Out of scope for this test

• Complete Pegasus 2 Tuning and be sure we are happy with the tune

  • We will not be doing this because it is risky and not really necessary right now.

  • Evaluate the tune we have right now

    • See how it feels with full stick reflections

  • Run autotune again on a higher aggressiveness

    • Last time we ran at 0.007 so maybe go up to 0.008 now that we’re more comfy with it

    • Hopefully less wind then last time

  • manually tune the rest

    • hoping this isnt really needed

    • oscillation => lower PID

    • slow response => increase PID

    • underdamped => increase P/D ratio

    • overdamped (motors heating up0 => decrease P/D ratio

Goals for this test

• Complete a 1.5 km range test on Pegasus 2 to measure dropped packets

  • Do this without even flying the drone, put it in a car, drive it a kilometer down the road, measure packet loss.

  • Flying the drone is a risk

  • max distance we need at comp is 1.15 km

  • Can we make sure that when we do range tests, we log continuous data on both tx/rx side? Would be nice to know how our tpwr fluctuates as a f'n of distance

  • Can we try to test different antenna orientations? I.e. if we rotate the drone does it severely impact signal quality.

  • Can we try this test with/without other ELRS rx's active (maybe for ex: houston) near the pegasus basestation? I know they say elrs<->elrs interference is low but I want to see how low

• Test the analog video system and relay system on Pegasus 2

  • Asana tasks to set this up

  • does not require flight, do at same time as mavlinkrc rank test

• Test Geolocation system on Houston

  • Tasks in Asana to set this up

  • this will require

    • driving to wrestrc

    • Integrate and test hardware leading up to this

      • RPi integration

    • Autonomy preparation

      • Geolocation software exists and will be run on Houston

  • houston is ready for this test hardware wise

  • Try to isolate altitude, flight pass-by speed, and distance from take-off/home location as variables for our testing geolocation accuracy

    • Will be important to determine altitude and speed at which we scan for hotspots later in comp

Attendees

• If you do not put your name here we will not assume you are coming.

• @Nathan Green is not coming

• @Anthony Luo is not coming

• @Evan Janakievski primary pilot, SDC vehicle driver

  • Will not be able to drive personal vehicle because driving SDC vehicle

• @Alison Thompson mech lead + car (fits 4 + driver)

• @Daniel Puratich supervision

• @Ashish Agrahari autonomy

• @Tochi Okoro autonomy

• @Maxwell Lou autonomy

Timeline Plan

• Start charging batts at 9am

  • only charge one set of batts for Pegasus 2

• Leave Bay 10am

• Debrief starts at 1

• Done 2pm

Debrief

Intro

Attendees:

• @Evan Janakievski

• @Daniel Puratich

• @Anthony Luo

• @Megan Spee

• most everyone else left or wasn’t interested

Objective of debrief: diagnosing and resolving a few difficulties this flight test + the flight test preparation that resulted in not being able to fly today.

General

General topics - very loosely defined by @Megan Spee , who was not actually at the flight test (and improved by @Daniel Puratich who was)

• Not enough preparation for this flight test

  • Houston configuration issues

    • houston was working last week but we wanted the rpi killswitch to work

      • params were changed to try to do this

      • changing these params broke the build and a motor would not spin

      • we were not able to resolve at flight line

    • parameters backups were either

      • not existent

      • not properly organized so we could find them

  • Peggy telemetry setup issues

    • didn’t know how to get ardupilot to connect to the controller for telemetry

    • spent 30 mins to get the controller to connect to drone at all

  • Unable to test auto code or ground test peggy as a result.

    • will need to redo this test, likely after midterms

    • Note that auto code (geolocation) was successfully ground tested on houston the day before the flight test (@Ashish Agrahari)

• systems integration / flight test operator / pilot knowledge base is lacking.

  • documentation does not exist. difficult to make this exist, because it’s related to:

    • ELRS (constantly changing)

    • Ardupilot (documentation already exists online for a lot of this, we don’t want to re-write for obsoletion)

    • things just change on the drones all the time and people don’t have time to keep up.

  • Houston and Peggy fly guides are out of date or unfinished.

  • controller inputs and curves are confusing and the documentation is out of date.

• General sentiment of better-clarifying who is responsible for what at each flight test.

  • Changing around the flight test owners frequently so more people get exposure

  • Having experienced members walk newer pilots through these steps before being left to do these tasks by yourself.

  • you don’t know what you don’t know!

  • Directors should delegate the task management with PMs better to avoid overloading directors

    • Daniel had a busy week, missed comp arch sync

• Couple thoughts on the fixed wing.

  • Evan (airframe lead) unable to attend fixed wing syncs to express concerns

    • ‘too late’ to fix a lot of design flaws

    • low confidence it will work well with the current manufacturing thoughts

Action Items

Action items following debrief:

• Use the flight test attendee roles harder.

  • Ping people more leading up to the flight test.

  • Nothing is too overwhelming of a task for one person if you divide up the work enough.

  • comp arch sync is a good time to go hard on these conversations, we need to use that time!

• All directors, pilots, flight test coordinators should take turns owning a flight test.

  • the admin overhead to make sure tasks are being done leading up to the FT and deciding what we need to do in prep for flight tests is a lot of effort, needs to be split around

• Make sure knowledge transfer is happening.

  • Have more experienced members coach/work through the setup of peggy and houston before flight tests (ground tests), and at flight tests.

  • can also be aided by documentation.

    • Maybe some old operation guides for examples too.

  • letting people try things with supervision is important before they can do it on their own