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By Dave Jesse on January 5, 2017

Occasionally I have been asked why parameters in the POLARIS software are described as “Smoothed”. You will find Smoothed versions of Latitude and Longitude, Altitude STD, Gross Weight and soon to be Pitch and Roll (we are adding these to provide cosmetic improvements for visualisation displays). It’s a bit of a history lesson, so makes […]

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Keeping up to date

By Dave Jesse on December 21, 2016

It is important in flight safety, as with most other things in life, to keep up with changes in regulations and procedures, and to keep up with industry best practice. It occurred to me that one safety lesson which I was told many years ago by my old friend and mentor, Capt Simon Searle, should […]

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Unsocial Networking

By Dave Jesse on December 14, 2016

Normally I write about flight data and technical stuff, and try to avoid anything relating to business. Today is an exception and I hope you will allow me one digression to “get this off my chest”. Since we started Flight Data Services our web site has carried notes about the people in the company. […]

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Why You Can’t Land in Scatsta

By Dave Jesse on November 4, 2016

For those of you not fully familiar with the northern Scottish isles, Scatsta is a small airfield on the Shetland Islands and the closest land airport to the North Sea oil rigs. It is mainly used for oil and gas workers changing from fixed wing services to helicopters, making the helicopter journey as short […]

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Where the Data Did Go…?

By Dave Jesse on October 19, 2016

In my last two blogs I explained that we had identified a problem where small amounts of data were occasionally being lost with uQAR-equipped aircraft. After ten years of satisfactory operation, this was very puzzling. I also outlined how we built a test set using a Raspberry Pi computer and showed some sample test data. […]

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Of Raspberries and Pies

By Dave Jesse on October 13, 2016

In my previous post I explained that we were suffering data loss, and needed to be able to test the uQAR with various different recorder and data card combinations. This unusual post explains how we built a test rig and what we found. Introduction to the Raspberry Pi If you have come across the Raspberry […]

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Where did the data go?

By Dave Jesse on October 6, 2016

Data going missing… Recently, our monitoring systems here at Flight Data Services identified that the number of flights processed was slightly down on the expected values, and although this was only a few per cent, it was enough to be concerning as we strive to reach 100% and many customers have data coverage as […]

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Defying the Laws of Nature

By Dave Jesse on September 26, 2016

One of the joys of these blogs is that I can repeatedly show that life is more complicated than you would first think. This blog post follows on naturally from the previous one, in which I clearly stated that you can’t measure something before it happens. No-one contacted me to protest at this bold statement, […]

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Another Spectacular Data Error

By Dave Jesse on September 6, 2016

Another Spectacular Data Error For those of you new to flight data, may I offer this week’s blog as a salutary lesson to always expect the unexpected. With only 39 years working with flight data I have never come across an error like this, and it just goes to show that there is […]

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When is a Frame Not a Frame – The Sequel

By Dave Jesse on August 31, 2016

When is a Frame Not a Frame – The Sequel So avid readers will remember the importance of superframe sequence numbering from my previous blog, and be wondering why this is such an issue. Surely you just number 16 superframes, and Bob’s your Uncle. Let’s take a simple example to start the blog going. Here […]