Posted by Gary Mortimer on October 25, 2009 at 10:24pm
Very lucky last week to get the chance to fly one of these fantastically scfi machines. The chaps were over from Germany on a UK tour and I somehow cracked an invite.
Thats all of us looking very serious, I think an important thing to note is that there were four real helicopter pilots there!
That's the venue.For 18,000 euros you certainly get a capable machine that was very easy to fly in some wind, it was at least 15 knots above the trees and the machine just stayed pinned where you left it in the sky.I took the chance to maiden a slightly different Manta as I think I may have mentioned elsewhere ;-)
Sorry to hear about your experiences Toby and Hooks , Jack I will ask Mike if he took any shots like that, I did'nt take a camera. Plenty of people were getting close ups, but perhaps not close enough of it.
That has taken the shine off things to hear that, but sadly it puts them in the pile with the rest of them. That's why Mike built his own open source quads. Not one of the companies selling quads seem to enjoy happy relationships with their customers!
Sure wish they were as keen to help thier customers. recently purchased the x-3d Brushless from asctec.de (hobbyline).1300 USD. it has all the bells and whistles Funpilot, x-acc and the x-mag blah blah blah...I can't get it to fly. Soft and firmware seem totally unstable and untested..asctec team has been less than supportive. I found myself up at 3am on the phone with the chaps only to get a "huh? that sounds strange..we'll call you back". No E-mail No phone Call as of yet. Sad. Hind sight being 20/20, I would not have baught it ....Anyway, hope my easystar ardupilot project goes smoother
Too bad you couldn't snag a closer look at the octorotor. Would have been interesting to see the fuselage & how the rods were joined, but obviously it wouldn't be 18,000E if you could photograph it. Ascending Technologies is keen on not providing high resolution photos of their airframe either.
Yeah I think that once it had been taken over by China things did not pan out how they thought!!
But the standard quad which you can get for a deal price if you buy the falcon and use it for training, was thrown to the floor and into walls to show just how strong it was.
It was then taken outside and sent up and I mean up.
The GPS hold and fixed rate of desent that the setup provides meant all you had to do was pull the left stick down and the machine arrived back with us mortals pointing the same way and in the same place.
They are the same people who came up with the X-ufo design and constantly inventing different type of mult-rotor systems. Everytime I watch this video from 2007 it blows me away. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vylB_vdWLFg
Thats not me flying in that shot!! I'm stood to the left, you need this site http://www.asctec.de/main/index.php there was real time video, the entire thing is stunning in operation.
It's a great hold circle, don't get me wrong. I just find it interesting that it diverged off the "desired" path by the same amount on every pass. It's like there was some outside force (a hill maybe? warmer ground?) that fooled the algorithm in the exact same way, on every pass. The repeatability intrigues me. If you find out I would be interested to know what it is.
For $30k (aud) I wonder if they would hand deliver the AscTec Falcon 8?! :)
Hi Angus, yes not sure why thats one for Dean, the thing to remember is that was the very first chuck of the wing, at the centre of the circle you can see the launch so I hand flew it for the white bit then auto on. After this flight I added some nose weight and that made things better.
Very cool! One thing does intrigue me though, on the NW side of that loiter, it seems to flatten out on every pass... I wonder why it did that? Something to do with the geography/compression maybe?
Comments
That has taken the shine off things to hear that, but sadly it puts them in the pile with the rest of them. That's why Mike built his own open source quads. Not one of the companies selling quads seem to enjoy happy relationships with their customers!
I also have the same eperince with asctec. ´Last year I bought same product as you.
1. very bad support
2. very long support responce
I now have a very expensive toy collecting dust.
I can't recoment Asctec.
But the standard quad which you can get for a deal price if you buy the falcon and use it for training, was thrown to the floor and into walls to show just how strong it was.
It was then taken outside and sent up and I mean up.
The GPS hold and fixed rate of desent that the setup provides meant all you had to do was pull the left stick down and the machine arrived back with us mortals pointing the same way and in the same place.
Very cool
http://www.asctec.de/main/index.php?id=97002&lang=en&cat=pro
They are the same people who came up with the X-ufo design and constantly inventing different type of mult-rotor systems. Everytime I watch this video from 2007 it blows me away. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vylB_vdWLFg
G
For $30k (aud) I wonder if they would hand deliver the AscTec Falcon 8?! :)