SEN 1727

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Category: Archive 2012
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Table of Contents - SEN 1727

  1. the King Speculates
  2. How they did it
  3. Coming up to dos

 James May and FF(??) - Peter King speculates
 
I saw the program here in the UK and I think any RC was only  used, if at
all, at the very end of the flight, to circle the model so  it landed on the
island rather than overshooting it and landing in the sea. Also  the model
was fitted with some kind of GPS device to keep the  model on course; a
little like a magnet steered slope soarer, but more like  the banned closed loop
systems that could have enabled a FF model to  fly back towards the flight
line after DT'ing...?  In fact it may have been  the GPS steering system,
and not RC, that made it circle at the end of its  flight. It was hard to
tell..??  It was a fun program to watch though, even  if the young James Mays'
"FF days" must have been very brief and unproductive,  despite his obvious
and infectious enthusiasm !! ;-)
 


And here is more details on how they did it

Like Peter most of us aeromodellers are curious as to how they did  it, kind of like try to understand a Magic trick.

They used an Ardupilot from DIYDrones

Here is a link

http://www.diydrones.com/notes/ArduPilot

And this link gives more info.  You can see from this link that more knowledgeable types observed that the PID was not set up properly or in our speak the model was not trimmed quite right as it the yaw was not quite stable..


http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/james-may-s-toy-stories-flight-club-featuring-an-ardupilot

Note for those in Southern California and with professional sportsman status that Chris Anderson,  the Mavin in Chief at DIY Drones will be a guest speaker at the Friday session of the AMA Expo in Ontario in January,

For those in the USA you can read of the AMA web site modelaircraft.org about the agreement that the AMA have negotiated with the FAA, FCC, Homeland Security etc al to stop a knee jerk reaction that could stop all kinds of model flying.  I'm assuming that there is some similat agreement in the UK.  In the US that airplane has to be in sight at all times - as this was with the chase helicopter and the modeller has to be able to takeover if there was a problem.  The ArduPilot permits that but it was not needed in the record run on the show.  Also reading between the lines the same situation does not exist in France which was why they had to change the destination from France to Wales.

2013 coming up.

Lost Hills members you will have got a membership renewal notice - did you send it in.
Have you renewed your AMA
 First America's Cup event is the SWR at Eloy, AZ on MLK weekend
then the Fab Feb Trifecta at Lost Hills is the Ike/Kiwi, North American Cup and MaxMen International 9 to 18 Feb


.....................
Roger Morrell