Ryerson training- Sat., June 3

[Frank v B]

Alton will be there to test fly his auto-pilot* controlled airplane this Saturday.  He will set up after 11 am and will be ready to fly around noon.  I will get there around noon after my morning (dis?)appointment.

Frank

* after the auto-idiot (me) takes the plane off the ground.

[Frank v B]

Well, I am starting to like flying the plane now that I know all its warts and behavioural problems.  It is amazing, in hindsight, that the plane is still in one piece after its many attempts to challenge the laws of aerodynamics.  The plane is a bit of an overpowered* airfoiled brick with the grace of a bumblebee loaded with pollen**.

Two flights today.  All went well on autopilot except for one instance in the first flight near the clump of trees it wanted to do a slow death spiral into the ground.  Went to manual mode quickly and corrected the flight path.  The second flight was on autopilot for about 12-14 minutes without touching the sticks once.

Here's to hoping Alton will post the video of the two flights.

Frank

* 1000 watts delivered via a 6S 5,000 mah flight battery
** according to the laws of aerodynamics, a bumblebee should not be able to fly.

[altonyeung]

Thank you Frank,

Great day for flying today. Here are the videos from the two flights. Both successful and I was able to capture wind data from the autonomous circuits.

Flight 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVvap7lwqNk

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_M-cK8ymvEbbHRxODlrdVhrMTA


https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_M-cK8ymvEbdGJqNkNRWXl4M00

Flight 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUsmMU3K8gg

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_M-cK8ymvEbU2RJSjRTUVJRZ3c

[Frank v B]

Neat!

Notice the spiral event (loss of autonomous control) at 13:55 of flight 1.  On the video it clearly shows the spiral to the right.  On the graph it shows as the blue path on the close-up over the trees.

Note the yaw in the plane on both landings.  I have stopped trying to land on the runway because of the low ground clearance of the prop and the bouncy landings.  The grass absorbs the bounces a lot better.  This plane has a very high stall speed so landings are hotter than a normal plane.  I try to fly it about a foot off the runway when landing until it settles bounces in.

Frank