Location
Avila
About
About Me:
Head of Special Projects Bureau at The Register
Please tell us a bit about your UAV interest
Currently working on the Pixhawk-controlled Vulture 2 spaceplane, as part of the Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) project (http://reg.cx/1Uyg). Plenty of photos on our Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/registerparis/
Hometown:
Los Narros
Activity Feed
"@Andrew - A mad idea, but strangely attractive. Doable, but we'd need a completely different launch set-up/release mechanism for such a flight - the latter being the big challenge. I'd go for 5,000m or so for starters, just to give the props a…"
"@Paul The RFD 900 is too big to fit in the aircraft. Here's the inside of the fuselage before we fitted the radio: http://regmedia.co.uk/2014/03/05/vulture_avionics_rig_annotated_big..."
Our Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) project is in good shape following last Saturday's PRATCHETT avionics test flight, named in honour of the late Discworld author Sir Terry.Our US allies at Edge Research Laboratory launched the…
"Fantastic work by Edge Research Lab and Andrew Tridgell. Beers all round, and details on the mission to follow."
"@Eli - For the rudder servos, the foam is far greater insulation than they'll have in the final aircraft. That's not an ideal set-up for the test, I know. Regarding the canard servos, in the aircraft they'e sitting directly under a Raspberry Pi in…"
"Hopefully, our monitoring of the servos will tell us if all is well. If they do freeze, they may have thawed by the time the pursuit team gets there, but probably not on touch-down. I'll keep everyone posted on the results as soon as we have them."
"Good luck with your own flight."
"Yes, we've done a few tests in the freezer, but that's not low enough. We've got a plan to replace the lubricant in the servos with ultra-low temp grease, if necessary.
Batteries are Energizer Ultimate Lithium - the only ones guaranteed to work, in…"
Batteries are Energizer Ultimate Lithium - the only ones guaranteed to work, in…"
The final Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) test flight - codenamed PRATCHETT - will take off tomorrow (Saturday) from Colorado Springs East Airport at 13:30 local time (19:30 GMT).The mission - designed to test our Vulture 2 spaceplane's…
We're gearing up for the final avionics test flight of the Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) project, and have dubbed the mission PRATCHETT ("Planes Reactive Airborne Tests Checking Heuristically for Extreme Technological Tantrums") in…
"Yes, we'll sort that out."
We're obliged to the chaps down at Exmaps for sticking the data from a Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) test flight into their "Drone Flight Logbook". The virtual two-hour High Altitude Ballooning (HAB) mission makes for entertaining…
"The latter. They work fine for the purposes of HIL."
We've been quietly beavering away at hardware-in-the-loop simulations for our Vulture 2 spaceplane, and Pixhawk wrangler Linus Penzlien has finally got the aircraft to land itself at a virtual Spaceport America.The HIL work involves ArduPilot…
A couple of weeks back, myself, David Patterson of EDGE Research Laboratory and our plucky Playmonaut went to check the lie of the land at Spaceport America.We're still waiting on FAA approval for the launch of our Vulture 2 spaceplane in New…
"No comms on this flight - just logging data on the SD card."
