De plaeeene, de plaeeene - Mr. Rourke! What nice neighbors

Anybody remember the 80's TV show "Fantasy Island"?  There was a little guy who would gleefully point out the arrival of their new guests.  I think he's on Craig Ferguson's Late Late Show now - or maybe his twin brother or kid, whatever.


So the short story is someone found my plane - yay.

Here's the long version..
My brilliant wifey had the idea to post some pictures of the lost plane around the area.  At first I just did it so I could say that I listened (you would not know anything about that kind of behaviour, huh) and then I forgot about it. But, behold! We get a call from a drunk sounding guy saying that he found a glider in his back yard, damaged but all the bits there.  Luckily, I met his wife when I drove over wasn't looking forward to meeting the drunk sounding guy).  It had crashed over a mile away from where I saw it last.  She was very nice and apparently heard about the lost-plane poster from a friend who had her son with her at Starbucks. What a thing.

I will post some pics.  Basically, everything was recovered.  I bought a replacement fuselage and should be back in the air soon.

I'll upload some video that was recorded during the flight.  Good for a laugh. You will see me chatting with Paige and Ellie then the glider lauches.  You don't hear me saying "Oh, nooooo" but you can just imagine as the glider drifts away, out of sight. I try to make it circle for a while but no luck.  Then I just let it glide while leaving the transmitter on.  I'm not sure why it decided to make a spiralling nose dive at the end.  It could be my doing as I drove around for a while trying to see if the rudder would wiggle on someone's roof.  The thought was I could pick this up in the corner of my eye as I drove around. Maybe it was still in the air while I was trying this..

Of course, this crash was caused by another "ratch** job" on my battery connecter for the GPS.  If this had not disconnected during my flight I could have easily recovered in flight or found the glider after it went down.

What was it I said in the video at Drumheller? - "Don't use ratches** to attach your cameras" - spoken in the voice of Mr. Bean.

** Ratch is a Trini term for a shortcut solution

Software Video Stabilizer

http://www.guthspot.se/video/deshaker.htm

Have a look at some sample video

More solutions to the packaging problem

Eventually, I want to promote & sell complete systems for Aerial Photography or whatever.

If the plane is sold with the autopilot and other components pre-installed then all I need to make is "covers" for the components.

The folks at FMA direct already sell planes with Co-Pilot pre-installed.

I was inspired by these folks who do UAV Swarms

Nice strategy - line up, slow and land

http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/landing-patterns-and-reverse

The writer is trying to solve the problem of "coming in too hot".  Typicall if you try to land an RC plane, the speed increases as you pitch down resulting in an overshoot of your intended landing spot.

Various solutions are proposed including prop reversal, variable pitch and flaperons.

This guy uses a car ESC that allows thrust reversal.

Gyro stabilzation for vids

Need to look into gyro stabilization for camera. 

Do a web search or look for kits

If no kit is available then we can supply one in my little shop.  Found something for kite cameras a while back.



This all fits with my goal to shoot aerial photography of destinations around the world for personal and perhaps commercial use.

Here's the Vid for "Search and Rescue"

Here is the link to the Aerial Video I shot.

Originally posted on my Youtube Channel

Plastics, plastics, plastics!

Found a nice supplier of, well, yuh know - plastics. All candidates for vacuum forming.

Can't wait to test them.  Hopefully, will not suffer from the "blow out" problems noted with the earlier DIY supplies.

http://www.ippnet.com/

Casings anyone?

My GPS tracker product needs a case.

Here's my attempt to package the components into some kind of casing.

Pics of first run vacuum formed parts

Battery endurance test

11.1V, 1300mAH LiPo

Fully charged > 12.53 = 4.17, 4.17, 4.18

Run till ESC engages safety

7:02.52-6:41:30 = 21:30
approx 20 mins

Empty > 9.55 = 3.16, 3.13, 3.27

Rx went from 11.1V to 10.8V in the same time.

IDEAS:  timer for flights, voltage measurement using "phigets" sensor

Just the elevator

I gotta try this as the simplest solution

1. Distance cone to home
2. H hold

Search and rescue

What a great way to use a UAV.  Finding another plane!

Set up "Opportunity" with 2 cameras and my GPS unit.  The usual crowd gathers.  Shot some spectacular video of the neighborhood in HD.

Now the work of looking for the downed plane in the raw footage (one day we'll call this memory since no film is involved).

Plane still not found yet but massive fun none the same.

Now that I'm getting the hang of aerial photography, I'm setting a goal of shooting and archiving wonderful sites around the world.  I guess I can start with nice places here in my home province.

Also, I hope to get this plany-landy thingy working one day...