New airframe and water test...

[icebear]

Hi all,

I have tested a really small airframe with the GP lately and Tom was kind enough to provide a GP with fewer headers and small BEC to save weight.

The airframe is a Swift2 wing and the whole setup weighs about 150 grams. Some data;

WIngspan 22 inches (54 cm)
Weight incl battery: 150 grams
Servos: 2xHitec 4 gram
Rx: Hitec Optima stripped from its case and shrink wrapped
ESC: Small 6A brushless
Motor: Small chinese outrunner from omgfly.com
Gluonpilot with external BEC
Xbee adapter board from SParkfun

This setup flies very well and I use a 2S-450mAh pack which gives about 15 minutes duration on auto. The motor seems to drax 2A on cruise which is more than expected so I just got a slightly better one from BRCHobbies to test,

Unfortunately I did som flight testing over water last Saturday and managed to fly MANUALLY into the sea 100 meters from shore.

In spite of spending 5 mins under water I managed to salvage GP, BEC, Servos, RX but lost the ESC and keychain camera.

So now it's official - the Gluonpilot is water proof!!!

Cheers,

Bjorn

[Jorn]

Impressive recovery and good to know GP is waaterproof (at least to some extent).

Bjørn, would you care to share the purpose of miniatyrizing? (just curious)

[icebear]

Impressive recovery and good to know GP is waaterproof (at least to some extent).

Bjørn, would you care to share the purpose of miniatyrizing? (just curious)

Yes, I was quite impressed that all electronics incl XBee, GPS, Servos, Rx, GP survived the "treatment"...

The purpose of making a small UAV or MAV was just to see if it was possible to have a really small autonomous vehicle. It is also quite nice to have a small unit that fits easily in the car and still be able to do some missions. I planned a route around a friends house and flew a fully auto path (start/route/land) and landed in their lawn.
Nothing I would do with the Funjet...

However now I havde decided to move up to a slightly bigger wing to increase runtie and also stability. The small wing was pushed around in gusts of course.

/Bjorn

[icebear]

Hi again!

After salvaging the equipment from my Swift wing I have now moved the gear to a bigger "Techone Popwing" which has 900 mm wingspan and weighs 500 grams incl battery and Gluonpilot w. Xbee.

After the initial testflight it is evident that this setup has a lot better range - runs on a 3S1100 pack for the moment.

It also carries the Keychain camcorder with wide angle lens with ease of course...

Now for a quick question;

- with the standard parameters for pitch/roll the Popwing was kind of sluggish in both altitude hold and navigation. Does anyone have experiences with flying wings and any suggestions for tuning parameters?

Thanks!

/Bjorn