First flight today in full manual mode with a brief session on stabilization mode. Plane: Slowstick - short wings, spinning 8x8 carbon prop, rudder elevator only.
Autopilot: Ardupilot mounted on stick in box from Bask Aerospace.
Ground Station: APM uploaded lastest firmware and using xbee link for comms to laptop.
Flight Report: Like all good flights it went well until the plane flipped onto its back and then I throttled back and waited for the hard landing / crash. Slowstiks are not good inverted is all I have to say not possible to recover from low altitude as I was setting up for a landing.
Flight Data: Mavlink worked well, captured data plays back on APM planner.
Things to do Now: will investigate flight data to see if it was an autopilot input or just the wind.
Satisfaction Factor: 7/10
richie
Picture above: Wind Tunnel Testing anyone? its not really for my planes but I get to work on some interesting stuff - I own and run a test laboratory here in brisbane.
Comments
the tunnel was square for testing HVAC lourves , maybe the next one will be round and be given a dual use of testing an airframe, at the moment however all my testing is done in the air. and sometimes the ground.
richie
Straws work great, I helped develop a small wind tunnel for middle school tech labs back in the early nineties. We used the straws with good effect. Our biggest problem was the development of a smoke generator and wand. We settled on a low speed fan so that the smoke system could keep up. It worked very well.
Also square tube is not the best one for wind tunnel. It should be roundish. When you run tests on square tube, results are not equal as corners will have different air pressure than middle areas.
Try to make it as a tube and you will have a lot better test results.
I've build one once. First thing you should test, is whether the turbulence (created by the fan) is filtered properly. I ended up having to use straws to linearize the airflow.