Test #3 – steady improvements in a correct direction

So we have our Gimbals upgrades mounted, added some minor clamps for batteries so they don’t go crazy anymore and battery is fully charged again.

On top of those hardware changes, I’ve recalled that Sebi had some significant difficulties with steering – mainly to keep our card straight on a narrow pavement with and even without a cross wind. We had a discussion on this and Sebi’s been able to demonstrate our problem with a balancing pencil on tip of his finger – or holding it hanging for its tip.

Well, this all made me thinking and I’ve got consequently dragged into some serious reading. Long story short, there are two main competing aircraft configuration concepts – Pusher configuration and Tractor configuration, while with our project we are hitting both with the third one – Push-pull configuration.

Aside of this I thought that providing bit of that “pull” configuration to move center of balance back might be beneficial so I instructed Sebi to code one of his 3-opts switches on his remote to behave like this:
1/ Only front gimbals are operational, rear ones are in their default position – to be used as a default for going forward or for sharp turns.
2/ All gimbals are operational – to be used for initial acceleration, strafing sideways and when full power is needed.
3/ Only rear gimbals are operational, front ones are in their default position – to be used when reversing.

It took Sebi no time to have it ready and I took video of him describing what’s going on.

And we’ve been heading for another test! Well not that fast – just when we’ve been about to start we’ve realized that two 4S ESCs (yes, 4S while we are running on 6S – they’ve been mounted as a temporary replacement) burned out so it took another couple hours to solder in new set.

Ok, now! Sebi will try to go around a blue mark on our local roundabout.

That went pretty well, didn’t it? You could see Sebi switching between mode 1 for keeping directing and mode 2 when he needed to accelerate or do a bit of strafing.

When it goes so well, let’s try a speed test!

That was pretty fast and it was still accelerating! In the last second you can see that Sebi used all 4 gimbals in a reverse-regime to do an emergency stop – super-cool! 🙂

Then we went to the shore to have a bit more fun scaring people and dogs from a pavement and after while I noticed couple of minor defects there. One of the motors got ripped off from its seat again when it lost a screw and propeller lost few blades when hitting the ring. Also another propeller started sliding out from its axle, while quite interestingly still stayed on. But all the rest was holding like nailed.

Finally Sebi asked me to check remaining battery power and it came with 22.66V ~> battery being still generously 68% full (min 17.4V, max is 25.1V) and that’s after 30mins + of being very naughty. These battery values are making me pretty happy.

All done for today, I can see we are making some good progress here again! Hope you are liking it too and as always let us know anything what comes to your mind. 🙂