Went for my first APM fixed wing flight this morning. It wasn't a great success, though through no fault of the APM.
I had the APM, RX and GPS sitting in the Bixler electronics chasis. I had a Gopro gaffer taped to the spine just in front of the engine "intake". To balance it I placed the 2200mAh battery as far back as I could (the front was roughly in line with the rear of the cockpit).
I thought I had it balanced right on the wingspan, but clearly I was wrong. The plane kept trying to pitch down. I should have landed right away but I instead attempted to fix it with trim (it never occurred to me to put it in stabilise). 60 seconds later we were parked in a tree.
Now to my questions:
How do you properly balance the Bixler with all this extra stuff in it? I don't think I could put the battery any further back. I removed the ballast from the nose long ago. The only way I see is to add a little ballast to the tail, but this seems quite inefficient to me.
I've since read that "level" for this aircraft is in fact when the rudder/elevator pushrods are level, and balanced 70mm from the leading edge. Is this correct?
Finally, if I'd had the presence of mind, could Stabilise have saved the day here?
Thanks for reading through this, I'd appreciate any advice you can offer.
For this interested I've attached the video of this flight below. Lots of near misses before the final blow. It took me over an hour to get it out of the tree (no helicopter rescue for me!). It turned out to be too high to throw things at, and I couldn't climb the tree. I ended up gaffer taping a bunch of long branches together and poking it out.
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Well it's dead.
After launch It seemed to be responding appropriately to my control inputs, staying relatively level on its own. Then I flicked it into stabilise and it suddenly rolled over. Flicked it back into manual mode but it was too late to save it. It hit the ground so hard the GPS module broke off its circuit board. I don't think any amount of gaffer tape and super glue can fix this guy.
See the GPS plot below (.kmz also attached). Blue and pink are Manual, purple is stabilise. The APM seems to think it went on some kind of adventure after the GPS module broke off!
Log & KMZ.zip
Public holiday in Melbourne today so I was able to head out this morning for another try. I had relocated to GoPro to the cockpit and adjusted the balance as necessary by adding weights to the tail. It was perfectly balancing at 65-70mm from the leading edge. I'd also rearranged the electronics a little, placing the ESC on the outside of the fuselage just under the starboard wing.
Anyway, today was not my day. I normally have no problems launching, but for some reason I could not get it right today. Either I wasn't giving enough throttle or wasn't throwing it hard enough, but it took several attempts to get it in the air. Even then I struggled to gain any altitude.
When finally launched it kept trying to roll right, despite my efforts to keep it level. Yes, I did check that the control surfaces were responding appropriately. On its final flight even with the stick full left and ailerons fully (and correctly) deflected it was still rolling right. Then this:
I've been thinking of getting a bixler. looks like fun. love your video.
wow..you came really close to some other trees before you finally hit "the one". Cool!!