We tried one hover test this morning about 11:45 am. The vehicle was stable, but we continue to have vertical throttle control issues, as it climbed above the fork lift then aborted when the ropes jerked on it hard enough to exceed the tether tilt abort limits. This happened simultaneously with my hitting abort. Luckily we missed the forklift and did no physical damage. The pressure readings were being erratic all morning and after the flight we did some debugging and one of the transducers shorted, taking out the A/D converter and letting out the electronic magic smoke. Putting short protection on the 4-20 ma transducers has been on my "I really should do that some time list". I guess it will be friday. So if all goes well we will be doing the 4 hour drive again on Friday night.
After determining that the vehicle was not fixable in the desert, we also received a delivery of propellant and decanted that from drums to smaller poly totes. Right before sunset we flew the helicoipter with the full RTK gps stuff running. Much more accurate, Seems to be more stable, but we ran out of light so we will test that more this weekend.
Its 9:30 PM we are 2:45 min from home (my son is driving), I'm on the web with the new MiFi wireless access point. It does not work at the FAR site, but works on the road to and from. In the past its always been that both my son and I wanted to drive as being passenger was really boring,with live internet access now the other eway around as the passenger can surf,,,, I think I'm going to go read the Firday XKCD.
2 comments:
Just hook the transducer up to some wires, I'm sure there'll be a project to do the software eventually...
:-)
U need to get equipped for night flying.
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