EDIT: Complete Video has been Posted Here: http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/autonomous-52km-32mi-cross-country-flight

 

Tomorrow morning (7:00CST/13:00GMT) I'm going to attempt a marathon flight from north Arkansas into Missouri (see flight path below) with my Raptor140, and will be streaming it live on ustream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/mygeekshow

 

To get ahead of the safety questions, I will be maintaining <120m AGL, and will maintain LOS during the flight. The flight is also far from populated areas and airports. I'm attempting this flight with the exact airplane/equipment configuration that has flown over 400km of flawless flights, including four 42km+ flights. Finally, I've identified eight rally points and pre-target landing locations in case I need to end the flight early.

 

Wish us luck!

 

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Comments

  • Where do you have access to the recording?

  • Admin

    I guess Congrats are in order Trent.

    I missed the live show due to work. :( , but watching the recording now.

  • Trent, I watched the entire thing and I felt so bad when the first launch went badly.. I have been there so many times... the look on your face was priceless.  only someone in the hobby would know what you were feeling..disappointment!  then, you survived and completed it anyway.. great job.

    I would really like to know how to integrate the gps dongle live position into the flight planner screen.  Is there some setting in mission planner to tell it you have a laptop gps?  please let me know how to do this.

    thanks again, for taking the risks and encouraging me to take some as well.

    Mack

  • I'll be editing the video and posting it as an episode this Saturday! Thank you all you your support.
  • Thank you all for your support! The flight went perfectly... the first take off not as much, but we got over it!

    David: Thank you! It was pretty sad there for a few moments... Stuff happens.

    Nathaniel: It was a little brave, but it passed my manual flight stress test, so I went for it. Glad I did. We both wore seatbelts 100% of the time, if you watch the ustream when we go to get on the highway you can see my put mine on, and you can see me take it off when I go to land it. Nick wore his while he was in the driver seat. Safety first! Agreed on the monitor, that will be coming up soon. Thank you for watching and caring enough to comment!

    Crashpilot1000: Happy new years! That box is my "power management module", it takes the 12v from my car battery, and distributes it to various xt60 plugs. Each plug has an independent fuse and switch. I'll do a full set up review this week and post it for those who are interested.

  • Congrats! Due to a *slight* new years hangover I missed the first 22 minutes.... your webstream connection worked better than my brain. BTW whats that plexiglas box with the switches behind the driver for - powersupply from extra battery?

  • Moderator

    Trent,

    Great show! A bit of a rocky start, gutsy decision to continue. If I have one critique though, safety first wear your seat belts, and get nick a small tablet he can mount on the dashboard like a GPS navigation system. That way he doesn't need to keep looking at the laptop in the passenger seat!

    Figure out the logistics and go for the 100k mark!

    Great Job Guys!!

    Regards,

    Nathaniel ~KD2DEY

  • Congratulations!  The flight was awesome enough, but, coordinating all the technology to do that and stream it live was great.  Next time maybe you can switch between FPV signal and ground camera signal on the stream.  Good work!!!

  • Moderator

    Saw most of the ustream feed Trent - very nice job.  My heart did go out for you with the failed take off though.

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