Spring Vol. 23, No. 2

Pentek's Talon® RTX rackmount series recorders are designed for extremely harsh environments and provide unmatched performance and storage capacity in a new, military-specified rackmount chassis. Designed for field operation, the RTX extreme rackmount series provides aggregate recording rates up to 5 GB/sec with up to 245 TB of SSD storage.

Military Specifications

The Talon RTX rackmount recorders are designed to meet or exceed military specifications for temperature, altitude, shock, vibration, radiated emissions, conducted emissions, ESD, sand and dust. The following list contains these military specifications.

• Vibration: MIL-STD-810F, method 514.5
• Shock: MIL-STD-810F, method 516.5
• EMI/EMC: MIL-STD-461E, CE101, CE102, CS101 CS114, RE101, RE102, RS101, RS103
• ESD: MIL-STD-1686A
• Sand & Dust:MIL-STD-810F, method 510

Chassis Design

All Talon RTX rackmount chassis are specially designed using heavy-duty wrought aluminum extrusions to provide superior torsional strength. Extrusions are partially overlapped for superior EMC. Shown in Figures 1 and 2, the chassis is 4U in height, with a depth of only 22". A fullyloaded chassis weighs as little as 45 lb.

Figure 1. The rackmount RTX chassis is designed to meet or exceed military specifications

Rear-panel I/O includes bulk-head-mounted SMA connectors, a 4-pin 38999 power connector as well as motherboard I/O. Rear-panels are modular and customizable allowing the end-user to specify the desired connectors.

Figure 2. The rear panel includes all analog signal connections and customizable to the application requirements

The operating system drive can be internally hard-mounted or can be made removable. Additionally an internally-mounted optical DVD writer is optional. All drives, OS, DVD and data, are protected from dust with EMI filters.

This new chassis was designed in collaboration with Nova Integration Solutions. "Nova was the ideal partner for designing a chassis that would meet all of our customers' MIL-spec needs," said Chris Tojeira, Recording Systems Director at Pentek. He continued, "Through months of collaboration, we were able to create a unique product optimized for extremely harsh environments."

"Pentek has the pulse on the market and knows what engineers need when it comes to rugged MIL-spec systems and data recording," said Mike Martyniak, VP of Marketing, Nova Integration Solutions. "We were pleased to satisfy their requirement and create an extremely dynamic chassis for high-volume data recording."

Floating Inner Chassis

In order to withstand conditions of high vibration and shock, the RTX rackmount chassis is designed to isolate all critical system components by placing them on a floating inner chassis.

Figure 3. The inner chassis floats with respect to the outer enclosure to improve isolation from shock & vibration

This inner chassis is suspended using multiaxis mounts that attenuate externallytransmitted shock and vibration energy. This allows the system to perform flawlessly in aircraft, ships, ground vehicles, UAVs or any other areas of high shock or vibration.

QuickPac® Drive Packs

In order to provide field engineers the ability to quickly remove and replace storage drives in the field, Pentek has developed the QuickPac Drive Packs for use in the Talon RTX rackmount chassis. These canisters hold eight SSDs. Up to four QuickPac Drive Packs can be installed in a Talon RTX rackmount chassis.

Front view of the QuickPac Drive Pack

Back view of the QuickPac Drive Pack

Fastened by four thumbscrews, QuickPac Drive Packs can easily be swapped in the field, allowing users to replace those filled with data with new, empty ones with very little downtime. QuickPac Drive Packs can be transported to the lab for offload or analysis, using one of Pentek's Talon offload or playback systems.

Figure 4. Chassis View showing one QuickPac Drive Pack partially withdrawn

Cooling and Filtering

Every RTX recorder includes a highpowered forced-air cooling system, to allow the proper transfer of heat from hot system components out the back of the chassis. Cool air is pulled from the front of the system through the QuickPac Drive Packs and forced over the hottest system components to ensure optimal cooling.

High-powered fans can be controlled via system software to allow the system to run quietly with lower cooling levels or at maximum air-flow levels. This can be adjusted to match the user's application.

Every RTX recorder includes filtering necessary to protect the system as well as the surrounding operating environment. EMI filters are placed on the front and rear of the chassis, to protect the surrounding environment from radiated emissions. A removable front panel filter protects the system against dust and sand.

Modular Power Supply

Every Talon RTX rackmount recorder includes a 600-Watt, 85 to 264 V, 47 to 400 Hz AC power supply. The power supply has an inline EMI filter to protect against conducted emissions and is isolated from the other electronics in the system, via an isolated chassis compartment.

The 400 Hz rating allows every RTX rackmount recorder to operate in aircraft and other environments where smaller, 400 Hz generators are used. For applications that require DC power, 24 V and 28 V DC power supplies are available to replace the AC power supply.

Talon RTX Extreme Rackmount Recorders

The chart below compares Pentek's different Talon Recording System solutions. As seen here, the RTX Rackmount series provide high performance and large storage capacity in a rugged package that meets high-level military specifications.

Talon Solutions Chart

Compare Talon products by selecting from the ones below. Comparison categories include Storage Drive Type, Max. Storage Capacity, Drive Removal, Dimensions, Weight, Max. Record Rate, Operating Temp, Operating Altitude, Vibration, Shock, EMI/EMC, Sand and Dust.

Compare			Compare
		RTV Value: Inexpensive, Quick Delivery			RTS Commercial: Commerical, HDDs
		RTR Rugged Portable: Handheld, Rugged, SSDs			RTR Rugged Rackmount: Rugged, SSDs
		RTR Rugged SFF: ⅓ Rackmount, Rugged, SSDs			RTX Extreme Rackmount: Extreme Environments, QuickPac Drives
		RTX Extreme SFF: ½ ATR, MIL Environments, QuickPac Drives, SWaP

Emissions Specifications Summary

Talon RTX Extreme Rackmount System Specifications Summary

  Note 1: Standard maintenance includes cleaning of the dust filter(s) as required.

Supplementary Information

Talon Recording Systems System Overview Recorder Selector Analog Systems Digital Systems By Chassis Portable Systems Rackmount Systems By Environment RTS Commercial Systems RTR Rugged Systems RTX Extreme Systems By Signal Type Analog Systems Digital Systems SystemFlow Software

Test Drive Pentek's Talon Recording Systems with the Free SystemFlow Simulator

The SystemFlow Simulator

The SystemFlow® Simulator demonstrates the Configuration, Record, Playback and Status screens to illustrate the intuitive controls and indicators of the recorder. It also includes the SystemFlow Signal Viewer to display simulated live signals being digitized and recorded by a Pentek analog signal recorder.

The SystemFlow Signal Viewer includes a virtual oscilloscope and a virtual spectrum analyzer for signal monitoring in both the time and frequency domains.

Pentek's SystemFlow Simulator for Talon analog and digital recording systems includes a virtual recorder server application that simulates disk and I/O transactions for a complete and realistic recording environment

SystemFlow API

The virtual server provides live, interactive operation for training or development. The user can easily switch between different recording systems in the Talon recording system product line. The intuitive user interface and API provide a simple transition from one Talon recorder to another.

• Live, interactive Talon recording system simulation
• SystemFlow API for developing and testing custom user interfaces
• Evaluation and training tool

Develop a Custom User Interface

Developers can use the SystemFlow API as a tool for developing their own UI to control the Talon recording system prior to delivery, saving valuable development time.

Remote Control Made Easy

The socket-based client-server architecture allows system engineers to get a headstart for the setup and test of the remote control of their Talon recording system.

Jump Start Development

With the SystemFlow Simulator, users can create system profiles containing all parameters and operational modes for easy recall in future recording sessions. All this, before ordering their recorder!