A Statistical Assessment for Evaluating Pilot Effort during Contact Tasks in Helicopter Air to Air Refueling Flight Tests

Abstract

© 2024 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. All rights reserved.Although in-flight refueling procedures are already widely performed thought military, most of all published guidelines and related documentation for certification/qualification between aircraft are focused on methods for Fixed-Wing Air to Air Refueling (FWAAR) receivers. Additionally, during an Air to Air Refueling certification process, cost efficiency is of utmost importance since it requires several aircraft during flight testing phase (tanker, receiver and usually a chase aircraft). Based on HAAR (Helicopter Air to Air Refueling) flight tests performed by the Brazilian Air Force (BAF) between Airbus H225M and Lockheed Martin KC-130H, this paper presents a statistical assessment tool that was developed in order to further investigate HAAR contact tasks results. A workload analysis was performed and compared to qualitative evaluations based on Cooper-Harper ratings for pilot input profiles on flight controls during contact tasks. Therefore, the main goal is to present lessons learned during HAAR flight tests as well as tools and methods that can be used to provide insight on which conditions should be further investigated, thus enhancing flight test efficiency.