Certification of the new G70 Ultralight Aircraft by Nando Groppo
During AERO, the world‘s leading trade show for General Aviation held in Friedrichshafen, Germany, the new “G70” ultralight aircraft model received the type certificate by the German DULV agency. The G70 is designed and built by the Italian manufacturer Ing. Nando Groppo srl and was developed and tested in co-operation with the PoliMI-Xflight group of Politecnico di Milano. The PoliMI-Xflight group is part of the FMSlab, the Flight Mechanics and Flight Systems research laboratory at the Department of Aerospace Science and Technology (DAER).
The development and certification activity involved extensive flight testing using DAER’s unique “Mnemosine” FTI (Flight test Instrumentation) suite, a low-weight, low-intrusiveness measurement system dedicated to light aviation. This result follows the previous success obtained with the “Trail” model, which was certified by DULV in 2011, as a result of a similar co-operation with DAER.
The Mnemosine FTI suite allows recording over 40 parameters at rates ranging between 2 and 50 Hz, including air data, inertial quantities, GPS quantities, flight control position and forces, and others. These parameters are transmitted to a ground station through a telemetry link supported by an automatically steered antenna, to be processed in real time. Mnemosine has been used, in continuously updated and improved versions, starting in 2005 on board eight different airplane models for some 200 flight test missions to date.
