First of all, sorry for the unexciting video. Waiting on my new gopro so I made do with an old keychain cam.
Flight went well! I was very impressed with the RTL performance straight out of the box. The Radian displayed much less of a tendency to wander than the 6' Telemaster I had flown with APM before. I will take a stab at tweaking the gains. This first image is just the RTL flight and the next one is all the flight data.
Before landing, the plane didn't want to come out of RTL mode, so a lot of frantic switch-toggling happened and eventually it came back. Not sure what the issue was.On the plane, I have the auxiliary antenna set up orthogonal to the main RX on board so antenna nulls shouldn't have been an issue....
Like I said, onboard video isn't great. RTL starts at about 2:17.
All in all, not a bad morning!
Comments
Hey Nick, I know how contentious airspace can be, it almost makes me give up hope to see it all laid out :)
Eli, I wanted to clarify that I wasn't trying to be negative in my reply. Just pointing out how crazy the airspace and protected surfaces are around a major airport. I work with airspace and specifically impacts to it everyday (not for the FAA, but to make sure the FAA is happy), so I just wanted pass on the info.
I live near a large international airport myself but I am lucky that my neighborhood is surrounded by farm fields and large open space. I can see how it would be hard to get to a large open space easily. I myself would not fly my quad in the area where you flew but a lot of that is based on my current ability and lack of complete trust in homemade UAV robot.
Eli,
Congrats on a great first flight with the Radian. Nice tracking as well!
In my defense, Greg, I've had this plane for the better part of a year and have many hours on it. This was just the first flight with an ardupilot onboard. I've also been flying the ardupilot since version 1 on a number of other platforms. Could I have picked a better place? Absolutely! Wil l fly here again? Not autonomously! I think there are two issues... The first being airspace, the second being plowing into someone's apartment window if something were to go wrong. The airspace issue is tricky but I think being more than 3mi from an airport, staying under 400', and keeping an eye (and ear) out for any full scale aircraft is not ridiculous. As for having the autopilot brick itself, send the plane down onto a road and cause an accident... i think thats a much more serious issue and probably the best reason to not fly here again. But what about quads? would anyone balk at flying a quad around this park? I've read plenty of stories of people switching to RTL and never seeing their vehicles again...
Forget about Boston Logan and LifeFlight helipads for a moment. Do you really think this is a good place to do a first flight on a new plane.....? Geez,, what are we defending here anyway?
The reason I suspect the helo's are flying so low is to avoid the class B airspace protecting KBOS. Class B is a huge and congested airspace. Since the air ambulance helo's are operating as using Visual Flight Rules they have to either stay out of Class B (IFR Flight Plan required) or request to enter and remain under control of Air Traffic Control. The helo's want to get from point A to point B as fast as possible so they usually stay low and skirt airspace
Besides controlled airspace there are also protection zones for approach, departure, and transition surfaces. For departure and approach they are trapazoids that extend off the end of a runway raise in elevation at a specific slope, depending on the type of surface.
Here is an incredibly confusing depiction of all the protected surfaces for KBOS, the colors and contours correlate the the elevation above ground where the floor of the surface begins.
http://www.massport.com/news-room/Documents/BOS_COMPOSITE_Ver2pt0_d...
Here is the extent of KBOS airspace as seen in Google Earth. The airspace is like an upside down layer cake with the widest expanse on top and narrowing down to the actual airport.
http://www.lloydbailey.net/airspace.html
These do not depict the departure and arrival routes and their associated airspace, but it will give you an idea of what is near. The KML for a country contains all the airports available and can make Google Earth run slow. You can turn them all off on the left menu and then expand the folder and find your specific airport.
Boston, You bring up a good point. If you in a congested area, chances are there my be a hospital helipad some where. I would think that would count as an airport, especially due to the copters low altitude.
Eli, Ya I would have no problem flying a small parkflyer in the park, but you have an autonomous capable vehicle now. Put some open space around yourself when you fly. You can also set up geo fence in the mp.
The other issue with Boston is that there are helipads just about everywhere, and those pilots fly surprisingly low.
Good points from a safety perspective. I'm used to flying small park flyers here and if anything goes wrong, they usually end up in the ground in a hurry. The Radian is a real floater so I can imagine it could go pretty far. I guess I didn't think I was in the wrong since I was under 400' and outside 3mi from Logan (I checked) and no one was around, but I see your point... I guess I put a lot of trust in the APM...
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