Solar Plane T-Shirts: teespring.com/stores/rctestfl... This video is sponsored by PCBWay: High quality & Only 24 Hours Build Time at: www.pcbway.com/ Flying my FPV glider at Steptoe Butte Music from Musicbed: share.mscbd.fm/danielriley
Man, this is so freaking cool! What a time to be alive. The shots at 6:36 and 7:30 when you spot the plane in the sky just flying on autopilot, it looks so cool! Can't believe we live in a time where someone made a free autopilot software that works this well.
A piece of advice from commercial pilot and software developer. ;-) ArduPilot normally does not maintain speed using speedbrakes so if you set steep descend at low speed it maintains vertical profile while the speed is actually higher than programmed. For that reason you should have taken into consideration minimal drag of the glider and plan shallow descend as it is not a problem to add some power in order to avoid stall while it is problematic to automatically use speedbrakes in order to maintain both vertical profile and desired airspeed. Even Boeing 737 including Max (as I know Dreamliner too) does not automatically use speedbrakes or flaps. Good to see happy landing. :-)
Imagine if the wright brothers could look at this RU-vid on a laptop, and see what wonders are in their future. Incredible and SOooooo awesome. Beyond the imagination of many EVEN STILL TODAY. Retired 70 year old electrical engineer. I've watched this growth since the 1960's. Your accomplishments have FAR surpassed my early imaginations of AUTOPILOT, where you can detect and utilize thermals, and GeoPositioning. I'm so incredibly impressed!!! ADDENDUM: 11:39 add ground sensing radar, for landing Elevation, geopositioning data from Google maps, mountains, bodies of water, And "PHONE HOME" with geo coordinates after avoiding destructive cliffsides or water landings. Obviously there's still room to grow!!! INCREDIBLE...
If this happens again, you'll probably want to hit the "Arm/Disarm" button in your GCS software once you're confident on the landing approach. Or at the very least, hit it once you've landed. This will stop the motor from trying to spin on the ground, the plane is still trying to go to the next waypoint so it keeps the throttle on until you manually disarm it. Or you could set up the autoland feature. Good call on not using it in this scenario though, it's got a few settings that need to be tuned before you can rely on it.
Burn Victim Yoda 2 months ago, "4:00. That's why you lost control. Your glider.... " I really think this comment and "OBSERVATION" to be ABSOLUTELY ABSURD. Viewers can see almost anything they wish in 'randomness' no matter how RIDICULOUS, and there SHOULD BE NO punishment to the author for an entirely unexpected claimed observation by someone, anyone, any person of entirely unknown background or certifiable sanity. We certainly CANNOT build anything of value if it can be vulnerable to the unfounded whimsy of chaotic hallucinational fanatics!!! I have looked, I have seen, and I stand by my statement, that these are the terroristic accusations of insane fanatics and have neither sensible foundation, or cause of any further action by anyone, EXCEPT TO BE ON GUARD AGAINST ANY SUCH IDIOCY gaining any traction what-so-ever in the future... PLZ STAY SANE!!! Unfounded IDIOCY can cause such unfair consequences, and unsettle the positive foundations of our civilization. Real, verifiable, scientifically provable facts, should be the foundation of understanding, NOT whimsical, ethereal, illusory images created in some whacko's head. Let's value our fellow human beings rather than just abuse them through human laziness and apathy...
I've had many many glider and single engine plane flights (full scale), but have never crashed, lost or ruined an aircraft. After watching many videos on this channel, I've learned that you can't expect the same with RC's. But it sure looks like fun exploring all the different flying concepts and adventures.
20% skill 80% luck. Great job getting it back safe!! I love my ASW I have a similar setup and it's one of my "go to" sailplanes for playing with thermals. Keep the awsome videos coming!
Built free flight models as a kid in the 60's. Took up hang gliding late in life but not for long. Found out my old body is unsuited for learning how to fly hang gliders. Then, I bought a Night Radian......Then, I learned about FPV!!!! I had no idea it could be used on glider. Totally lost my marbles. I came here seeking to learn more about FPV and stumbled across your most excellent video. I have an HG friend who flies Steptoe Butte and Tekoa and produces lots of videos. Where's my drool cup?
Good video with great visuals of the area, and a look at the good and not so good things about flying drones. RF from the towers 'may' have been an issue. Illustrates a good case to be made for having a pre-loaded set of "Abort to Home" waypoints for recovery. Steptoe Butte is in the middle of farm country. That "grass" that would provide a nice landing cushion is most likely wheat.
The power module of the pixracer doesn't provide enough current for a 1.5W telemetry receiver. You could tell that the receiver lost power in flight because the LED on your transmitter was Green, not Blue. That means it was not getting telemetry back from the RX. You need to power the receiver directly from the BEC, not the "RC In" port on the pixracer (don't connect the red wire there).
When the aircraft got a bit further away, the receiver telemetry power ramped up and caused the problem. You're very luck the pixracer didn't brown out.
I have a handheld Ham Radio and a Motion activated paper towel dispenser. When I transmit at 1 watt of power 8 feet away the dispenser activates. RF can screw with unshielded electronics. Transmission towers can get to kilowatts of power. Something to keep in mind.
Ardupilot supports a joypad or joystick though mission planner using the telemetry connection. you could get a USB device or use a PlayStation 2 controller with a USB adapter, once set up you just leave the pad in your kit as an emergency backup with will allow you to take full control of flight over mission planner should something go wrong again. The latency is very high and it's not something you'd wanna fly with for every day use but it can get you down safely when something goes tits up :)
@@christop3260 it does not matter how high the latency is, it is pretty high, the idea is to use it simply as a way to get the craft down in an emergency.
Ive done a lot of rc flying until about 10 years ago. i witnessed a lot of rc control failures, but none was so relaxed like yours! Great video and also great Hangsoaring spot. Atm im not flying but i subscribed...
The dragonlink has a spectrum analyzer function that you can access with a USB cable to your computer. You might see if the towers were putting out signals in the band.
That was such a nice landing. Last time I did an APM autopilot landing it hit harder than normal. It broke the landing gear. Thanks for the video I was debating between Dragonlink and Crossfire, was already leaning to the Crossfire due to the prices but now looks like it is a definite Crossfire. I have an R9 setup but, I want long range more than 2 miles and I do not trust the R9 with that distance. I have been in your shoes before with lose of direct control and you handled it perfectly. Better than me actually I started to panic.
Typical Daniel adventure, full of surprises, but a cool approach saved the day....Im guessing it went failsafe and those dishes prevented it re-binding again. You need EZUHF, with its extreme hopping and noise filters... its way more refined.....lol. Kudos for still using your original Spectrum DX7, I still have mine too, and it still works fine.
I used to fly hang gliders and one of our local sites had radio towers. I can verify that they will wreak havoc on electronics. Every time I would thermal up to the same level as the towers my vario/altimeter would go freaking nuts until I was above or below the dishes again. NOt sure it was all that great for my man parts either, but I've managed to have three healthy boys despite microwaving my nads a few times.
I've been watching your videos for a long time. The first one I watched was the cheap RC car mods video. I've loved every video since. I've only ever commented once before but you don't seem to reply much to comments. My favourite videos have to be the snow plane V2 and the slow mo short course trucks in n the mud! Keep up the great content Daniel. Your parents must be very proud 👍
I enjoy your vids & find them interesting. Here it comes. today was OK but, I was hoping to learn a little more. I flew the first FPV "ever" last Monday. A $24 camera/TX on top of a fun cub wing. I know, "lame" (working on an S800 but that is also of dubious camera & flight control quality) The flight was fun but short. Kept looking for my truck, the road, and irrigation equipment. Could make out the road ok, but the other landmarks not so well. Ended up low over what appeared to be tall grass, decided to set it down. Removing the goggles, had no clue, so loaded up and drove the tall grass beside sod and barley fields. Thanks to Chad & Dwayne at Selstade's Sod Farm the wayward aircraft was spotted, upsidedown far into the barley. The rear-mounted camera on the glider did give me an idea, It reminded me of the trailing view on simulators, will try that. But had to hope for a further Idea on flight controller with GPS for the S800 wing, also may change to a slow flying glider. What would you suggest as a better camera For the S800? Keep filming. Thanks.
Those white microwave dishes on Steptoe Butte are seriously powerful, in a very narrow beam. My guess is you flew through the beam and seriously swamped the input filters on your radio. BTW, Steptoe is a super unique geological formation: it was part of the old pink-quartz mountains that were here before the ice age and lava flows.. REALLY old rock. Welcome to our neck of the woods! users.scc.spokane.edu/ABuddington/G210proj/2007g1/?p=3
Tower self-defense "mechanism" might be to sense a radio signal near and jam it? If I build an expensive radio tower that's how I would have made it :) . Excellent landing BTW and showing how to stay calm so as to think of a solution. Great redundancy.
One other thing you might have tried is to get further away from the radio towers, get close to the aircraft, and try to get control there. But dunno how dangerous it would be to travel further without manual control. That was a great landing.
I love your videos. Thank you for making them. What would you recommend to get started in the use of telemetry and eventually autopilot? Could you make a video going over the parts needed and basics for setup?
I maintain some of the equipment on that radio site there on Steptoe Butte. There is a 500 watt 900MHz paging station up there and I'm guessing that may have caused a problem. Everything else there is 100 watts or less.
