So tweeked the nacelle angle to compensate for wind. GPS was only giving 0-2Hz. After autopilot took off & tried to turn her unsuccessfully, switched to manual. A gust of wind combined with the tweeked nacelle angle probably flipped her over. That was the end of Vika 1's 2nd fuselage & 3rd camera. $100 + $150 tax by our calculations.

You can see the tweeked nacelle angle in that 1.

Maybe we should just buy cameras in packs of 10. The A480's last stand.

Tilting the fuselage to tilt the camera is never going to be practical
because it requires tilting the IMU & the GPS. Since only the forward
propellers can be tilted while the aft propeller must point down, that
creates a tendancy to flip over. All propellers should point the same
way.

After repairing Vika 1 & fixing the GPS problem through redundant
packets, did some static hovers to look for problems. This produced the
1st long exposures of Vika 1 under the stars since Major Marcy appeared
9 months ago.

This has been a risky affair as regards making men fall in love.

Then she had yet another crash. Took off normally, then she started
tilting left & heading towards the parking lot. Took over manually,
propellers stopped because collective was still off. Raised collective
& she started flipping over uncontrollably right & forward. Flight
recording showed what appeared to be a loss of the right forward motor.

So why does Vika 1 have so many problems when the stock Mikrokopters are
shown working effortlessly, crash free, & maintenance free? Maybe the
full time attitude hold. Maybe they're not optimizing every last ounce
of weight with crazy camera mounts. Maybe they're not using super cheap
Chinese parts with exposed windings & barely reflowed solder paste.
Maybe they're not documenting daily experiences with them in all
weather.

MARCY 2 HELL

Marcy 2 isn't going so well either. Ran another board with shorter
radio traces but hopefully common enough to be used with Marcy 1.

Yet another blown photoresist job. It appears any ambient UV light is getting into the mask.

Everyone is switching from double sided tape to grip tape. Double sided
tape stretched too much but grip tape is now proving too slippery.

OTHER AEROSPACE NEWS

Maybe being shut down by an Air Force heroine makes you appreciate the mundane, but finally shot the huge swarms of birds that rise in
the thermals produced by local parking lots. They autonomously organize
into rows that we guess parallel the shore & rise over 1000ft.

The other autonomous system of note was the Ares 1 launch abort test.
Pretty tough getting something to take off autonomously, control
attitude in 16g of acceleration, turn itself upside down, separate from
its 1st stage, & deploy parachutes all using solid rockets.

Despite what our rulers say, don't think private industry will have the
business case to fund anything like that in our lifetimes. Any commercial
human spaceflight program would have to be commercial in name only.