Further Experiments With an UHF Radio Link to a Railgun Projectile

The transmission of measurement data from the projectile during launch would open up new possibilities for the research with electromagnetic railguns. At the French-German Research Institute of Saint-Louis, a small-caliber railgun projectile is equipped with a commercial off-the-shelf 433-MHz radio transmitter. This transmitter is connected to a microcontroller and a magnetic field sensor. The so equipped projectile is exposed to realistic railgun launch conditions and the transmitted signal is recorded in the laboratory. Here, we report on the implementation of this concept and the first results of the experiments performed with the complete setup.