My first flight with Gluon

[blagerst]

This weekend I tested my Funjet/GP2 and it was a total success.
I have followed all instructions and hints I have been reading about so I was well prepared. The weather was calm and tmp 6C, could not be better in November.

After launching the plane and a couple of turns I switched in the Stabilized Mode and the plane immediately leveled, wow it works.
I noticed my stick movements almost not override, turn radius was 100 meters or more, but the plane was for sure stabilized so I switched in Autonomous Mode.

My flight plan was only two waypoints, one close to home and the other 800 meters out. The plane turned quickly towards the first waypoint and increased also altitude up to 100 meters GPS, as programmed.
Almost out of sight I saw the plane turned smoothly left and returned - that moment made my day!
I stayed in auto mode for a while and the plane went out and back 4 times. This was so fun and I continued with several flights at different altitudes.

I noticed the plane turned differently at the outer waypoint, sometimes left and some right. What is controlling that?

My compliments to Tom, his autopilot seems to be reliable and tolerant.
I look forward to future flights.

Best regards
Bo

[Tom]

Hello Bo,

Congratulations on your first flight! It was very daring of you to make a first flight almost out of sight

I see you changed the winglets on the funjet, it looks very cool. Does it fly better like that?

About the turn radius: it will usually be larger than when flying manually, especially with fast planes like a funjet. 3 ways to make the turn radius smaller:
- Lower the speed
- Make the maximum roll angle larger (I usually set it at 45 or 50 degrees for a funjet that is well tuned)
- Set some differential elevon. (this will work better on larger wings)

About the left-right turn: Yes I am aware of this problem. I should take some time to debug it. Until now I always blamed floating point rounding errors when you nearly hit the waypoint, but it might as well be a small bug. It only shows on agile planes, not on slow ones.

Do you already have an XBee modem?

[blagerst]

Hi,
Yes it was nice for everybody that the plane turned back.
The main purpose with the winglets was to reduce loss of altitude when turning but it also improves overall stability, I like it.
About left/right turns, it should be nice always to make turns up against the wind-direction.
I guess implementation of that implies input of wind parameters and always do download when out at the field.

About Xbee yes, I will get one with the next Gluon.
/Bo

[icebear]

Congrats Bo - well done and you seem to be the first to fly GP2 - at least in Sweden !

I can really recommend an XBee link - once you try it you will never fly without...

/Björn