UAV flight over Hells Canyon

[Mark Hanson]

While on vacation a couple weeks ago, I had a chance to fly my amatuer UAV in the "real world". I've got a NewTimer, electric with a digital camera onboard ( setup for movie mode ). The New TImer also has a PICOPILOT-NA onboard and I had my laptop with me.

Preprogrammed waypoints would been useless on this mission since I didn't know if I could even find a place to launch. I did make a JPG of the area ( using Google Earth ) before I left and I brought my LapTop with PICO-GS installed. After driving about 30 miles on narrow, switchback roads I finally found a sign for a lookout point. I drove a couple more miles to the lookout and setup in the parking lot, no one else was there. I created four waypoints for PICOPILOT using PICO-GS ( I made a JPG of the HellsCanyon area from Google Earth before I left ).

PICOPILOT worked perfectly and flew a four waypoint pattern, about 1/4 mile apart. and yes...the plane was always in visual range

[ShadesOfGray]

Looks like fun. What kind of plane is that?

[Mark Hanson]

The "NewTimer" from Cermark makes a great little camera plane.

[Mark Hanson]

video of the HellsCanyon flight here: http://www.u-nav.com/gallery.html

[Connexxion]

Sounds like you're using the Alt3-T for altitudehold?

[lvspark]

Looks good. Nice area.

[CarPainter]

Very cool Mark, and right in my back yard.

If you ever get over this way again I would love to check out your set-up.

Bruce.

[Mark Hanson]

Sounds like you're using the Alt3-T for altitudehold?

On this setup I'm using the ALTE (elevator control).
On this flight, there were random updrafts and downdrafts from the canyon and the altitude controller was working hard to maintain altitude !