Restoration of a vintage rugged computer from the Tornado aircraft

[Frankie]

Erik Baigar is the principal hardware engineer at Thermo Fisher Scientific (Germany). He is a Phd/R&D geek/scientist/engineering buff and has been reverse-engineering vintage military hardware and software since 2004. 

FIN-RPMD-Explorer, Erik Baigar's tribute to Inertial Navigation in early Tornado

That's the moving map display brought back to life by Erik. He hopes to one day test it out at least once in a plane.

These days we have GPS in our smartphones that tell us exactly where we are on earth. 40 years ago,  the Ferranti FIN1010 inertial navigation system and the moving map display (RPMD) was used to tell the Tornado pilot his exact position. The video is a fascinating account of this ingenius electromechanical device, and the equally astounding feat by Erik of restoring it to working condition.

     00:00 Intro
     00:39 How intertial navigation works
     01:20 Uses of the Ferranti gimballedf platform
     01:40 Spotlight on the RPMD
     02:10 How map films have been made
     02:50 Internals of the RPMD
     04:20 Focus on the FIN101x
     04:55 Platform in action: Gimbal flip
     05:30 The homebrew logger explained
     08:31 Starting the laser based INS
     09:51 Turning on the RPMD display
     11:00 RPMD controlled by the inertial navigator
     11:40 Supersonic flight over Germany
     13:00 Additional features of the logger setup
 

More information at Erik Baigar's amazing website.

[Asid]

Very interesting Frankie 

It mentions a Commodore computer was used in the development of the map reel...I had a Commodore 

Thanks for posting this