The following videos are in order by date, newest on top.
This was my most interesting flight so far and my current distance record. On this flight I used manual control and heading hold for much of the outbound flight. For the return flight I turned on the "Return to Home" feature which uses GPS to guide the plane to the home location, while holding a preset altitude. Normally I fly out and climb enough to be able to glide back home without running the motor. On this flight, however I was much further out with not enough altitude to glide home. The motor is by far the component that drains the battery quickest. However when this type of batter is near dead, the voltage will suddenly drop off. I let it get too close to this point. If the battery gets too low I would lose radio control of the plane. This is why I chose to suddenly dive and land.
The RF signals for video and control do not pass through or go over hills therefore I lost video and at that point could only guess what was happening. I suspect the RVOSD autopilot took over as I lost my radio control link. This would have caused the plane to auto level and attempt to climb. With no power for the motor, the plane simply glided to the ground.
After the flight I manually plotted GPS coordinates on the outbound and return path and overlaid them on Google Earth Viewer. I was impressed to see how well the GPS autopilot caused a near perfectly straight path to home. It compensated for the crosswind by pointing the nose of the plane into the wind slightly to keep a straight path. ------------------------------------------------------
A flight across Leaf lake with some nice views on the return trip.
------------------------------------------------------A flight over the lake with some nice views. This is also my current distance and altitude record. About 1.8km distance and nearly 1km altitude.
------------------------------------------------------Autopilot altitude set to maintain 200 meters with a +/- 25m margin. When activated autopilot turns off motor because the planes alt is above 225m. It then glides until it hits 225m (200+25) then turns on the motor to maintain a 200m altitude. Also note the direction to home arrow/line. When active, autopilot continuously heads to "home".
------------------------------------------------------This video features an RC plane using RVOSD (Range Video On Screen Display) It has many features a real aircraft has. It even has an autopilot that can bring the plane back to a "Home" location.
------------------------------------------------------Another RVOSD video.
--------------------------------------------------This video was taken shortly after the 2009 Fargo-Moorhead flood using a forward mounted Canon camera. You can see sand bags around some of the homes:
------------------------------------------------------------------This is an un-edited video that was recorded on a rather gloomy fall day:
----------------------------------------------------------------------This is video was taken with a lower quality wireless video camera. Audio is overdubbed.
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