This is my latest modification of the EasyGlider to coincide with the official release of Ardupilot 2.2.I call her the “EG 2.2”. The last modification, found here,involved increasing the fuselage volume but this is a little more ambitious and includes standard tail conversion to an inverted V-tail, moving the motor to the rear in a pusher configuration, moving all servos to the control surfaces and extending the nose by two inches. The nose was extended to get the CG set without having to add nose weight and to make room for the larger autopilot and data logger.The booms are made from collapsible fishing pole segments and house the elevator cables. The elevator servos are joined with a Y connector that contains a reverser for one of the servos. The ailerons are joined with a simple Y connector.She had her maiden flight yesterday and she flies fine. As soon as the new Ardupilot and shield arrive, I’ll get them installed and restart my flight tests. I’m predicting much better success this time since there will be throttle management and I have a better feel for how the code changes effect flight.
For the moment, she's grounded. Apparently the new Ardupilot with the ATmega 328 doesn't work with the Sparkfun FTDI cable. You can upload the code but cannot read/write from the setup utility.
I just flew my diagnostic flight to get an idea of the actual power required for cruising speed. I'm defining cruising speed as best L/D speed which is not much faster than minimum sink (just above stall). I found the stall speed and guestimated the cruising speed for this test. The first plot shows Watts and amps over the stable, 3-6 minute flight time. Average power was 36W and average current was 3.6 amps.
The second plot displays speed aquired by pitot-static and by GPS over the same flight interval. The pitot-static average cruising speed was 35 MPH. The GPS speed was all over the place and I don't know why it was so irratic.
I don't know how Dean is calculating only 25 Watts for cruising speed of a 2.5 lb plane but you certainly won't get that with an Easyglider!
David - The nose to wing leading edge is 12.75 inches. The wing root chord is 8 inches. I received my ardupilot and shield today but I still want to fly her with the data logger first to get some basic info on stall speed, cruising power consumption, etc. Hopefully I'll get that done in the next few days.
Bryan,
that's a great mod. I broke my EasyFly ST-330 (EG Copy) the other day so I might look at doing a similar mod.
I've been eyeing that cockpit area to see what I can cut out, now I can remove everything.
Thanks
best
Matt
Comments
Unfortunately, I had ESC problems and lost this airplane in a fire. Overall, I was pleased with how she flew with the inverted V-tail.
best
Matt
The second plot displays speed aquired by pitot-static and by GPS over the same flight interval. The pitot-static average cruising speed was 35 MPH. The GPS speed was all over the place and I don't know why it was so irratic.
I don't know how Dean is calculating only 25 Watts for cruising speed of a 2.5 lb plane but you certainly won't get that with an Easyglider!
that's a great mod. I broke my EasyFly ST-330 (EG Copy) the other day so I might look at doing a similar mod.
I've been eyeing that cockpit area to see what I can cut out, now I can remove everything.
Thanks
best
Matt
-
1
-
2
of 2 Next