Mark Hanson
Nov 14, 2008, 09:47 AM
I brought along my EasyLander plane on a recent trip to the Washington coast. We were headed to Long Beach, Washington where its legal to drive a car on the beach. EasyLander is an electric motor glider powered by an AXI-2208/26 and weighs 30oz with a PICOPILOT-NA and a HobbyLobby FlyCam.
The ocean beach turned out to be an excellent place to make an autopilot flight. This beach is about 10 miles long and most of it is hard-packed sand making a safe place to drive as long as you avoid the soft white sand on the upper beach and the very wet sand at low tide. The wind and fog could be a problem at the ocean but on the day we were there it was clear with a 5 to 10 mph breeze off the ocean.
We drove out on the beach and stopped to take a waypoint on the GARMIN 76 (hand-held GPS). Then we drove down the beach 4 miles, according to the car's odometer. We stopped the car and got the plane out and powered it up. Then I got the Laptop out and got the PICOPILOT Waypoint editor running. It took just a few minutes to enter the single waypoint ( 4 miles up the beach). PICOPILOT automatically stores the launch location as WP32 so there are now two waypoints stored in the autopilot.
I launched the EasyLander and hopped into the car while my partner drove.
I climbed to 400 feet and trimmed EasyLander for a speed of 25mph and enabled the PICOPILOT. The autopilot turned the plane and headed for the waypoint, 4 miles up the beach. I held the RC-Tx ready to take manual control if necessary as we drove behind the plane. I could clearly see the heading correction for the cross-wind coming in off the ocean but the course was straight up the beach. No problems following along except we had to slow down a couple times to cross some small streams.
Watching the car's odometer, we knew when we were getting close to the waypoint and sure enough, the autopilot made a 180 degree turn right at the waypoint. We turned the car around and followed the plane back to the launch point. The flight lasted about 20 minutes and flew a total of eight miles with only one waypoint. Yes, the plane was always in visual range and under 400 feet AGL. The FlyCam is small enough for a 25 oz plane but it has it's limitations. The still shots were taken from the movie clip and as you can see the camera gets strobe lines from the prop. The other problem I've had with FlyCam is the battery doesn't last very long. I only got about 5 minutes of video on this flight.
Video clip: picopilot flys at the ocean (http://www.u-nav.com/gallery.html)
If you have an ocean beach nearby that you can drive a car on, I highly recommend it as a test area for autopilot flight.
Note: The attached Google Earth screen shot of LongBeach is for illustration only and was not used for waypoint programming.
The ocean beach turned out to be an excellent place to make an autopilot flight. This beach is about 10 miles long and most of it is hard-packed sand making a safe place to drive as long as you avoid the soft white sand on the upper beach and the very wet sand at low tide. The wind and fog could be a problem at the ocean but on the day we were there it was clear with a 5 to 10 mph breeze off the ocean.
We drove out on the beach and stopped to take a waypoint on the GARMIN 76 (hand-held GPS). Then we drove down the beach 4 miles, according to the car's odometer. We stopped the car and got the plane out and powered it up. Then I got the Laptop out and got the PICOPILOT Waypoint editor running. It took just a few minutes to enter the single waypoint ( 4 miles up the beach). PICOPILOT automatically stores the launch location as WP32 so there are now two waypoints stored in the autopilot.
I launched the EasyLander and hopped into the car while my partner drove.
I climbed to 400 feet and trimmed EasyLander for a speed of 25mph and enabled the PICOPILOT. The autopilot turned the plane and headed for the waypoint, 4 miles up the beach. I held the RC-Tx ready to take manual control if necessary as we drove behind the plane. I could clearly see the heading correction for the cross-wind coming in off the ocean but the course was straight up the beach. No problems following along except we had to slow down a couple times to cross some small streams.
Watching the car's odometer, we knew when we were getting close to the waypoint and sure enough, the autopilot made a 180 degree turn right at the waypoint. We turned the car around and followed the plane back to the launch point. The flight lasted about 20 minutes and flew a total of eight miles with only one waypoint. Yes, the plane was always in visual range and under 400 feet AGL. The FlyCam is small enough for a 25 oz plane but it has it's limitations. The still shots were taken from the movie clip and as you can see the camera gets strobe lines from the prop. The other problem I've had with FlyCam is the battery doesn't last very long. I only got about 5 minutes of video on this flight.
Video clip: picopilot flys at the ocean (http://www.u-nav.com/gallery.html)
If you have an ocean beach nearby that you can drive a car on, I highly recommend it as a test area for autopilot flight.
Note: The attached Google Earth screen shot of LongBeach is for illustration only and was not used for waypoint programming.