LOS GATOS CAMPAIGN
Returning to the place we saw MAJOR MARCY in real life for the 2nd &
final time, this campaign produced a lot of decent images & videos.
It's an intriguing place, filled with billionaires selling electronics
that China sells for 1/10th the price, mountains cornering off the last
of the valley, & AIR FORCE HEROINES.
A490 HELL
Aerial camera #4 arrived. A Canon A490 with no accessible shutter
signal on the main board. Your only recourse is a rubber hand.
Video with the newest camera mount has lots of vibration. The old
rubber band shutter trick is very hard to get engaged.
Getting pretty frequent GPS failures again on Vika 1. It's going at 4Hz
& getting 7 satellites but suddenly returning a long shift in position
in the opposite direction. The only change from the days of 100%
reliability was getting rid of the full time power. If it just powers
up right before the 1st flight, it's prone to sudden failures.
Speaking of AIR FORCE HEROINES, have a photo from an unknown source.
M.M. most resembles the one on the left without a flight suit & with
more beauty.
Where were we.
MARCY 1 BICOPTERS
Marcy 1's radio got a break. Once again the UART receive needs to be
handled in an interrupt handler or it locks up. The joy of not having
an operating system.
Tried a number of variations on the bicopter theme. They all required a
balance beam & had the same instability. Pitching due to chord length
only explains it if the 2 wings are asymmetric. No idea what's
happening.
UNEMPLOYMENT RETURNS
It was the job that paid for most of our flying career but all good
things must come to an end. The main loss is the memory of all the
flying we did in that area, Corona, T-Rex, quad rotor, tri rotor, &
Russian Heroine, day & night flights. Almost took for granted that we'd
always have the field to take off from & look across the bay from. M.M.
was really close as the UAV flies.
