2022-2023 Post Mortem Draft & Breakdown

Owned by Anthony Luo
Last updated: 2023-05-14 by Ethan Abraham
3 min read

  • Controlled Airspace authorization

    • fixed this year, well in advance. Two pilots available & ready

  • Flightline communication

    • better this year, but still had oddities

  • Timeline

    • better this year, at least pilot flew the drone before the day of competition

  • Harnessing

    • Continued to be an issue throughout the term, but was better @ competition

  • RC Dropout

    • still affected us this year. Need a significantly better solution

  • VTX/VRX

    • implemented analog COTS system.

  • Flight Stability

    • significantly better this year. we were commended on how stable our drone was during flight.

  • No battery monitoring/telem

    • fixed this year with COTS solutions.

  • ZP Un-used

    • made the decision to call this significantly earlier, but still unused

  • Board bring up

    • one board used, more could be used.

  • Frame/material choice

    • managed to fix problems as they came up this year.

    • lots of last-minute changes, but accounted for some of them beforehand to make them possible.

    • design wasn’t complete early enough to have run through thorough testing / experimentation

    • Material choice on structural elements was good, but very little thought was put into other components (Wings, mounts, cabin, etc) which resulted in poor performance

    • Issues with square tubing not being “square” were significant

  • Weight budgeting

    • better this year w/arch doc, still ended up grossly overweight

  • Sleep deprivation

    • better this year

  • Jetson Unused

    • No ability to command drone

  • Software not completed

    • Stored in random places (not centralized)

    • Not version controlled

    • Not tested

      • Where unit test?

  • IMACS cancelled RIP

  • Camera actioned upon very late (2022 December IIRC)

    • Camera arrived very late as well

2021-2022 Post Mortem Review

 

Yearly Timeline Recap

 

Specific Issues & Comp timeline

Comp Timeline

Thursday

  • arrive and setup 1pm?

Friday

  • autotune & crash

Saturday

  • motor burnout one

Sunday

  • Geofence one

Issues

  • speaker wire melts!

  • connectors heavy!

  • LED’s ripping

  • power module cable breaking

  • overweight

  • motor burnout

  • landing gear iterations

  • optical flow

  • LTE phone

  • Comms dropout

  • no spare motors / esc’s for houston

  • didn’t bring harnesses

  • didn’t bring spare materials

  • Finalized competition hardware too late

  • Reevaluate flight test program

  • Being more cautious before first power on

  • Wasn’t prepared for unexpected event e.g) Losing zip ties, Drill bits

  • Rushed out to fly forgetting props

  • Geofence issue

  • Software all done last minute

    • Most software not tested until run at competition

Other teams notable actions

  • There was a team (ETS) that destroyed their aircraft completely and recreated the whole aircraft in a night. Unfortunately, a fire was caused due to shorting the circuits just before their second flight test.

    • We also need a back up plan to execute when our drone goes MIA.

  • The Toronto Team removed significant weight from their aircraft.

    • Wasn’t able to check how it affected their flight test - Can somebody add here?