Patent ID: 7589645

Claim:
An apparatus for determining an aircraft hard landing event comprising: a housing mountable in an aircraft having at least one connector allowing interface between the housing and the aircraft power and optionally the aircraft avionics systems; an inertial measurement unit located within the housing; processing means coupled to the inertial measurement unit for receiving data at high data rates therefrom, the processing means including data correlating to at least one threshold parameter for comparison with the data received from the inertial measurement unit to identify when a hard landing has occurred; and an indicator coupled to the housing and connected to the processor for indicating the occurrence of a hard landing, wherein the processing means includes an active recording mode and a passive monitoring mode, the active recording mode being initiated by a predetermined recording event and comprising the receiving and storing of data from the inertial measurement unit and the aircraft avionics system until a predetermined landing event initiates the passive monitoring mode which comprises the processor performing at least one self check.