HI,
I have a goal to fly the arducopter higher than the current tallest structure 829.8 metres and record the flight. I intend on doing this on a calm day but expect winds at high alt. I do not know what speed to expect. Has anyone brought you copter to a high alt of this value and any learnings i can take?
Thanks
Damo
Replies
I launched mt 3D Robotics Hexa-C copter last week up in the mountains of Virginia and conducted a high speed vertical run for what appeared to be 15-20 seconds in Stablized mode. I was able to see it the entire time and hadn't considered just how high I went until I started my decent. It took a considerable amount of time to bring it down due to not wanting it to flip on descent. I worked my throttle back from roughtly 45% to a minium of about 10% to keep the props turning and still maintaining stability. At one point the copter began to wobble and I had to ramp up RPMs to bring it back to level while descending. I strong discourage anyone not willing to accept risks of flipping and crashing your UAV by maintaining a mimium RPM on your UAV.
My Hexa was equipped with Telemetry, a 5000 maH Lipo, and Gimbal Stablized Hero 2 camera which recorded the entire run. At present due to weight increase to my factory setup, my Lipo on normal flight runs for 8-9 minutes. I did run into a issue with my Quanum Battery Telemetry monitor, I lost signal with the copter's battery somewhere at 150 meters as the copter ran up to 650 meters AGL vertical assent so I am unable to assess how many milli-ampre it took to get to that altitude. I was able to successfully bring it back down and land it, but I forgot to reconnect the battery telemetry to see how much was consumed.
Hope this helps. I have telemetry logs,KMZ file, and video I plan to share later when I get back home from work. Will post for those who are interested.
Some high flying :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGimzB5QM1M
As far as I remember there were one or two cases that ArduCopter did fly to over 700 meters altitude due ehem.. minor software issue looong ago. So yes we know that they can fly high. (btw pilot got his copter back with RTL command so everything were ok after all).
FPVLeif in Norway has flown hes hexa (or was it octo) to over 1km of altitude. In technically there is no limits on how high you can go. It's more like physical limits.. Your battery and also thrust that your motors can create. More higher you go, faster motors needs to spin to keep same lift due air is getting thinner.
We have flown our jDrones copters on altitudes of 1.8km MSL here in Thailand and later this year we have plans to go and test them on 2.5km altitudes (flying at mountain areas, not in free space)
The tallest tower in the middle is 330 meters. Don't know whether my tricopter was higher than it or not? The gopro looked down a little bit.
330.jpg
50 miles outside of Dubia, it's horizon-to-horizon of completely empty desert for one, way outside any flight paths, and would be a very suitable venue (heat issues aside).
I don't think anyone is advocating breaking any aviation rules here, merely to ensure the OP obtains the correct permission to do this.
And I for one, would like to see this done - pushing the boundaries and all that.
My Mikrokopter was at 1025m AGL once. There was even time for some hovering and hesitation on the way up.
I'm at 800m and can fly to 200m no problem. I think you'll only really run into air thinness above 2,000m.
However, 800m of vertical climbing and descending? Big juice...
I don't condone the activity but if you're using 2.9.1b you'll find that it thinks a waypoint is complete once it's completed the horizontal component even if it hasn't reached the vertical requirement. This is resolved in AC3.0 so you can put waypoints right on top of each other horizontally but at different altitudes and it will properly climb. With AC3.0 we've found that it doesn't always achieve it's vertical speed targets so if you want to climb at say 3m/s you should set the WP_SPEED_UP to be 450 (4.4m/s).
BTW, is there an altitude record for multicopters? I know with a plane it's easier to get up high but I tend to shy away from taking my copter too high even though I don't have a range issue with my fpv gear.
What I would suggest is put it in Loiter and do altitude tests, increasing by 100 meters each time to gauge your batteries. I have a perfect place to try this and might give it a shot. I'm already at 250 meters starting altitude but I'm near an airport so have to keep it safe.
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