IRIS + First Autonomous Flight and RTL today

[sledge57]

So after a few months flying the Iris I finally got up the nerve to try this.

First I did a short flight and initiated a RTL... PERFECT! Landed almost dead nuts on the home point, in fact I did probably 8 - 10 RTLs today and was never off by more than 3 feet or so, I'm impressed.

Next flight I went to Auto Mode, I have to admit I started freaking out, I didn't realize how far my way points actually were from me. I programmed a few flights in Tower last night in my hotel room and didn't have a good grasp of how far it was actually going to fly from me, LOL

So after it was headed to my 3rd way point I freaked because I thought it was an escape in progress and I switched to RTL and she came home, the PUCKER FACTOR was high, did I mention I'm flying in the mountains in PA?

After getting my nerve together I tried again and while nervous I didn't freak out (I did keep my finger on the RTL switch though lol) and the Iris flew the mission perfectly.

I flew this mission a couple more times and loaded and flew a couple more missions too. Everything was flawless, except my video. I have to learn how to make the transition from WP to WP smoother, I'm thinking a 2 or 3 sec delay at each WP maybe.

Regardless this has been the most fun I've had with any of my MR's to date and is the reason I bought this.

Going to have lots of questions I think. I am flying again tomorrow hopefully I can get so decent video to post, if not I'll post a short crappy one lol.

 

[cootertwo]

That's great. I still haven't tried an auto flight, but will soon.

 

[sledge57]

Didn't you put a different GPS on your Iris+ (M8N I think) If so I'd love to see a pic of it mounted .

 

[cootertwo]

Here ya go, and yes, that is dust on my Iris

 

[sledge57]

LOL That's not dusty, you should see my FW 550, it embarrassing...

Thanks for the pic, I'm going to order one for mine, easy to set up?

And here's a video from today, I flew about 6 different autonomous flights today , trying different things with ROI and creeping up on longer flights.

The railroad bridge is the object of my affection these days (love old RR stuff) I hope to get some good video up close before I leave Friday.

The flights before this one were to make sure my altitude was high enough to clear the trees and to get up my nerve for longer flights.

The flight in this video the Iris is far enough away that if I took my eyes off it I wouldn't be able to easily pick it up again, also my video to my monitor starts to break up at this distance increasing the pucker factor by about a factor of 3...