Bill and Travis maiden a quad

[travis-k]

Hey! Yesterday, Bill and I made it out to TEMAC to maiden our latest build, a big ol' quad. It's got 18" props, 280kv motors @ 6S, and weighs in somewhere around 5 kg. It is based on the Tarot X4 frame kit, and we are using 8000 mAh batteries we had lying around the lab.



The goal of this quad is to use it to test some concepts we have been cooking up in the lab to improve rotor efficiency. But the first step is to get this thing running reliably, in order to build up some baseline performance numbers.

Our first flight was a little hectic (Andy was there to witness). We took off, flew up to 20 meters or so, tried a few flight modes out like altitude hold, and then tried to use the automatic landing feature, but it came down a little wonky and the landing was a bit hard. 

The remaining flights were a lot better, we did a few completely autonomous missions from take-off to landing, out around the field. Once we tuned the automatic landing, the thing was flying way better than I ever could 



Unfortunately we don't have a lot of pictures, because it was just Bill and I during the flights. Bill was manning the laptop, and I was on the transmitter.



We are going to make a few tweaks here and there, and then we'll be back out flying. There were some issues with the vibrations on the quad that we have to address, and it did get its typical Ryerson Tuck Tape Badge of Honour during that first rough landing.

As always, a big thanks to TEMAC for providing us the place to fly!

All the best,
- Travis

[sihinch]

Looks so awesome!  Sorry to have missed it.  Congrats.

You're still so far ahead of my learning, but I'm going to maiden "Robo-plane 2" tonight, after the original Robo-plane decided to shed it's wings mid flight, last week.  I will be trying altitude hold, GPS return home and loiter mode.  Nothing autonomous yet......but I'm determined to be as good as you Guys some day.

Now, these efficient props you mention, do you have any that will make me go faster? 

[travis-k]

Looks so awesome!  Sorry to have missed it.  Congrats.

You're still so far ahead of my learning, but I'm going to maiden "Robo-plane 2" tonight, after the original Robo-plane decided to shed it's wings mid flight, last week.  I will be trying altitude hold, GPS return home and loiter mode.  Nothing autonomous yet......but I'm determined to be as good as you Guys some day.

Now, these efficient props you mention, do you have any that will make me go faster? 

I'm happy to hear the robo-plane will be reborn! And if you get altitude hold, loiter, and return to home all checked out, I think the autonomous stuff will go very smoothly

There is no magic here, just some computers - also a quick prayer before flipping the mode switch can't hurt

And we'll see if we can get some more speed out of these things!!!

[bfeist]

That's also known as the "crash switch".

[Bill B]

Unfortunately making it faster also means it will crash faster... 

When we were leaving the field, 2 combines pulled up and started harvesting the beans. Would have been awesome to get some fpv footage over a combine Simon.