DEATH OF A RADIO
Finally surrendered the ground station to tethering. It was a long battle with 72Mhz, 2.4Ghz XBees, & 900Mhz FSK but we never had enough money to make it reliable enough. Still using a custom transmitter with 8 channels. Went with a 2 conductor audio cable & 1/4" TRS connectors for the most reliable connection possible.
Nothing is more reliable than the 1/4" TRS connector, invented in 1878 in a strange country no-one remembers the name of & used in the 1st telephone switchboards. It's still going strong 132 years later. Modern connectors only get smaller & less reliable. You're flying history with this rig.
MARCY 1
Got some freshly captured HD video of Marcy 1 in flight. She had 1 broken propeller. She needs to spin a lot faster to go autonomous, but that means an actuated flap. Back to Marcy 2 while we think it over.
So basically, to get anywhere autonomous or even controllable, Marcy 1 needs to spin a lot faster. You can see the influence of RPM when ascending & descending. But the goal of the Marcy 1 program was to spin as slowly as possible to extend flight time. The balance beam also negates throttle modulation by adding momentum.
The Marcy 1 stability problem has us leaning towards a 3DOF IMU with very high saturation limits & a proportionally actuated flap. The idea is to use a flap to stabilize angle of attack at low RPM like a very large balance beam.
Fortunately single chip IMU's finally exist. Could put 1 on Marcy 1 to figure out how to get angle of attack. There's no way to directly measure angle of attack. You'll get a large yaw rate on 1 plane involving all 3 gyros. Separating that from the other 2 components would be real hard.
The increased cost & wind resistance probably make a full size monocopter much more valuable than a micro monocopter.
MARCY 2
Marcy 2 has a real electronics problem. Her radio initializes in the apartment but not on the golf course. Carry it to the golf course after initializing in the apartment & it stays initialized. Shut down on the golf course, wait a while & it won't reinitialize. It seems temperature & humidity related. Rarely, when it initializes, it dies shortly after. How can a Marcy vehicle not initialize on a golf course?
Got some indoor footage.
VIKA 1
The battle of the Aiptek continues. Got it running on the CC-BEC. It did malfunction during a flight & lose all our sunset footage. Suspect the battery contacts glitched.
TILT SHIFT TERRORISM
Look at this, kids. Autonomous, tilt shift, aerial, & timelapsed.
Finally wrote a lens blur effect.
TILT SHIFT MAGIC
Interesting story behind that flight. We flew over Sunnyvale instead of Mountain View to avoid falling in love with Major Marcy. Then She
moved to Sunnyvale.
AIR FORCE RESEARCH
Major Marcy discovered Marcy 1. She seems to be taking it well, so far.
> So, I see you named your aircraft after me!!!
> I sure hope you're a good pilot because I don't
> want to crash and burn.
Still doesn't want to have anything to do with us in real life, but at least She responded to the rejection requests.
Comments
Not all women like outdoor sports/golf U know?!! , sweeten the deal , who knows....