Large room 4 U

Had a rare opportunity to fly Marcy 1 in a large room, at a cost of over $100/hour, revealing for the 1st time that she was extremely stable in every direction except altitude. Horizontal position holds really solid. Vertical position needs constant tweeking. Using a keyboard instead of a proportional stick made it very challenging to control altitude.

Also revealed was that the cyclic phase seemed to be different in the air than on the ground. It may have always been offset, but unnoticeable on the ground.

Horizontal position was super stable, yet translation was very effective. Pull the cyclic & she moved pretty fast. Center the cyclic & she stopped immediately, all without any electronic stabilization. The aerodynamics of Marcy class vehicles have certainly been hashed out.

Where the Picco Z rotor was the breakthrough in cheap cyclic damping which made toy copters popular, the next wave will be cheap altitude stabilization.

Sadly, autopilot in this room was a complete failure. It was certainly no fault of the aerodynamics. Something has gone wrong with the autopilot in the last 6 months.

The memory of being able to guarantee a stable takeoff, hover, & landing with every single autopilot run is still fresh. It was so reliable, I would walk around with a camera while the autopilot took off & hovered, unattended. It would be nice to work on getting back to that state, with the proven machine vision system, but financial reality dictates focusing on a better position sensing system.