2023-01-24 Flight Test Program Coordination Meeting notes

Re-evaluate current timelines based on best-case and worst case (dependent on cornflakes development)

2023 Comp Drone Timeline

• Carbon Fiber is expensive, will not be ready to fly on competition frame

• Need a plan regarding what to test in each comp sim

EE: Inspect Cornflakes ESC Data Line Soldering Job

• cornflakes ready by feb 4 wknd

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Design go/no-go protocol in flight test document

if certain things don't occur by a date, then that test is cancelled so we don't rush

• Suraj, Aaron, Hardy - Define documents for flight test information

  • To inform regarding this new aspect

what every subteam needs to validate during flight tests before competition in may

• CV: downwards facing footage

  • Footage with landing pads, with camera being used at competition (new camera)

• Mech: flyable by Feb 4th

  • Flying Cornflakes VTOL and Fixed-wing to validate the frame

• EE: Zeropilot Board Flight Test (More of an EFS thing? ZP board hardware stack validation will be mostly done on the ground)

• EFS:

  • ZP - Pixhawk Passthrough/Integration - starts Feb 11th

  • ZP - Jetson Integration

  • Integrate Optical Flight Sensor with Ardupilot

  • Range testing w RF Comms (actual comms with WARG equipment, not Andy’s)

• Phoenix with PID tuning

determine common resources for flight tests

• Cornflakes - being assembled, currently not usable

  • ee systems need to be reharnessed (though all soldering is completed)

• Phoenix - have a few, in a low-effort state and can be assembled decently quickly

  • Also includes Arizona, slightly larger frame with 12 larger motors available, no spare props

    • Should be able to hold Pixhawk and Jetson, etc. with 4s low-weight configuration

    • Should be enough for flight-testing re ZP3-Pixhawk Configuration

    • Will need a way of replacing Pizza box covers for Arizona, such as Lexand (RPC takes a long time to book), cardboard, wood, Waterjet PVC, etc.

  • One of the phoenix has motors, rest are sitting as bare frames

  • 1 pdb

  • 4 escs (indiv, non dshot compliant)

• 1 Judie - largely stripped, only foam tray available

  • Some have motors mounted on, need to be validated if they still work

• 1.5 tube frames

• Vanny - frame available, high effort to get going and motors/ESCs are high cost

  • Zero effort to fly “as is”.

  • Just requires bullet connector setup

  • No spare motors available, can only be used once

  • Should be used as a backup as required

rebrief of protocol

• Need to have operating procedures for everything there:

  • Protocols on each aircraft regarding parts on the drone, where things go, etc.

  • Essentially user manuals on the drones

  • Pixhawk setup

  • Antenna/Ground station setup

  • Would be ‘owned’ by pilots flying the aircraft and System Architects:

    • Would delegate tasks out to different leads as required

Development plan for Houston

go with Vanny renovation re PPM passthrough

Update the preflight checklist with takeaways from RCA document

(basically update pre-flight checklist with points that address lessons learned)

Checklists (we should remove some of the subpages)archived

Root Cause Analysisarchived

Pre-flight manual would be owned by the pilots and Program Owner (e.g. owner of Judie, Phoenix, etc.)