As you all know we are ready for the first test flights.

We want to keep you posted, so we thought we would not let you miss our latest experiences even trough they were not that successful and even a bit embarrassing. It seems piloting an airship is not such an easy endeavor for untrained guys like us, even trough the closed-loop control stabilizes and helps a lot! Things like mass, velocity and inertia keep you quite busy piloting an UAVP...

Sunday was a bad day for us test pilots... We went to the football training ground which we elected as ideal start place. On the way there we had to notice that there was quite a bit of wind (later that night a small storm hit our area). Silly us we decided to fly anyway...

First, Taarek tried to fly and crashed when he bounced on the ground and his antenna touched his rotor. If you listen carefully you hear the "click" when the antenna hits the rotor and gets cut in half:

Direct link: Download the FLV Movie

Later on I tried my own luck and went into the air with my own UAVP. I was no more successful than my brother and crashed after 22 seconds:

Direct link: Download the FLV Movie

Something went terribly wrong. When I touched the ground you hear the beeper start and then my motors stop and it crashes. It seems as if I lost my battery or my receiver when I crashed. having switched it off and on everything is fine again. I can not yet really explain what happened.

Next we will upgrade our UAVP software to version 3.12 which will support the compass. This will make sure the UAVP's orientation will be stable all the time, since the compass is a reference sensor with no integral error.

Be sure to hear more about our next flights in my next blog entry!