Since I’ve had the Decathlon it has never really flown “right” for one reason or another, had to rebuild the motor mount twice, fix the battery bay, In the end the wing support struts gave up, and as that would mean stripping all the covering off the wings to fix I though why not fly it in the 30mph gusts we were expecting and if it crashes then we can just have a good laugh about it, long as no-one gets hurt it’s all good.
The plane takes off as normal, and to my amazement actually handles the wind beautifully…. I just couldn’t believe it, it was flying great in the wind.
So Mr Chris and I came up with the idea of sticking the FPV gear on it, “What could possibly go wrong?”
Well I’ll tell you, when you get blown sideways it gives you the impression your turning…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl_ExAz9RQ8
And then you get too far away for anyone to help and you crash, so we had to go on a long walk, many thanks to all those that helped, you were great chaps 🙂
How far away did it end up? well…
Quite a way, the white arrow is roughly where the strip is, and the red dot where the plane was found.
And how did the plane look when it got back?
At least most of the electrics were in one piece.
Despite everything it was still a great days flying, loads of fun, and now we have some kindling to try out the log burner 🙂
It was going so well, watching the video, right at the end (2:43 on) the speed goes right up to 59mph, and the distance from us goes from about 1000ft away to over 1600ft away in about 10 seconds. You must have caught a big gust which then ultimately sent it out of range possibly of the control signal as well as the video signal. Remember my furthest FPV the control signal was patchy before the video signal went, but the wind wasn’t blowing me away at 60mph then…
I can update the OSD so the distance from home starts flashing when it goes over 1000 ft, although in this case it ran away rather quickly, would that help in normal circumstances?
And then I want to try the arduplane autopilot system which will hopefully be able to take over.
Chris, have you already got an Ardupilot system?… now that is something I could get into.
Hello Mr Mel, Yes. I have now got one, the GPS and compass, and I got an OSD module for it. With all the items shown on the screen you can barely see out.
It is very versatile, but very complex I think it is going to be a little while before I can be confident to put it in a plane, send it up and know what its going to do, but the mission planner is a very impressive piece of programming software.
And finally to add the final chapter in the story of the Decathlon…
The marshmallows were lovely 🙂
Watching the video looks like you had it well under control but the FPV looks to go out of range. Was a hell of a mess when I found it. Shame I didn’t take a photo of the crash site.
I think someone else must have taken a picture of you finding it:
