Another week, another flight test!

We were able to fly twice during this test (A new record for this year!). Also we had about 10 people come to this flight test (also a new record for this year) Here’s a summary for those that missed it:

Autotuning 🔧

One of our goals today was the tune the Pixhawk’s PID controller so that we can reduce oscillations and improve the plane’s performance during autopilot flight. After much wiggling of the control stick, we tuned our pitch and roll values so the plane flies really well in stabilize mode now.

RTL and Fly Here Testing ✈️

After doing the autopilot autotuning, we put the plane in RTL mode and the plane successfully “orbited” the home point we set at an altitude of 165 ft AGL. Although, we set the radius to be 30ft so the path was more egg-shaped. Nonetheless, it demonstrated that our autotuning went well since it flew stable despite wind gusts.

We also tried to use the autopilot’s fly here command and the plane followed the command to its new destination - although with short periods of RC link loss. Luckily the plane didn’t go into failsafe so we were able to land it successfully despite a bit of panic.

Also, we some new vinyl signage on our plane.