Flight Tests

Initial flight-testing of the RIPCom system took place near Boise, Idaho, the week of April 14-19, 2003. Tests were conducted for 6-, 8-, 9-, 10-, 11-, 12-, and 15-mile orbits. During the flight test, several issues were evaluated, checked, and recorded:

• determine the strongest channel (One is able to choose among 11 channels.)
• ping each network device for each throughput setting (11, 5.5, 2 Mbps), and transmit a 36 Mb and 77 Mb file from the plane to the ground station
• determine the time it took to transmit the data
• characterize the location and duration of any data drops during data transmission.

Other tests included having the pilots fly elliptical orbits, flying directly over or to the sides of the ground station to characterize the radiation pattern of the ground station and to determine if there was any Doppler interference in the data transmissions.

RIPCom exceeded expectations during flight-testing as it had with the ground tests. Performance was very good. Data rates of 2-3 Mbps were achieved at a range of 30 miles. The system was robust; FTP (File Transfer Protocol) transfers could be completed without errors even if the transmission was interrupted (up to 45 seconds). We also found that the jet could fly directly to and from the ground station at 300 mph without the data transmissions being affected by the Doppler Effect.