Made several tests of landing approach. Apparently the standard navigation is good enough, at least for EasyUAV.You need barometer, IMU and it can be done without range sensors (which wouldn't live more than a few landings in the mud).
It could be made even with circular waypoints. Place home fixed position on the far end of landing strip, and make the last waypoint at slightly negative altitude (-5m or so) around 50m from home. Provide plenty of horizontal space on the last waypoints (W-2. W-3...) in order to make sure it wont fly too high over the last waypoint. All this to make sure the last leg will be straight and short.
Recently I was flying in the fog. Perfectly calm weather
1st flight: took off, disappeared from sight after 100m on the other hand of the other side. Landed 10m behind me.
2nd flight: same, disappeared soon after gaining altitude. landed 10m left from me.
3rd flight: same, right in front of me.
4rd flight. Took off. Was hoping o trim it out on direction but it disappeared after 1s of flight! Lost it after maybe 10m. Totally blind, pulled up, turned more throttle, engaged ap some 3s after takeoff (quicker than I wanted to), then continued listening the voice of the motor and the dogs from all nearby villages. For 1 min I was looking around seeing milk and a darker area of trees that are normally 30m from me. Then heard tiny buzzing coming in... 'hesitating' to maintain throttle.. then silence. I knew what was coming next from the British war films when V1 motor cuts off. Rushed to the other corner of the airfield. A few s later heard a plane making sliding on the grass on the place I stood.
The landing precision is some 20m wide and 40m long. Not really road landing yet. And only in good weather. The rest is untested - a plane has very little maneuverability if we restrict its bank angle, which is a condition for safe landing.
The requirement is that straight landing is possible but then it must be long (8:1 glide ratio, but must be prepared for as much as 12:1 glide ratio during sunny day). 10m seen from 100m distance is uncomfortably low for emergency manual control for beginners. After some trials it is ok. The altitude is controlled until the last 30-40m in the sense it will try to maintain it, but will not try nose down at those distance. So the planning task is to LOSE the altitude along waypoints.
The real risk is the fence at the end of the landing field - it is really tempting to underestimate glide ratio during planning.
Impressive video Krzysztof. Straight landing approaches will indeed be a great advantage over circling down approaches in areas such as where I live, damn trees grow everywhere!
Thank you all for positive feedback.
VideoEditing: yes, I am wasting my time with Ulead VideoStudio trying to recover from usually low wireless video quality.
The EasyUAV sells silently and the website is terribly late, because there is something magic coming on a different business front - in a month or so the web should be up, maybe earlier.
The manuals are available since some time, while the website and sales are just unnecessary artifact of capitalism, as you know ;-)
Hi Krzysztof! Nice video again- when are you starting to sell products on the web site? One more - what are you using to make such nice audio/video documentary - I bet you are not loosing times with some "heavy" video editing software?
Yeay! You've inspired me to add a camera. We live parallel lives. (bordelon.net/ezstar)-- I"ve been working on my own stuff just like you but this is the first time I've seen anyone else with a scratch autopilot on an EZSTAR. Well done!
I don't use a baro yet, and with the UBLOX gps I get very accurate fixes... usually within 30 feet. I just flare 30 feet up and settle into the ground.
What is giving you trouble on automatic takeoff? I have a 200 watt brushless motor, so I have plenty of power on takeoff to hold a 20 degree pitch angle, wings level, full throttle.
A paste from vimeo: An example of using fixed waypoints with prescribed altitudes in order to create automatic landing pattern.
With some experience about chosing the distances and altitudes, EasyUAV can fly a full landing approach, like a real plane.
Several flights that day (10 in total) indicated touch-down circle radius of 10m - but it can shift +/-20m because of wind.
All landings took place with rear wind.
The landing point was too close to the edge of airfield (half of the landings ended 5-10m past the 'airfield'), but was not moved in order to gather statistics.
For indication, the landing zone is about 45m wide and 55m long.
Touchdown speed around 35km/h.
Cruise speed around 40-45km/h.
Weather: calm-no turbulence, 2m/s steady winds, slight fog, high humidity, temperature +7C, occasional mild rain.
As usually with EasyUAV, the flight was 95% automatic (autopilot enabled shortly after the takeoff) and the 'pilot' became camera operator.
Comments
Recently I was flying in the fog. Perfectly calm weather
1st flight: took off, disappeared from sight after 100m on the other hand of the other side. Landed 10m behind me.
2nd flight: same, disappeared soon after gaining altitude. landed 10m left from me.
3rd flight: same, right in front of me.
4rd flight. Took off. Was hoping o trim it out on direction but it disappeared after 1s of flight! Lost it after maybe 10m. Totally blind, pulled up, turned more throttle, engaged ap some 3s after takeoff (quicker than I wanted to), then continued listening the voice of the motor and the dogs from all nearby villages. For 1 min I was looking around seeing milk and a darker area of trees that are normally 30m from me. Then heard tiny buzzing coming in... 'hesitating' to maintain throttle.. then silence. I knew what was coming next from the British war films when V1 motor cuts off. Rushed to the other corner of the airfield. A few s later heard a plane making sliding on the grass on the place I stood.
The landing precision is some 20m wide and 40m long. Not really road landing yet. And only in good weather. The rest is untested - a plane has very little maneuverability if we restrict its bank angle, which is a condition for safe landing.
The requirement is that straight landing is possible but then it must be long (8:1 glide ratio, but must be prepared for as much as 12:1 glide ratio during sunny day). 10m seen from 100m distance is uncomfortably low for emergency manual control for beginners. After some trials it is ok. The altitude is controlled until the last 30-40m in the sense it will try to maintain it, but will not try nose down at those distance. So the planning task is to LOSE the altitude along waypoints.
The real risk is the fence at the end of the landing field - it is really tempting to underestimate glide ratio during planning.
VideoEditing: yes, I am wasting my time with Ulead VideoStudio trying to recover from usually low wireless video quality.
The EasyUAV sells silently and the website is terribly late, because there is something magic coming on a different business front - in a month or so the web should be up, maybe earlier.
The manuals are available since some time, while the website and sales are just unnecessary artifact of capitalism, as you know ;-)
I don't use a baro yet, and with the UBLOX gps I get very accurate fixes... usually within 30 feet. I just flare 30 feet up and settle into the ground.
What is giving you trouble on automatic takeoff? I have a 200 watt brushless motor, so I have plenty of power on takeoff to hold a 20 degree pitch angle, wings level, full throttle.
An example of using fixed waypoints with prescribed altitudes in order to create automatic landing pattern.
With some experience about chosing the distances and altitudes, EasyUAV can fly a full landing approach, like a real plane.
Several flights that day (10 in total) indicated touch-down circle radius of 10m - but it can shift +/-20m because of wind.
All landings took place with rear wind.
The landing point was too close to the edge of airfield (half of the landings ended 5-10m past the 'airfield'), but was not moved in order to gather statistics.
For indication, the landing zone is about 45m wide and 55m long.
Touchdown speed around 35km/h.
Cruise speed around 40-45km/h.
Weather: calm-no turbulence, 2m/s steady winds, slight fog, high humidity, temperature +7C, occasional mild rain.
As usually with EasyUAV, the flight was 95% automatic (autopilot enabled shortly after the takeoff) and the 'pilot' became camera operator.