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Date/Time	Action	Notes
9:15	Briefing @ WARG Bay
9:45	Arrival at Flight Test Location	about 5 cm of snow on entire skid pad
10:15	Flight Test Card #1 - Efficiency/Endurance, 3 Waypoints	Flight 0 - couple hundred meters. Used blue controller. Took off, LTE dropped out after 5 seconds. Ended up returning to home - first flew up to 100 meters ~ 200 meters away to hit the first waypoint, then the 45 second no-telemetry count down kicked in. waypointnavspeed set to 18m/s. Actually flew at ~ 30m/s. Switched to RFDs. Flight 1 - 1.2 km total flight. all fully autonomous through mission planner. Took turns a little hard. When returning, flew over the firefighter zone. Fixed this for the next flyover.
10:25		Flight 2 - 1.2 km total flight. same as previous. Did not fly over firefighters.
10:45		Flight 3 - 1.2 km total flight. Had to check battery health immediately following this. Battery failsafed about 10 meters off the ground, tried to land, Nathan took over on the blue TX manually. Had to hit full throttle immediately after taking control just to stop the drone from falling. Batteries visibly sagged very hard and drone had a slightly rough landing (not a free fall, just a slow drop) from about 2 meters. Can be seen in IMG_1496 March 23 - OneDrive (sharepoint.com)
10:50	Flight test card 3 - RTK GPS checks	Took ~ 5-10 minutes. Got a hold.
11:30	Debrief	Below

Tip
Didn’t crash ~1.5ish comp laps with 4x 5000mAh batteries (old batteries) Flew at 30m/s (108 km/hr ground speed) RFD900 works RTK got to fixed mode at 5mm accuracy Set up quickly and followed checklists Checked the pre-arm warning in the bay before leaving

Note

Speed was unpredictable. set at 18 m/s but flew at ground speed 30 m/s
RTK easily switches back to float
Noise in the video signal
Didn’t have a mission planner setup with coordinates for task 1
- Meant we had to adjust it in the bay before and also during the flight test.
Lack of visual observers - most people heads down on the laptop. Someone on the flight line should be looking at the drone at all times
Very fast turns - acceleration at direction changes looked very high

Warning
LTE dropout OSD dropout (same interference probably) Batteries very uneven voltages, failsafed and had a mid-rough landing at the end of the 3rd flight. probably cooked for good. these ones are bad now. good thing we’re getting new batteries on monday can use a couple of them for ground tower things, but shouldn’t fly them again

Card #1 Debrief

Flew 4 flights total.

Flight #1

Took off in typical configuration, experienced GS Lost Link after ~ 5 seconds. Continued mission until first waypoint, and then failsafed into RTL.

LTE was swapped for RFD900’s.

1.2km total flight

<<< to be updated >>>>

Action items

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check ground speed when ardu is set to 10 m/s (this time, it was set to 18 - at another flight test, if we have time)

wire lengths helped with video but didn’t help OSD cutting out
- either shield it more or use a capacitor.
- Use coax? Aidan Bowers (Deactivated)

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do the ESCs have something to do with this
check that OSD isn’t being disabled (channel 5 lmao) at the same time as the arm switch
- this is probably the case

For next flight test:

set behavior of battery failsafe to land (second failsafe) Nathan Green
Nathan Green Replace the RPI with an old phone.
- Actually decreases by 80 grams.
Change OSD switch from channel 5 to something else.
Figure out how to capture DVR from the cameras.

Mission planner graphs

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