Skip to main content

Blade 300CFX Flight log 7/100 - Failures 1/100



So today was a really good day because I've managed to hit just under 15min of flight using the three batteries show in the picture and most importantly with a failure. The wind was alot calmer today which made flying a breeze (excuse the pun). I was also able to do nose in and slow circuits which was a huge confidence builder.

Now on to the specifics: Even though I was doing tail control (and to be fair there's a pretty bandwidth gyro in the loop as well), I found that rotating the heli to get it into a nose in position caused quite a drift away from me so much so that I had to quickly bring to tail-in in order to recover the heli (achieved about two succesful crash-worthy recoveries - Yeah!). This could potentially be a inherent in the dynamics (which i think it is) or there's further tuning that's required.

In any case, success once again. I can see why accumulating more flight time in bulk helps. You get to correct and improve that crucial confidence onto the next flight without having to wait to long. Interesting enough, that's how neural connections are enforced in one's brain...

Accumulated flight time: 44min

Comments

  1. It's amazing how you are passionate about helicopters

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Setting up the Tarot T4-3D gimbal on the Pixhawk 2.4.8 with Specktrum dx6 Gen2 toggle switch

So i took the challenge of setting up the Tarot gimbal not just for inherent stable video footage but also the flexibility of controlling it from the radio control. However, I encountered quite a few challenges which made me aware that I'm not the one only in this battle . It's quite clear that the setup of the Tarot gimbal using its own software is completely different from how it's been described in the Ardupilot/Arducopter webpage and in mission Planner. In Mission Planner and it's associated site makes one believe that it should be done through software, only to realize that in actual fact the setup is more complex than that.  After two evenings of trying various combinations, I realized the getting the pixhawk Aux channels to communicate with the T4 gimbal requires the following steps: - The Pixhawk Pin9 (Aux1) needed to be activated to pass through user-chosen channel from the transmitter. For the Dx6 Gen2 it was the channel 6, which can assigned the ...

GPS Navigation Ground Test #2 - Heading Error Computation Algorithm

This one is going to be quite short. Yesterday was the turn of the heading error algorithm to be tested. This heading error is calculated based on the heading the between two waypoints and heading measurement from the GPS module. This error will then be fed into a the roll controller as an input for roll command to reduce it to zero. But for the roll controller to work accordingly, the input must be right and within certain bounds. Same as the previous ground test, waypoints were loaded unto the autopilot and serial debug data was monitored using my Asus TF101 Tablet. It's worth saying that I managed to get serial data output straight from the LINUX command line . So the command line integration with VIM is complete. So it takes approximately under 10sec to upload and start debugging data of the autopilot. Sweet! Anyway, it was found that the GPS accuracy should be considered at 10-12m. Anything less than that and you'll be running for trouble. That is not a real conc...

Development of a new learning algorithm

Over the course of the past 2-3 weeks I decided to take the plunge of learning a new training algorithm which had quite alot of attention in the academic community but was also well constructed for easier implementation. The work by Peng et al on developing the Continuous Forward Algorithm (CFA) was my subject of attention. The overall premise behind implementing this algorithm was to investigate less memory-intensive machine learning algorithm that will not sacrifice accuracy or robustness. The ability to have a real-time learning system for low-cost electronics (such as the Teensy 3.6 ) has huge implications for the commercialization and affordable access of intelligent drones specifically for developing and even under-developed economies. The far-reaching impact of having technology leveraging efforts of farmers, herders, game rangers, biologists is the next wave of industrialization. This is the essence of this blog. The journey is very exciting and eventual results even mo...