Comment by Tom in ON on April 21, 2012 at 7:45am

Interesting, entertaining, well done.  Wonder what would be the best way to test the airspeed sensor.  

Also, I would build a simple rubber band launch catapult for that flying wing :)

Comment by Luke Cooke on April 21, 2012 at 9:56am

Great video, love the new format!!!!  I think Nick might have had a bad influence on your flying though. ;-)

Launching a flying wing in that way is quite tricky, I launch all mine from the nose, that way there is no yaw during the launch. (Trent don't want to bring back bad memories but If you are worried about your fingers dont apply any power until it has left your hand.)

When will ardupilot be back on the show?

Cheers

Luke

Foamzone.de

Moderator Comment by Gary Mortimer on April 21, 2012 at 10:06am

Once you add some weight to a wing nose launches are very tricky.

A bungee as Tom says is also cool but as long as you keep the wing loading down its fine.

Trent that Nova was flying way too fast.

Most people here seem to add and add and add oh yes they also add weight to their platforms and then are surprised when they don't fly well.

Keep it light and keep it simple. 

Comment by Francois Sabourin on April 21, 2012 at 11:15am

I'm glad to hear you will be using the APM again in the near future. If you have the pressure differential sensor that plugs into the board, you can use the on-board logging post-flight to calibrate the pitot-static system, and determine with precision the performance of your planes. If you install telemetry, the tuning process is even simpler and faster. Good luck.

Comment by Luke Cooke on April 21, 2012 at 12:46pm

Yes I imagine nose launching a wing with abit of weight to it would be tricky, you would probably need to launch with power on and risk your fingers. But I would imagine the raptor wouldnt be a problem to nose launch.

Maybe he'll give it a try???

Comment by Ramon L on April 21, 2012 at 5:45pm

Trent you should consider to put some color on the Raptor since that foam is sky blue, you can loose orientation and crash. I noticed you having a hard time keeping orientation. You can add some black strips on top and some color on the winglets too! 

Comment by R. D. Starwalt on April 22, 2012 at 6:04am

Ramon L has a great point. I realized this a couple weeks ago while watching another of the shows. Trent mentioned not being able to tell the orientation of the Nova at that time. Blue on blue.

Try a large Sharpie or other permanent marker and give one wing some'Normandy Stripes'.The weight gain will be almost unmeasurable (vs using color duct tape or the like).

This wont help when the Raptor is directly edge-on but then again F.W. types are hard to see that way anyway. In this case, marking the leading edge of one wing all black about 2 inches back will help.

The bizarre results of the See How A.S.I. makes me wonder if the pressure transducer ended up with some water/condensation in it on one of your previous, seemingly successful, flights? The transducer probably is not rated or designed for fluids. If it ingested some, multiple times, and it dried up in there, salts and other deposits could be affecting its operation. For those of you who enjoy the math (like me), here's the Wiki on Pitot tubes.

I enjoyed the 'bloopers' at the end.

 

Comment by R. D. Starwalt on April 22, 2012 at 6:41am

 Looking over the Winged Shadow Systemssite and the A.S.I. unit, could the static and pressure tubes be reversed? Does the static tube still have a plug in the end? (a crash could have dislodged it) Not knowing the part number of the transducer, my net browsing has shown some are 'dry/dry' types implying that wet fluids are a no-no.

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