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Table of Contents

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Date/Time

Action

(due)

Aircraft Assembly: Alison Thompson

  • Subframe assembly

  • Wing assembly

(due)

Aircraft Assembly: Alison Thompson

  • Control surface design and construction

  • Motor protection design and construction

  • Aircraft frame assembly

(due)

Electrical Repairs: Daniel Puratich

  • Replace/fix damaged PDB

  • Fix/Replace damaged ESC

(due)

Harnessing: Daniel Puratich

  • Finish wiring new aircraft

Pre-flight Preparation: Aidan Bowers (Deactivated) / Hardy Yu

  • Ensure Incident Procedures, driver lists, etc. are completed

  • Ensure all items in Week-Before and Day-Before checklist are complete

Pre-Flight Systems Review:

  • Review all systems, and complete checklists to ensure systems are functioning as expected

9:00am

Pre-Departure Preparation:

  • Complete all pre-departure checklist items

10:45am

Flight brief from flight test lead

  • Outline what is being tested, responsibilities of all participants, incident procedures, and general coordination.

11:30am

Loading onto the Car

Take your water bottle with you. Go washroom before we leave!

11:45pm

Drive to the test ground

12:00-3:00pm

Flight Testing

Test #1

Quad mode takeoff/landing w/ flat mounts

  • assert that system is stable & both pilots are comfortable with the controls.

Test #2

Quad mode YAW control w/flat mounts

  • Test to see how much yaw control we have, which is basically the drone correctly responds to our left/right instruction

  • Success if drone give correct respond and appropiate yaw throttle

  • The test is first done without wings then with wings

Test #3

Quad mode takeoff/landing w/angled mounts

  • similar test with angled mounts, this should give more throttle on yaw

Test #4

Quad mode yaw control w/angled mounts

  • first done without wings then with wings

Test #5

Buddy box

  • control handover in all altitude

  • both pilot have the control to the rc link

  • After one pilot delivers the control, the other pilot should has the control of the drone

Test #6

Battery VS Flight time measurement. Recharge batteries if needed

  • Measure the amount of the time the batteries were used in the previous tests and come out with an estimation of batteries life

  • we probably need to go back to bay in this process to recharge batteires for an hour since we don’t have spare ones🫠

Houston Test

While batteries are under charging, the group of ppl on wrest rc can conduct the test for Houston

Test #7

Transition & Fixed Wing Flight (brief, 1 circle)

  • Trasition will take place in a straight line

  • After the trasition is done, the drone should fly in fixed wing for one circle, the return to quad mode

  • during this process, making sure the drone maintain altitude and flight forward while avoid other people

  • TODO: the flight path needs to be determined

Test #8

Transition & Fixed Wing Flight second pilot

  • repeat everything with second pilot

Test #9

Fixed wing “waypoint” navigation

  • Setup a destination on mission planner and run the drone in autopilot

  • Wait is the fixed wing or quad? I suppose this should be quad.

  • drone maintain altitude all the time

  • TODO: the waypoint needs to be determined

Test #10

Quad Mode RTL

  • Quad mode to RTL. Start close and then move further away.

  • to see if it autoland

Test #11

Fix wing in a whole circle

  • Once again, we are looking for checking the drone responds correctly to our control in fix wing. Fly in a whole circle under fix wings will be tested

Test #12

Transition to fix wing then RTL

  • Fly the drone away-> transition to fix wings-> RTL

  • we expect the drone transition to quad and autoland

  • but this is risky and we don’t know what’s gonna happen. Also the batteries may not support us to do this test, so this might move to 18th flight test

3:30pm

Debrief

...

Note
  • A lot of the checklist was not completed.

  • We need people going to comp (which we currently don’t have a list of) to get a feel for the competition stuff so we dont screw it up at comp

  • Anni laptop battery was dead

  • Throttle was touchy (fix in software later)

  • Pitch was touchy (fixed in software, but possibly not a complete fix)

  • The servo connection was intermittent

    • Seemed fine in the bay, didn’t work when we got to setup

    • (Daniel is suspecting this is due to poor connection on the servo wiring wise, possibly we use better connectors )

    • Anni’s opinion is we need more slack on the wires

  • Control surfaces are pretty stiff

    • Control rods bent while control surface doesn't move too much

      • check “bullet proof control rods” youtube video

      • tape outside of control surface, fold over, and then tape inside of control surface at max deflection. leave a bit of a gap.

    • Anni / Megan giving taping tips to improve this in the future

    • We will improve for next flight test

  • Talk loudly into the radio

  • Communication

    • default action should be to not do anything

    • acknowledgement of receiving instructions

    • Some sort of radio standard or be clear on it in flight brief

  • It’s rough when someone is working on drone and other people are offering opinions and repeatedly offering help

    • Give people that are doing things space in most circumstances

    • If the people that are doing something need help they’ll ask for help. This needs to be clearly communicated to people so we don’t bombard people

  • Early before flight test in the bay

    • A lot of people were off topic and distracting others from setting up the airframe

    • People who are just showing up to watch should get out of the way of people trying to do things for the flight test

  • We kind of forgot about Houston ?

    • Should’ve assigned people to work on it

  • The project manager should be in charge of a lot of these bits

    • Filter things through the correct channel to get it done

    • Pre-brief people on things before the flight test

    • Don’t want to spend a lot of time explaining what needs to be checked on day of flight test

  • Initially we saw some oscillations in the first flight, but not that bad

    • Was only happening when we were facing the wind

Warning
  • No RCA since no crashes and major damage.

  • Servo was not Servoing for elevator prevented us doing a lot of our tasks

    • Daniel suspects bad connections on the wires to the servo and will debug

    • We managed this failure very well in the sense that we still did some things, but didn’t rush into the major things

  • Trouble with angled motor mounts

    • Some of them were mounted with three of four bolts because they were a pain in the ass

    • The switch from angled to straight mounts took a ton of time

      • We didn’t verify the bolts went in straight before hand

        • Root cause is we didn’t get the bolts till yesterday

          • Root cause of this is the ESMS like black listed us cuz we need to figure out WEEF account stuff for them

      • The holes are really messed up now.

        • There’s too many holes now in the box tube frame so like it’s kinda trolling

...

  •  Mech Alison Thompson to delegate- stiffen the 3D-print insert tail extender, re-design and print out of CF PETG
  •  Get Battery performance data documented Anthony Luo
  •  Get the yaw control data written into this document ( Nolan Haines to assign this task out, it’s pretty much looking through the video)
  •  Review the videos Anthony Luo to get data on yaw and oscillations
  •  Mech - Alison Thompson Remove gorilla tape on underside of control surfaces, different tape instead to allow better control surface flex
  •  Alison Thompson Control rods should have no interference with the foam when fully deflected/retracted
  •  Alison Thompson Improving angled motor mounts?
  •  Fix servo working Nolan Haines Ethan Abraham Daniel Puratich (One of them, right rudder was producing audio and feeling the vibes)
  •  Consider overvolting servos or using higher torque servos
  •  Anthony Luo determine Ardupilot reaction to pitch/roll/yaw
  •  Anthony Luo continue to setup buddy boxing?
  •  Alison Thompson Possibly make another cool instagram videos (smile)

Other Resources

Booking WRESTRC Field

How to Book the Flight Grounds