Ambient Static Pressure

Short Name or Variable Name
PSF, PSFD, PSFRD

"Static pressure," also called "ambient pressure," is the pressure of the atmosphere at the flight level of the aircraft. It is called static pressure to distinguish it from dynamic pressure, which is the difference between the pressure present at a forward-pointing aperture like a pitot tube on the aircraft and the ambient pressure. On research aircraft operated by NCAR, static pressure is measured using Paroscientific Digiquartz Series 1000 transducers that sense the pressure at "static buttons," special ports mounted on the sides of the fuselage in locations selected to deliver a pressure close to the ambient. Additional corrections, based on reference measurements such as those from a trailing cone, are applied to remove small remaining deviations between the pressure at the static buttons and the true ambient pressure. See the discussion in the tutorial in the "Documents" section at the end of this page. In that section there is also a discussion of the current method of determining pressure corrections by reference to a Laser Air Motion Sensor (LAMS); see also the discussion of the LAMS elsewhere in this discussion of RAF Instruments.

Model: Paroscientific Digiquartz Series 1000

Measurements Provided: Absolute Pressure

Lead Contact
Adriana Bailey