Was up in the UK Lakes a couple of weeks ago and managed to apply a couple of examples of rank stupidity having had a good run since maiden flight up 'til then. Given the ongoing uncertainties around multi rotor AP flying I decided to make telemetry a top priority.... no flying without a black box to sit down and study in the event of a ditching.
So I front-up at the cricket club, chat to the groundsman who happens to have been a one time BBC cameraman and was keen to see the latest semi-autonomous filming platform.
I did all the pre-flight checks (the list is self-expanding), had my friend Tim alongside, new to this type of voyeurism and completely unfamiliar with what a normal flight should look like. He had his iPhone on video and the modest but rugged as hell Canon G11 was my onboard video and gimbal ballast.
In transition (that fretful moment between take-off and catastrophe or hover ha ha ) I sensed something was wrong with pitch. Not enough to abort so I flipped the TH forward a blip and up she came...
TO BE CONT'd
Only joking, but recognition of how much bloody fun it is reading about someone else's crash - I've done it myself ha ha...
WAIT FOR IT...
She hopped cleanly up to about 3 metres with a marked FWD tilt and rapidly accelerated to...
Now for those of you who don't believe in telemetry here's the beauty of it. I KNEW right then and there that things had gone tits up but there was a smug part of me (no doubt in the reptilian part of the grey matter) that said - don't worry its being logged - you'll learn from this. It'll be something dastardly complicated that only deep telemetry analysis can divulge.
Meanwhile my friend Tim who'd never seen a multi rotor shrieked with impulsive wonder exclaiming "Wow that's cool". This really through me and resulted in some serious stick wobblies which didn't help at all. I nearly cracked up larfing too...
I by this time had the elevator stick fully backed but this was barely slowing her down. She was heading (real fast) towards some ruminating sheep on a tussocked hilltop some 180m away. I decided that prior to loosing sight of her I'd have to put her down so back on the throttle whilst maintaining full rearward stick and bang in she went. Fortunately the fabled stoicism of Hardwick sheep meant that none of them moved an inch - they carried on chewing the cud.
The humiliation of walking past the groundsman with 3 limp booms was bad enough but it didn't match the galling feeling of having missed something fundamental.
Of course I leaped to the inevitable false premise - bloody firmware I thought knowing that I was going to have to be coolly analytical about this and that the telemetry data would hold the answer.
We had two good videos, the G11 survived its second ditching (whereas the gimbal didn't) and we could hear the combination of adulation followed by consternation on Tim's take-off vid soundtrack.
So we get back to the Hotel and I download the Jeti and Graupner logs.
A few things checked out...
The Wookong-M was getting all the stick inputs. The GPS signal was good (although I was in ATTI mode). The batts and power system were fine. The Tx and Rx signals and Voltages were fine.
But these data really impressed me...
That led me to look elsewhere.
Now there is someone on this forum that knows the answer so hopefully he'll keep quiet.
Anyone else want to guess? I will come clean promise.:tennis:
So I front-up at the cricket club, chat to the groundsman who happens to have been a one time BBC cameraman and was keen to see the latest semi-autonomous filming platform.
I did all the pre-flight checks (the list is self-expanding), had my friend Tim alongside, new to this type of voyeurism and completely unfamiliar with what a normal flight should look like. He had his iPhone on video and the modest but rugged as hell Canon G11 was my onboard video and gimbal ballast.
In transition (that fretful moment between take-off and catastrophe or hover ha ha ) I sensed something was wrong with pitch. Not enough to abort so I flipped the TH forward a blip and up she came...
TO BE CONT'd
Only joking, but recognition of how much bloody fun it is reading about someone else's crash - I've done it myself ha ha...
WAIT FOR IT...
She hopped cleanly up to about 3 metres with a marked FWD tilt and rapidly accelerated to...
Now for those of you who don't believe in telemetry here's the beauty of it. I KNEW right then and there that things had gone tits up but there was a smug part of me (no doubt in the reptilian part of the grey matter) that said - don't worry its being logged - you'll learn from this. It'll be something dastardly complicated that only deep telemetry analysis can divulge.
Meanwhile my friend Tim who'd never seen a multi rotor shrieked with impulsive wonder exclaiming "Wow that's cool". This really through me and resulted in some serious stick wobblies which didn't help at all. I nearly cracked up larfing too...
I by this time had the elevator stick fully backed but this was barely slowing her down. She was heading (real fast) towards some ruminating sheep on a tussocked hilltop some 180m away. I decided that prior to loosing sight of her I'd have to put her down so back on the throttle whilst maintaining full rearward stick and bang in she went. Fortunately the fabled stoicism of Hardwick sheep meant that none of them moved an inch - they carried on chewing the cud.
The humiliation of walking past the groundsman with 3 limp booms was bad enough but it didn't match the galling feeling of having missed something fundamental.
Of course I leaped to the inevitable false premise - bloody firmware I thought knowing that I was going to have to be coolly analytical about this and that the telemetry data would hold the answer.
We had two good videos, the G11 survived its second ditching (whereas the gimbal didn't) and we could hear the combination of adulation followed by consternation on Tim's take-off vid soundtrack.
So we get back to the Hotel and I download the Jeti and Graupner logs.
A few things checked out...
The Wookong-M was getting all the stick inputs. The GPS signal was good (although I was in ATTI mode). The batts and power system were fine. The Tx and Rx signals and Voltages were fine.
But these data really impressed me...
- it reached 30Km/hr at 10m before I slowed her down
- was pulling 160Amps
That led me to look elsewhere.
Now there is someone on this forum that knows the answer so hopefully he'll keep quiet.
Anyone else want to guess? I will come clean promise.:tennis:
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