Todays test flight led to a crash course on instrument flying.
I was running APM 2.0 beta and RTL was not working right. The plane would make it back to the start location but by way of an almost .5 km detour. I would be flying it then select RTL and the plane would start circling (climbing) then once it got to several hundred feet it would head away from the start location and slowly make its way back around, not the quick turnaround and direct path back as would be expected.
At one point it flew behind some trees and was completely out of sight for several tense minutes. All I could do was watch the heading and altitude on my laptop. By leaving it in RTL it maintained altitude and I piloted it back into view just by the model on the GCS map.
Tonight I manually uploaded the 2.01 Beta and will test it tomorrow. I was getting lots of 'port in use" errors while uploading flight paths earlier today and have not had any of those with the update so things are looking up again.
Also I got 3 more Zippy Flightmax 2200mah LiPos in the mail today- they are currently charging :)
Now I'm just waiting on my high capacity transmitter battery to replace the 600mah one that came with it from Futaba.
next upgrade will be a current sensor to monitor battery voltage and remaining power.
You doing a great job bud. Just joined your site. I'm really interested in your work. My name in Paulin Kantue. I'm a aerospace engineer in South Africa. Will be following your progress. Don't give up your work is pretty interesting. Later
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