While reviewing post flight data it was determined that a military uav practicing landings breached ...

Narrative:

A scheduled VFR test flight was finalizing the last test points as the aircrew began to initiate practice approaches to verify the automatic land functionality and logic inside the previously scheduled restricted airspace. The recovery phase of the flight required the aircrew to operate the aircraft and implement an amended right hand traffic pattern which runs very close to the restricted airspace boundary. This amended right hand traffic pattern not only offered a larger safety margin; but allowed terrain separation as well; which is why a left hand traffic pattern was not utilized.while executing practice approaches; the aircrew noticed that the autopilot was not intercepting and maintaining the approach localizer/azimuth as briefed. The aircrew felt that the amended traffic pattern could be root cause of the lackluster performance and by widening and squaring the pattern; it could assist the autoland to regaining desired tracking performance. While flying the wider pattern; the aircrew was completely aware that they were operating extremely close to the airspace boundary; but felt they were still operating the landing pattern safely inside the restricted airspace. After downloading and parsing aircraft data; it was determined that an airspace breach occurred while the aircraft was on the downwind turning to base. The data shows that aircraft did cross the restricted boundary by 300 ft (estimate only) on three out of [more than] twenty patterns.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: While reviewing post flight data it was determined that a military UAV practicing landings breached the edge of the authorized restricted airspace envelope.

Narrative: A scheduled VFR test flight was finalizing the last test points as the aircrew began to initiate practice approaches to verify the automatic land functionality and logic inside the previously scheduled restricted airspace. The recovery phase of the flight required the aircrew to operate the aircraft and implement an amended right hand traffic pattern which runs very close to the restricted airspace boundary. This amended right hand traffic pattern not only offered a larger safety margin; but allowed terrain separation as well; which is why a left hand traffic pattern was not utilized.While executing practice approaches; the aircrew noticed that the autopilot was not intercepting and maintaining the approach localizer/azimuth as briefed. The aircrew felt that the amended traffic pattern could be root cause of the lackluster performance and by widening and squaring the pattern; it could assist the autoland to regaining desired tracking performance. While flying the wider pattern; the aircrew was completely aware that they were operating extremely close to the airspace boundary; but felt they were still operating the landing pattern safely inside the restricted airspace. After downloading and parsing aircraft data; it was determined that an airspace breach occurred while the aircraft was on the downwind turning to base. The data shows that aircraft did cross the restricted boundary by 300 FT (estimate only) on three out of [more than] twenty patterns.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of July 2013 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.

Attributes
ACN	1124343
Time
Date	201309
Local Time Of Day	1201-1800
Place
Locale Reference	ZZZ.Airport
State Reference	US
Environment
Flight Conditions	VMC
Light	Daylight
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	UAV - Unpiloted Aerial Vehicle
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 91
Flight Phase	Initial Approach
Route In Use	Visual Approach
Flight Plan	None
Person 1
Function	Pilot Flying Single Pilot
Qualification	Flight Crew Flight Instructor Flight Crew Instrument Flight Crew Multiengine Flight Crew Commercial
Experience	Flight Crew Last 90 Days 100 Flight Crew Total 3300 Flight Crew Type 150
Events
Anomaly	Airspace Violation All Types

While reviewing post flight data it was determined that a military uav practicing landings breached the edge of the authorized restricted airspace envelope.