Sunday, October 18, 2009

A quick update...

Currently in the passenger seat of the car on the way home.
Just spent 4 days at FAR camping. Worked on three things...

1)Navigating Pad to Pad flying the exact desired LLC profile with the helicopter, and new GPS system. This work went very well, many exactly repeatable flights, only one scare the GPS needs more voltage for proper operation than all the other electronics, so one flight the system battery was low and even tired, sun burnt and sleep deprived at dusk I mangaged to save the helicopter by taking over.

2)We had a very poorly timed large project for a customer. It was the largest rocket ever fired at FAR and the test went really well. Can't really say more.

3)We tyried to hover the silver ball. We got the altitude stuff under controll, but never managed a stable hover. Nothing we did in the way of loop tuning seemd to help. Got up before sunrise this morning to carefully look at everything in the system. I did some sweeps of the gimbal actuators trying to precisely measure dead band and hystersis. Came up with a sequience where the actuator moved OPPOSITE of the commanded direction. This jives with observations and as we would hover then just all of a sudden flip over to the abort limit. Seems to come and go depending on how I press on the PCB, I had no replacement with me so it means going home.

My son is in the middle of starting a new business and has other commitments for most of this week. I've got business commitments Monday and Tuesday, but I hope to go out to the site
Tuesday night for more testing. We will be short handed so if you are in the So cal area and don't mind hard work in the sun at a site with no good shelter and no running water we could really use some help.

9 comments:

Unknown said...

argh! If you were in WA state, I'd be there... Hope you find the help you need!

David said...

Sign - so far away but not an issue - would but ITR rules in play. Bummer would be there otherwise.

Hopefully you find some help.

Jon Goff said...

Good luck Paul. We're rooting for you.

~Jon

Bruno Berger said...

Cheer up! Don't give up Paul.
Bruno

Joe said...

I sent you an email Paul. I'm willing to help out, need to know how to get there (I know how to get to what MapsOnUs says is Canthil, but to FAR, dunno) and how long to plan to stay.

Paul Breed said...

Joe, I did not see your Mail.
I should have posted my Email

Phonetically...

Paul at
Romeo
Alpha
Sierra
Delta
Oscar
Charlie
dot Com
You'll get a query from my spam filter.
I'll look for it later....

I think I have Wedensday and Friday covered so the day I don't have covered is Thursday, but If you have time and want to help we will be camping at FAR Wed,Thur and Fri.

Joe said...

Yes, I found your email address and got the spam filter and did all that. So, just need to know where FAR is. I can google the MapOnUs to get to Canthil, but from there need to know where FAR is. Don't want to wind up at Honda proving grounds and get shot. I can arrive Wed. night for Thursday duty if that is what you need. Have a Lance camper for convenience.

Paul Breed said...

My mail seems to be doing weird things today.
Joe, you should have a direct response from me with phone # and map.

David said...

I am glad you can help Paul out.
Good luck with the testing.