Ryerson flying this Saturday Nov 19

[Frank v B]

Alton and the Ryerson team will be at the field this Saturday, Nov 19 from 12 - 2:30.

Frank

[Frank v B]

Well, we flew today... in the rain... two flights of approx. 7 minutes each....cold as heck....  The plane behaved fine once we had all the connectors connected.  My guess is there are about 25 connectors in this plane and one was missed.  The work was done under a sheet of clear plastic to protect the electronics.  Once all the connectors were connected, the plane flew fine.  There is a video of the first flight.  Alton will post the video... when he thaws out.   

The next flight should be the first autonomous flight on this plane.  Today's flights were to auto-tune the auto pilot system.  The video will show about 4 circuits with max roll input left and right and at least 3 circuits with max pitch deflection.

So then we went to Tim's to thaw out.  They pulled out the laptop and evaluated my flight.  Normally all the critiquing of my flying is done at the field in real time by my TEMAC friends from the peanut gallery.

Frank

[altonyeung]

Thank you once again Frank,

I wonder why no other TEMAC members were out flying today, weather was great! 
I have uploaded the video of flight 1. Frank did banking and pitching with autotune function of the autopilot system. The plane is now properly tuned and should be able to perform autonomous flights. The maximum roll angle was set to be 45 degrees which means when Frank holds full stick to the side, the plane should roll and stay at maximum bank angle with rudder output to keep the turn coordinated. Flights went well given the weather was "not ideal". At least we have proven the plane wasn't a Hangar Queen 
We will post some flight data of today's flight during the week.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXZ5tmss4UA

- Alton

[Frank v B]

Alton,

Thanks for posting the video.  The entire flight until the landing was at full throttle for safety reasons since the stall speed of this plane appears to be about 90% of full speed.
Just so you don't think there was a drunk sailor at the sticks:
- at 1:56  three circuits of banking was started.  This meant full deflection of aileron on the straight runs up and down the field.
- at 4:18 two circuits of pitch was started.  This was full up and down movements of the elevator.
- at 4:55 there were some more roll angle stick deflections... as the support team asked me to do.

The take-off was to the south and the landing was to the north so there could be a reasonable slope to accelerate for the take-off and bleed off speed for the landing.  It avoids any issues with the road.  This plane sometimes feels like it has the aerodynamic properties of an airfoiled brick.  Did not want to take a chance in the rain which could only make the stall issue worse.  The aim was to land on the grass and not the runway because of the minimum ground clearance for the prop* and it bleeds off speed faster after touchdown than if it were landed on the runway.

Frank

* wouldn't want to put a tear in the runway and have to listen to Graham all winter long about it.

[altonyeung]

If you want to know how a master's student can be to his thesis, this pretty much sums it all up. 

- Alton

[sihinch]

Good for you Alton! Great commitment.

Go for it!