Gluonpilot

Since it is now apparent that the Gluonpilot is water-proof, I decided to fly over the lake where we spent a weeks holiday in the midst of the woods in Småland in south Sweden.

I have re-installed my GP in a slightly bigger wing - TechOne Popwing and after some trimming it flies very well.

It was a calm and nice morning and I laid out a route along the shoreline from the only good take-off spot in a filed to where we have our house and brigde/dock by the water.

Here is a short video from the event!

Enjoy!

/Björn

http://youtu.be/DzsFrd0peOo

Very nice video! My vacation looks so far away now

Altitude hold is OK now?

Tom wrote:Very nice video! My vacation looks so far away now

Altitude hold is OK now?

Thanks Tom!

I increased throw to make the wing more responsive and it both tracks and keeps alt better. Still working a bit with altitude since the wing is not yet up to "Funjet standard"

/Bjorn

Hi,

After increasing throw I had much better tracking and alt hold. I have now also increased P-term in roll/pitchto 0,7 and 1,2 respectively and this has also improved further from what I can see.

Now to my question - the Popwing still does not reach desired altitude but lies just below - say 55-58 meters when alt is set to 60 meters. Is this something that can be improved? See attached screendump with alt curve.

I have added som up-trim (which was needed) but when entering flare the wing stalls so I need to go back a bit and I have also increased autp throttle to a good speed (about 50% throttle) but this has not helped reaching desired altitude.

Theory;

- The laps I have in my route are quite short so maybe the wing does not have time to stabilize around 60 meters.----> I could try to increase I-term in Pitch-Altitude

Any ideas welcome!

Cheers

Bjorn

Hi Bjorn,

Those few meters difference are the steady state of your system. The reason it does not reach the target altitude can be several:
- trim of elevator too low
- unsufficient P-term for pitch
- maybe 0° pitch is in reality -3° pitch?
- If you already increased throttle enough I can assume we can rule this out

In general you would need to add an I-term to your PID control loop, but this will add complexity for just reaching these 2 extra meters.

Tom wrote:Hi Bjorn,

Those few meters difference are the steady state of your system. The reason it does not reach the target altitude can be several:
- trim of elevator too low
- unsufficient P-term for pitch
- maybe 0° pitch is in reality -3° pitch?
- If you already increased throttle enough I can assume we can rule this out

In general you would need to add an I-term to your PID control loop, but this will add complexity for just reaching these 2 extra meters.

Hi Tom,

Yes - I agree, it looks very stable around that altitude slightly below target. I think we also can rule out elevator trim since I already have quite a bit of "up" trim - to the point where I get a stall during flare.

I will try your suggestion to increase P-term further just to see what happens and I agree it might not be of use to add the I-term - in all other aspects I think the wing is very well trimmed now.

Now I am off to a weeks vacation in the Baltic and I hope to return with a nice video or two of the area...

/Björn

Hi again,

Managed a late night flight (we have loooong evenings here ) yesterday to test increased P-term for pitch.

I increased in steps from 1.1 to 1.3, 1.5 and 1.7. Already at 1.3 I get a slight oscillation in pitch which shows as quick corrections that causes a quick wobble every 2-4 secs. Video recording is good to pick up that...

Therefore, I have concluded that 1.1 is a good pitch setting and I am OK with a few meters off the target since everything else is fine. (Maybe thrust angle could be changed and/or more throttle...)

Now off to the Baltic!

/Bjorn

Have a good vacation!!!

Thanks!

Managed a flight over an ancient castle (Borgholms slott) today but scr***d up the video since the lens had shifted

Still AP picture attached!

More to come soon!

Björn