Sweeeeet! Was thinking about doing the same project to get around the issue with having to control the glider on descent! Keep it up and looking forward to the 3D printed one.
Thanks for the education. Having a bag with several Autopilot/stabilizers with precarious results. Your video inspires me to get them out and find their instructions. Truly cool project, with very respectable results.
Very nice. I put a couple of Autopilots in my zohd models and am waiting for the snow to go and the weather to get better so I will be able to test the return to home feature in case I fly out of range. Am using the BGL 6G xxx and see how it works. Happy Flying
Man! I totally invented this concept when I was little. An autonomous, GPS guided glider software for a model skydiver dropped from a plane. But obviously didn’t have enough resources or knowledge to pursue it.
Hi Daniel I just want to thank you for doing this awesome videos. They are such an inspiration for me. Thanks to them I am back at getting creative again. As you are doing, I'm Building a Spacex RC landing booster. You even inspired me to begin documenting my projects on UA-cam. Thanks Damian
What a great idea you mentioned. Organizations that send up sensors by balloon would be able to recover expensive equipment easily and safely. I wish I could tag along and assist. You are brilliant....Good Job!
That works perfectly! You just need to get better at working with the limitations and nuances of the mission waypoints. So inspirational, thanks for all the content you post.
Your vids from 10 years ago were great. They made my son and I laugh so hard when the planes would go wrong. Many great memories of those days of building, flying and watching your vids. Still like the vid with Schlomo song.
You have to adjust the PVT to 200 bdc's and raise the FML to high, so that the plane can switch from ALS to BLS. Do NOT set the GPS's FGI to 0, or it will crash. One other thing, I have no idea what I'm talking about.. Cool video man!
Looking at the route the plane took you can see it nails the centre of each waypoint before making the turn to the next one. So maybe if you want to get the landing right you need to chain a few waypoints together to control the planes heading.
For a manual RTH I believe there's a parameter to set minimum altitude, so the times it worked you were likely above that altitude, and when it rejected it, you had fallen below. A failsafe RTH might ignore that parameter because it's an "emergency". On a normal plane with a motor it'd be able to climb to the required altitude.
@@kc8omg maybe work out its (the shuttle) glide ratio, and set a initial waypoint (IP) position and final waypoint (touch down) set an appropriate altitude at the IP and 0 feet at the touch down waypoint, in fact if you set an ideal Altitude at the IP you won't even need to set an Altitude at the touch down waypoint. it will just vary a little bit with wind.
Maybe the vehicle is to close to home point when you engage it and is why it rejected RTH.? Try getting further out and away from launch point. You can change distance to home point engagement distance but can’t remember how. It’s been a while since I’ve messed with Ardupilot and PX4. I had the original 3DR mini pixhawk running px4 and had lots of issues and ended up dropping that project and moving on to something else. I’m not familiar with the pixracer but no they had some problems with that board a while back as well but sure that’s been addressed by now.
Awesome test! I love that you mentioned the pinpointrc black box tracker at the end. I got one about a month ago. It's a great little product. Managed to find my lost plane multiple times.
Very nice mission. It's got the spirit of your old videos - but modern day tech instead of just popsicle sticks :) The px4 looks pretty nerdy - just what I need. You also got a Sripol going on here in the comments - next video Casey and Pew will come and say hi :)
Fun fact: During a campaign or whatever, a US drone lost connection with its controller and by default was set to land back home. The drone however did land home, all the way in california. And it the drone taxied away apparently even into the proper hangar.
Now bind a brick to it, so its maneuverability becomes what it looks like: a SpaceShuttle ... Wait! - would you be so kind to strap it on some solid rocket boosters ... ??? ... pretty-please?!
Imo the best lost plane tracker is tBeacon, because it uses 433mhz band to transmit coordinates via voice. So you can use cheap UV-5R to call for them and receive them, and if u'll use Yagi high dBi antenna u'll be able to find it even without coordinates. You just search for direction with best signal, and go there. I used to fly drones and planes in places with almost no cellular coverage (for example mountains), and this tBeacon thing helped me out really good though. It has its own battery with pretty low power consumtion because it just waits for you to call it and it doesnt transmit anything if its not needed.
Be careful with dropping from a balloon, as I saw a guy a few years ago try that and ended up getting his balloon rig tangled his antenna. Instead, try putting a small balloon opposite the large one. The small balloon is inserted into a cavity in the rear of the aircraft and holds it using pressure borrowed from the main balloon. When the big one pops, all pressure is lost in the system and the small balloon releases the aircraft... no strings attached! Good luck, I'd love to see it happen.
If you want to do a drop test on a budget, please take a look at my X-37ABC. Plans & instructions are available on Instructables website. By the way, I did a drop test using a cheap WLtoys V262, using my trusty FlySky FS-T6 to release the glider (using a device I've built using a servo and a 3CH receiver), controlling the aircraft using a F939 receiver (which is compatible with the FlySky FS-T6. Now, I didn't have expensive cameras to film it, therefore the quality of my video is pretty cr@ppy, but the drop test worked perfectly.
Story if my life: Man look at all these really cool features! Won't answer the really simple question I need answered....but has a ton of cool features.
Why does the px4 need a motor, as long as you have altitude you can trade it for speed, of coarse you can’t climb without a motor, but your just trying to get home. This project has really fired me up to try this. Great job.
I suppose you can slow down your dropship and make it glide smoother (and as a result more spectacular) by applying the tail-breaking system which is in a real space shuttle is implemented by a two-piece split air brake.
You need to contact the "Earth to Sky Calculus" group. They send balloons to over 100K feet, but it takes days to find their payloads. Just think if it would return home. Good work!
Please post a follow-up video of the GoPro footage of the plane bouncing off the trees in the final crash landing. Epic bouncing from branch to branch.
Please please please do a high altitude drop in the near future. That would be so cool. A lot of people have attempted to pilot them back but it would be great to see and autonomous glide.
Nice! Reminds me Xyla Foxlin vids. When it landed in the water by Mother Goose, did you perform CPR, CRC, or blow dry electronics, foam Proly not to happy with electronic cleaner???
8:07 As a commercial operator (Flight test operator currently) and a past military operator with external operator qualifications may I state this out loud...? What do you have you turn radius set to? Are you capable of setting it and/or the direction of rotation in the flight plan? Given the close proximity of your flight plan legs, you may be overlapping your turn radius and or with a combination of the short legs causing the inconsistent flight paths in real life as opposed the those you have build in your software and uploaded to the air vehicle. To me it looks like the vehicle at this point was flying the flight plan, but the turn radius was large (shallow turn) and as such it didn't have time to orbit 2 in such a way as to strait line 3 if you will.
Dude, Im finding your catalogue backwards. I know its been years and youve made so much progress since this video, but were you setting your home location when you powered on and established gps before taking off? If it isnt getting a good home point it might not go into rtl.
Hi what program did you use to get the Telemetry with the dragonlink system n where did you purchase the cable that's connected to the Dragonlink to the computer?
Due to high wind at higher altitudes, flying home from 10 or 20 km is going to require a better glide than the "bad glide angle" you say you are going to try next.... I'd prefer to go for higher glide angles....
Daniel, Back when you did a shuttle drop video I suggested that this technology would be useful for returning weather balloon or other balloon borne instrument packages to a home base instead of relying on them being dropped by parachute, found accidentally, and mailed back. I don't know if your comment about doing this from a balloon release is related to my earlier comment, but I still believe this would be a valuable application. My experience is that good ideas have usually already been patented, but if this hasn't it would by worth your pursuing. Bill Dimpfl
That is super cool it looks just like the shuttle used to I hopy you keep it up and dial it in I think you might be on to somthing really cool and needed for rc aircraft.
Smooth glide slope. No matter where I put the explosives on mine it always seems nose heavy. It messes up the shaped charge alignment on contact with the wheelchairs, if you know what I mean? Ha ha ha ha ha, obviously joking. Nice to see you doing some projects again. Is there anything you can do to optimise your sink rates so that at any given time it's extrapolating for your position relative to it's speed, altitude, sink rate and orientation?
Sweeeeet! Was thinking about doing the same project to get around the issue with having to control the glider on descent! Keep it up and looking forward to the 3D printed one.
Hi Peter!
look its a wild peter
Hi Peter I can officially say you and David are the reason I got into RC flight 👍🚁🚁
weird science Same
Peter are you gonna buy idubbz gfs xxx cam vidsss?
Two aircraft. An expensive Alta and a crappy piece of foamboard. Lets look at the foamboard. THIS is why Daniel is awesome.
BirdsEyeView Well he is only using an alts because it needs to be dropped from high
Ok
Great video, good to see that you are doing such interesting projects again.
High altitude stuff..
Like on a helium balloon, raised to 60km near the edge of space high altitude?
edge of space is 100km :) but 60 is better than Felix Baumgartner.
Pierre ANDRE
Correct, the edge of space is known as the Kármán line and is around of 100 km.
@@ciber_flyer turns out earth's atmosphere extends up to the moon according to some recent discoveries.
@@Mionwang But the edge of space still remains at the Kármán line, at some 100km.
@@ciber_flyer You mean Julian Baumgartner
unless you're a goose...
Goose*
One of the best things, i have ever scene. A mere 10 years ago, this was 100% fantasy. Sweettt Vidddd
Thanks for the education. Having a bag with several Autopilot/stabilizers with precarious results. Your video inspires me to get them out and find their instructions. Truly cool project, with very respectable results.
Very nice. I put a couple of Autopilots in my zohd models and am waiting for the snow to go and the weather to get better so I will be able to test the return to home feature in case I fly out of range. Am using the BGL 6G xxx and see how it works. Happy Flying
Man! I totally invented this concept when I was little. An autonomous, GPS guided glider software for a model skydiver dropped from a plane. But obviously didn’t have enough resources or knowledge to pursue it.
Hi Daniel
I just want to thank you for doing this awesome videos. They are such an inspiration for me. Thanks to them I am back at getting creative again. As you are doing, I'm Building a Spacex RC landing booster. You even inspired me to begin documenting my projects on UA-cam.
Thanks
Damian
What a great idea you mentioned. Organizations that send up sensors by balloon would be able to recover expensive equipment easily and safely. I wish I could tag along and assist. You are brilliant....Good Job!
That works perfectly! You just need to get better at working with the limitations and nuances of the mission waypoints. So inspirational, thanks for all the content you post.
I think it needs an altimeter so when you're making waypoints that it needs to be at the specified height at said waypoint
indeed your right, to make a profile suited to the glide ratio of the aircraft.
LOL... a pile of tubing waiting there for you to use... you live a charmed life my friend...
All your projects are so cool!! Really enjoy all the details. You have opened up so many things that are possible. Thanks
it's like boomerang but way more expensive...
Cottonwood trees... Farmers best defence against winds.
Also one of the greatest allergy pollens.
I love to see shuttle like planes drop from a other plane/drone. Idk its kind of satisfying🤔🤣
Your vids from 10 years ago were great. They made my son and I laugh so hard when the planes would go wrong. Many great memories of those days of building, flying and watching your vids. Still like the vid with Schlomo song.
You have to adjust the PVT to 200 bdc's and raise the FML to high, so that the plane can switch from ALS to BLS. Do NOT set the GPS's FGI to 0, or it will crash. One other thing, I have no idea what I'm talking about.. Cool video man!
Looking at the route the plane took you can see it nails the centre of each waypoint before making the turn to the next one. So maybe if you want to get the landing right you need to chain a few waypoints together to control the planes heading.
I sowed a little parachute canopy last year. Getting one of those to drop, open and then steer autonomously would be awesome too!
Fantastic. Inspirational. Imagine where this will be in five years.
Struggling through blackberry and wild rose prickers is the main reason I retreated from free flight. That new GPS is pretty cool.
Can you incorporate a radio altimeter and get this thing to flare itself at 5 feet?
For a manual RTH I believe there's a parameter to set minimum altitude, so the times it worked you were likely above that altitude, and when it rejected it, you had fallen below. A failsafe RTH might ignore that parameter because it's an "emergency". On a normal plane with a motor it'd be able to climb to the required altitude.
kc8omg so he should probably set RTH alt to as low as he can set the parameter then correct?
@@Freebird_67 yeah, I would think you should be able to see it to zero, since it's a "minimum height", and then it would always try to head home
@@kc8omg maybe work out its (the shuttle) glide ratio, and set a initial waypoint (IP) position and final waypoint (touch down) set an appropriate altitude at the IP and 0 feet at the touch down waypoint, in fact if you set an ideal Altitude at the IP you won't even need to set an Altitude at the touch down waypoint. it will just vary a little bit with wind.
Always nice to see an rctestflight video uploaded , great project Daniel , All the best ...............
Maybe the vehicle is to close to home point when you engage it and is why it rejected RTH.? Try getting further out and away from launch point. You can change distance to home point engagement distance but can’t remember how. It’s been a while since I’ve messed with Ardupilot and PX4. I had the original 3DR mini pixhawk running px4 and had lots of issues and ended up dropping that project and moving on to something else. I’m not familiar with the pixracer but no they had some problems with that board a while back as well but sure that’s been addressed by now.
Awesome test! I love that you mentioned the pinpointrc black box tracker at the end. I got one about a month ago. It's a great little product. Managed to find my lost plane multiple times.
Could you try to do an iNav build? It would be very interesting to see an iNav glider or quadcopter.
Very nice mission. It's got the spirit of your old videos - but modern day tech instead of just popsicle sticks :)
The px4 looks pretty nerdy - just what I need.
You also got a Sripol going on here in the comments - next video Casey and Pew will come and say hi :)
Fun fact: During a campaign or whatever, a US drone lost connection with its controller and by default was set to land back home. The drone however did land home, all the way in california. And it the drone taxied away apparently even into the proper hangar.
Now bind a brick to it, so its maneuverability becomes what it looks like: a SpaceShuttle ...
Wait! - would you be so kind to strap it on some solid rocket boosters ... ???
... pretty-please?!
NASA is looking for guys like you! Thanks for sharing!
I saw this when it was first uploaded, but I'm now noticing how seamless those transitions are and WOW.
Damn. The possibilities are freaking infinite. Very, very cool concept.
Imo the best lost plane tracker is tBeacon, because it uses 433mhz band to transmit coordinates via voice. So you can use cheap UV-5R to call for them and receive them, and if u'll use Yagi high dBi antenna u'll be able to find it even without coordinates. You just search for direction with best signal, and go there.
I used to fly drones and planes in places with almost no cellular coverage (for example mountains), and this tBeacon thing helped me out really good though. It has its own battery with pretty low power consumtion because it just waits for you to call it and it doesnt transmit anything if its not needed.
Awesome man! GREAT IDEA.
Great video on this, with the Thorn bushes and all
These gliders put windows in danger! Nice work :)
Be careful with dropping from a balloon, as I saw a guy a few years ago try that and ended up getting his balloon rig tangled his antenna. Instead, try putting a small balloon opposite the large one. The small balloon is inserted into a cavity in the rear of the aircraft and holds it using pressure borrowed from the main balloon. When the big one pops, all pressure is lost in the system and the small balloon releases the aircraft... no strings attached! Good luck, I'd love to see it happen.
If you want to do a drop test on a budget, please take a look at my X-37ABC. Plans & instructions are available on Instructables website. By the way, I did a drop test using a cheap WLtoys V262, using my trusty FlySky FS-T6 to release the glider (using a device I've built using a servo and a 3CH receiver), controlling the aircraft using a F939 receiver (which is compatible with the FlySky FS-T6. Now, I didn't have expensive cameras to film it, therefore the quality of my video is pretty cr@ppy, but the drop test worked perfectly.
My year is complete when I see your new video. No more UA-cam for me until 2020.
That ages well
Story if my life: Man look at all these really cool features! Won't answer the really simple question I need answered....but has a ton of cool features.
Add a little bit of wing flex to increase stability, because your shuttle appears to have a negative flex, awesome work !!!!
Dihedral.
@@SuperFrodo95 thanks
Why does the px4 need a motor, as long as you have altitude you can trade it for speed, of coarse you can’t climb without a motor, but your just trying to get home. This project has really fired me up to try this. Great job.
i worked in STEM for 25yrs [Science Technology Engineering Maths] this is fascinating - i worked in aerospace, precision engineering
That was awesome, can't wait to see the weather balloon drop.
Beeing able to remember the Space Glider video like it was yesterday, i feel old now...
dude! that's real cool. Can you imagine dropping the glider in your state and actually gliding over to another state? Man, that would be cool A.F.
check for jet streams over your area when it goes high.
Will you do your long range FPV videos again. I loved those man
Gliders are supported by Ardupilot #LookforArdusoar
I suppose you can slow down your dropship and make it glide smoother (and as a result more spectacular) by applying the tail-breaking system which is in a real space shuttle is implemented by a two-piece split air brake.
I like this guys RC's big up bro,from 254
Awesome experiment, dude 😎👍 You've been inspiring me to design my own parkjets and fpv planes.
You should try an airfoil versus no airfoil with the same weight on both machines.
If you do your final version clear the grease from your servos and put a hand warmer pouch on the electronics and battery it gets cold up there.
Apart from the rest of a great video, the thing actually flies great!
You need to contact the "Earth to Sky Calculus" group. They send balloons to over 100K feet, but it takes days to find their payloads. Just think if it would return home. Good work!
Cool project Daniel. Keep ‘em coming😊🛩
Try a close coupled canard and about 20 degrees sweep back on the main wing trailing edge and it may pitch up in ground effect for a softer landing
Please post a follow-up video of the GoPro footage of the plane bouncing off the trees in the final crash landing. Epic bouncing from branch to branch.
Please please please do a high altitude drop in the near future. That would be so cool. A lot of people have attempted to pilot them back but it would be great to see and autonomous glide.
Agreed. I've seen a few attempts but none I'd really call fully successful.
Nice! Reminds me Xyla Foxlin vids. When it landed in the water by Mother Goose, did you perform CPR, CRC, or blow dry electronics, foam Proly not to happy with electronic cleaner???
Just realized how easy it is to make an rc plane, probably gonna be making one and now I'm looking at your videos way differently.
The shuttle drop project was the first video of your I saw and have been watching sense.
That's pretty cool man! I'll be watching for more updates.
Love your work good luck with the high alt version.
Still waiting for continuation. Of the series. I'm definitly gonna try this for package delivery
thats a very important piece of research if it works
Wow Thank you -much better than having boys playing with toy planes !!
noooice to see the alta8 is at least good for lifting what looks like a cereal box glider LMAO good to see you back sharing the diy builds
Great Aussie accent there.
I love these types of videos, keep up the good work.
"...so many autonomous vehicles!"
Welcome to the Matrix. Now charge my LiPo puny hooman!
Amazing video! What Ground station are you using in your Mac? I haven’t been able to install APM in my Mac. Can you give me a clue?
Those vids at your parents house back in the day were the best 😂
literally every rc thing I have ever built, "huh, I wonder why its working, what changed?"
8:07 As a commercial operator (Flight test operator currently) and a past military operator with external operator qualifications may I state this out loud...? What do you have you turn radius set to? Are you capable of setting it and/or the direction of rotation in the flight plan? Given the close proximity of your flight plan legs, you may be overlapping your turn radius and or with a combination of the short legs causing the inconsistent flight paths in real life as opposed the those you have build in your software and uploaded to the air vehicle. To me it looks like the vehicle at this point was flying the flight plan, but the turn radius was large (shallow turn) and as such it didn't have time to orbit 2 in such a way as to strait line 3 if you will.
Just great episode! Keep em coming!
I had a prop blow on a bixler and take out the vtx a mile away up wind. Inav brought it home. I'm sure there were multiple stalls on the way back.
Ardupilot not only supports gliders but it also searches for thermals.
Really that's nuts
Here's a link that may be helpful: ardupilot.org/plane/docs/soaring.html
You can most likely adjust the ardusoar parameters to suit your mission.
That was freaking cool. Looking forward to Part two
Dude, Im finding your catalogue backwards. I know its been years and youve made so much progress since this video, but were you setting your home location when you powered on and established gps before taking off? If it isnt getting a good home point it might not go into rtl.
Those Blackberry bushes looked like barbed wire....Im feeling nostalgic for those pink foam days Daniel...:)
You will need to watch out at the high altitude testing for the cocom GPS limits.
Really cool! Do you have any video where you go through your setup? I´d love to understand how it works!
Can you show us how to do the autopilot?
Hi what program did you use to get the Telemetry with the dragonlink system n where did you purchase the cable that's connected to the Dragonlink to the computer?
Cool idea for a drop from high altitude !
The slough haha! I haven't heard that thing mentioned in years, I'm from Woodinville lol.
RTH . fool it as you did. Fail-safe on low power. on a weather balloon high power to get some distance before the failsafe kick in.
Due to high wind at higher altitudes, flying home from 10 or 20 km is going to require a better glide than the "bad glide angle" you say you are going to try next.... I'd prefer to go for higher glide angles....
You using dragonlink v3 or V2? I’m considering purchasing a dragonlink because R9 system or crossfire isn’t good choice when using 1.2ghz vtx vrx.
Daniel, Back when you did a shuttle drop video I suggested that this technology would be useful for returning weather balloon or other balloon borne instrument packages to a home base instead of relying on them being dropped by parachute, found accidentally, and mailed back. I don't know if your comment about doing this from a balloon release is related to my earlier comment, but I still believe this would be a valuable application. My experience is that good ideas have usually already been patented, but if this hasn't it would by worth your pursuing. Bill Dimpfl
I always had problems with a cheap GPS. But it seems your tracking is good. So I guess you don't have problems there. Something to look into, though.
That is super cool it looks just like the shuttle used to I hopy you keep it up and dial it in I think you might be on to somthing really cool and needed for rc aircraft.
Glides like a brick ..... best line of the day...
Hello Buddy!! Great video! :) Please i would like to ask you do you have plans of this glider availible? :)
Check out the SAE aero design challenge, the advanced class planes have to drop these into target circles. They use pixhawks too.
Smooth glide slope. No matter where I put the explosives on mine it always seems nose heavy. It messes up the shaped charge alignment on contact with the wheelchairs, if you know what I mean? Ha ha ha ha ha, obviously joking. Nice to see you doing some projects again. Is there anything you can do to optimise your sink rates so that at any given time it's extrapolating for your position relative to it's speed, altitude, sink rate and orientation?