuration settings for the host computer.

The problem has been solved on the 2nd of December, 2008.

During MPACE, three flights (October 10, 2004; October 20, 2004; October 21, 2004) had the Applanix unit fail resulting in bad position information (latitude/longitude).

Kevin Andrews at Applanix indicated that they do not know what caused of this fail but it seems to have happen on other Applanix Units.

Applanix sent us a whole new unit. The POS/AV controller and cable between the controller and the IMU was replaced on November 3, 2004. The IMU units was not replaced. Will test to see if this fixes the problem, if not will replace the IMU unit.

New units was tested outside and was able to get GPS data. M200 was getting the Applanix data. Noticed the following, The GPS status is amber not green; The System is blicking green not solid green; The IMU status is solid green. On the “Fault Detection” window in the PC controller software all green except “GSP Data Gap” and “Invalid Instrallation Parameters”; all other tabs are green. Will ask Applanix about this.

Kevin Andrews from Applanix told me the following about the status lights. The amber GSP status light indicates that the GSP unit is working in standalone mode with no differnial correction being received. This is the correct configuration for our application. The blinking green system status light indicates that the Applanix unit is in navigating mode but not yet achieved thresholds set in the POSAV controller. This should change to soild green once the aircraft starts to more and get airborne.

• December 2, 2004 Update: For all the L3Com flights so far there has been no repeat of the latitude/longitude drifting problem experienced during the MPACE field project.

• December 15, 2004 Update: All the L3com flights seem to have the Applanix work with out any problems. The third flight on December 6 had an issue with the real-time Applanix data but it was good on the 200 Hz data files.