I was working on some Perl scripts to record flight test data. I got the scripts working for the engine monitor and EFIS, but I was having problems recoding data from the GNS 430. Then I got some unexpected assistance from Mike. He provided a much nicer data recording script, but we never got it working completely correctly. There was some sort of timing issue that screwed up the time sync between the various devices. I couldn't figure out how his script works - Perl code can be very inscrutable.

I eventually got interested in Python - it has a lot similarities to Perl, but the code can be easier to understand. I decided to have another go at the GNS 430 using Python. I got that working, then managed to to put together a single Python script that records data from the engine monitor, EFIS, GNS 430 and an event marker. Each of those data streams is saved to a separate file, at a selected rate, with each record annotated with the time so the data from the different devices an be time sync'd later. I've got another Python script that will be run post-flight to merge the four data files into one big file.

I will eventually make these new scripts available, but I need to do some more testing first.