Gluonpilot

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

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)

Jorn wrote: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

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