Airplane

Im finally learning to properly land this airplane, i did several FBWA runs with this aircraft trying to get my approach right and landing right too

I absolutely suck at both of these things, atp im surprised ik how to build the most stable aircraft but idk how to fly the said stable aircraft

We cant 100% blame my lack of skill tho cuz if yall notice we can see that the glide ratio is a bit steep, I didnt expect that from this aircraft but due to the autonomous electronics increasing the weight it might be cuz that

Since the old wing mount broke and also i wanted to design a new one with 2 servos so i can get flaps with aileron going, which will hopefully reduce my approach speed and angle

The efficiency of this aircraft is pretty solid ngl, it cruises at around 5-6A which is very good imo, with this pack i can get around 15-20mins

I also made a 4s2p pack for this aircraft using the cells i got from hackclub, i have only bench tested those, the voltage sag is kinda concerning so im not sure if i should fly with them or not

Anyways enjoy the flight and do star the repo if yall like the project so far

Drop mechanism done

Gonna test this servo drop mech on this aircraft too, hopefully it works

Unfortunately yall have to wait with me till i go back home

Attained total hands off autonomy successfully
(Ignore the wonky video my mum was trying her best)

Man this is the best day in my life.

For starters ill start from yesterday, after coming home i realised i
dont have much pitch stablity cuz the elevator was hitting the carbon
spar, so i ditched conventional tail and made a Vtail instead.

After i set it up in arduplane the next step was to go out and test it,
And oh boy testing i did.

I flew first in FBW A (stablize) And it flew fkin beaut, at 30m altitude
i set it to Auto mode, I had preprogrammed 4 waypoints and then RTL in
the fc.

It flew absolutely perfectly (except for the fact that the winds was WAY
too high i could NOT fly it but the fc could) So after it finished i
tried bringing it home in FBW A mode (worst idea ever )

The wind literally yeeted it in other direction and i switched on RTL, unfortunately it was wraps

The plane crashed in a gravel making facility (idk bro)

And i was surprised to find out that ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BROKE!!!!!?!!?!

THAT HAS TO BE SOME SORT OF MIRACLE BRO

Like literally the only thing broken was that ONE SINGULAR SOLDER JOIN
CAME LOOSE DIDNT EEN BREAK IT JS CAME LOOSE

So after it crashed we panicked and rushed to the facility, the security
was super helpful and i had telemetry link with it so i was able to
find it in no time

This project was excruciating but absolutely worth it in the end, I will be flying it in more beautiful locations later

The image in the end is the aftermath of the flight (literally spotless)

Beautiful flight

Js look at the way it flies bro i can NOT its way too smooth

This was my first time actually flying with a flight computer and god damm was it a good experience, everything was so easy and i wasnt scared of flying it too far as i had setup RTL earlier

Unfortunately the bad news is that i had 3 flights with this plane, and in the final flight i was tryna autotune it and mid flight the motor came off the mount and fell in the ground (yes it was 70m above the ground when it happened) thankfully the goated pixhawk was able to save the plane, also i had full control over it so i was able to land the plane safely

After further inspection i figured out that the motor heat had melted the PLA mount and made the countersink screws act like wedges in wood and it js came clean off 😭 I did NOT expect that bro.

Since then i have asked for a bump and also i made the mount much thicker and in todays flight i will be ziptying the motor on

Apart form that i also changed the tail for standard configuration to a V tail, currently the elevator hits the carbon boom which reduces the throw, thsi Vtail is much sturdy and cleaner lets hope for the best in todays flight

Okay so good news and bad news

Bad news being that my 1.5m span UAV unfortunately crashed, i took it out to fly yesterday and due to wings being way too high i couldnt control it and it crashed.

Good news being that my 1m span ultra stick DID fly, This is a similar UAV i started designing thats much lighter and more capable.

Enjoy the flight video, Unfortunately due to me being a shit pilot i tried to turn it towards me to get a nice shot but the turn radius was too low and it was going straight towards the power lines so i panicked and crashed it, That broke the motor mount so ill print like 5-6 of them and go to fly tmr with the pixhawk

Breadboards are mid and they ruined my life, i got devorced lost my house, kids, properties, car and everything else cuz of them

I wrote a header file for this encoder, Normally thesehigh precision 21 bit encoders use SPI to communicate to the MCU, BUT I SWEAR ON MY LIFE THOSE PADS ARE TOO FKIN SMALL.
ISTG THESE ARE THE SMALLEST PADS IVE EVER SEEN HOW IS ONE SUPPOSED TO SOLDER ON THESE

I was NOT gonna solder those lil shis w my fat and rusted ass soldering iron, so i instead used 14bit resolution PWM out of the encoder, its not AS precise as the 21 bit but il solder them when im home
OH AND THIS IS MY HOSTEL ROOM BTW
I HATE IT HERE

The consistency of this encoder is perfect tho resolution is consistent (both the stepper and the encoder) I showed yall in the video how consistent it was.

Sometimes it floats aound a bit but ik its cuz of the breadboard fkin up the pwm signals whcih are alr prone to interference. Ill fix that tho so need to worry, Ill design everything in a way so that in future its very easy to switch from PWM to SPI

Anywyas thats all i did for today, for tmr i have better calibration for motors and when the motors calibrate ill calibrate the encoders too, I havent worked much w header files for C, This is my first time so ill have to learn abt that a lot too

I love writing clean code

I genuinely think one thing im good at is writing clean and structured code, Anyways apart from that, i was able to utilize sensorless homing in my TMC2209 drivers which i very ingeniously picked cuz i totally knew what they were capable of.

To be honest i was js surfing da net and found out that u can actually home using these drivers without any external switches, so i was able to save the hassle and wire for that, It was pretty hard getting it running im not gonna lie, With help of chatgpt i was able to figure out why it wasnt working, and in the end i was able to get it to home properly

I wired up the GPS use a library for it too and then sent those functions in a different header file so my main file remains clean.

I coded a lil GPS_3D return func that gives x y and alt of the GPS which we will be using to aim the yagi to the target.

You see the no gps fix message cuz my house walls are pretty thick, these GPS cant get fix inside (my planes expensive GPS cant get it indoors either)

Update on my rc plane:
Its my last day at home before ill be going to clg and it has not stopped raining for a single day so its wraps for that, I might be able to find a window to test it maybe.

Tmr ill be working on getting the motor encoder working, Im still waiting up on my bearings and the wodden staff istg its taking way too long

MY CUSTOM DIPOLE IS WORKING AND NOTHING BURNED

FOR STARTERS MY COAX IS HERE

I went back to my dipole because it was WAY easier to solder the wires on stainless steel than it was on aluminum, Kinda bummed out cuz stainless steel velocity factor is higher than Al, So im 80% sure my antenna isnt tuned rn (hasn’t unlocked its full potential)
Also i havent tuned my antenna for endpoint factor either.

I tested with mavlink in same room and another room the RSSI didnt drop, I will be conducting more experiments today driving around tryna compare both the antennas

I will research on how to build a 1:1 or 4:1 balun and make that too if possible, follow this proj and lets figure this blackmagic out together

OH ITS CHRISTMAS EVERYDAY

MY PARTS ARRIVED ITS SUCH A MASSIVE BOX I CANT CONTAIN MYSELF, Im so so so excited thankyou zach thankyou stardance and thanku hackclub for getting me all this

As soon as my parcel arrived i hopped on da puter tryna make the stepper go brr
When i was starting out surprisingly it was NOT working as intended

The stepper was making a LOT of noise and it was just jerky and stalling and had 0 torque, for the life of me i couldn’t figure out what the issue was.

TURNS OUT, Claude fkin lied to me and told me wrong way to wire the stepper phase wires, so i had changed the wiring of how the stepper connector initially came with, After my free tokens expired i was like shi i gotta take shi in my own hands, I tried that and it instantly worked

The torque was perfect and microstepping was insanely clean

Now that this wiring stuff is done, all that remains is i have to figre out a way to get the motor encoder with the motor, i have multiple ideas on how i will do it so follow this project to see more of this

in the end i would like to thank hackclub once AGAIN for getting me all this i love yall

I have finished the plane

This took way more than 2 hours btw, it was js such a hassle i forgot to record

Anyways the 2 hours that ARE in this post are the hours i spent analyzing the crash of the flying wing, I have zero idea why it crased, but it just rolled right and hit the ground nose down every chance it got.

I went on reddit asking about this they told me its cuz flying wings are fiddly (i dont have much exp w them either), and need to be perfect to fly
So i js moved on from that and finished the build of the full plane

I did factory reset the flight computer this time to get everything reset, and this is a note to self for future

When configuring channel 14 RSSI for Flysky TX, Remember to turn on allow_aux_reverse in RC_OPTIONS parameter for it to work

The plane is done and build (will build the fuselage later incase it crashes), Im js waiting for good weather, Im here till 7th of this month, hopefully we get a window in that time or else its wraps for me

Dipole is done

I made a 1/2 wave dipole antenna using 14 AWG aluminum wires
I recorded 30 mins of work but this job took me 2 total hours to complete

For starters i ALMOST disintegrated my 3D printer because of a stupid soda can

I forgot i kept it under the arm (the X axis arm that moves up and down)
and i didnt realise i kept it there, My first layers were SO trash
because of it it was a solid half an hour of troubleshooting till i
figured out what the issue was.
Thankfully i didnt overtighten my screws so my rails are fine, But i
cant say the same about my nozzle

My nozzle scraped the bed after i removed the can cuz i set the Z offset
too low and i did stop the print but it was lowk a lil late, It still
works so thats fine But this stupid 6min print took me 2 Hours of work

Anyways, This half wave is made of aluminum 14AWG single cored wire, i
used a drill machine to straighten it and then cut 16.75cm pieces ( 2 cm
more than that and then i folded the 2 cm part to work as connectors)
It looks pretty perfect to me, I hope it works that way too

If this doesnt work as expected ill look into building my DIY balun

Took the plane out anyway

So today i did 3 VERY short flights 2 of those were successful so ill only count 2

First flight the plane started oscillating in the pitch so i ended it short, Also cuz i ran out of ground to fly as due to heavy rainfall the fields i fly usually on are FULL of water

After this flight i committed a bit more to the second launch, got the plane in the air (I think AP did it) The tail was oscillating but it wasn’t unflappable, I had to crash the aircraft in the tree because it was heading beyond my line of sight and there was a LOT of water beyond that tree

Thankfully the aircraft received no damage in todays flight, everything was so soft the aircraft didn’t even register any of these crashes as a crash, It went good overall

I reduced the servo throws by moving the wires down a notch realized that my surfaces are not symmetric so i accounted for that checked everything chucked it in my room and it feels fine for now

Something i dont understand is why in 2nd flight did the aircraft pitch left 80 degrees for no reason and it didn’t even stabilize itself, might need to look at the logs for a few more hours to figure that out

Fuh me

The EXACT DAY i finished my build it has NOT stopped raining at all the airfield is completely damp and my aircraft isnt waterproof.

I have limited amount of holidays and this weather is NOT helping me, mum says if i am not able to finish it i can come back again and try then, I still have 4 days to go hopefully weather clears out and im able to ATLEAST take out the flying wing

Added the MCU and other sensors that will be necessary in the CAD too

SHOUT OUT TO @253_Mathilde_IYKYK

For starters i made a lil script so that if a rocket is in the SOI of a
planet and then it scans near it by pressing F it shows all the
necessary details about the planet, currently they are obvious details
but i will work on making them useful. I have a few ideas of what i can
do with it

Now to the important part @253_Mathilde_IYKYK recommended me to add a
song they like SO I ADDED IT TO THE GAME
Hope yall like it :)

(Sorry for not including video idk why stardance was bugging and throwing error when i was tryna upload a video)

Made the OS

Since stardance was ending i was like lets js finish this and ship it

This devlog i added pyrite, its own python like programming lanuage

You can make simple programs in this run them in the terminal inside it

Fixed the file manager, now you can use linux commands to make files from terminal and theyll actually show up in the file manager so thats pretty cool

I think ill call it wraps now

BOOMBOX!!1! , macondo marketing team too good

Last night i spent unhealthy amount of time watching ig posts of macondo on hackclub ig, I lowk feel insane amount of fomo and i wanted to go so bad

The songs they used in the marketing reels are still stuck in my head
So as any reasonable person would, I added a boombox in my game with with my fav songs from the reels they made

@zach PLES FLY ME IN NEXT IRL HC EVENT PLES IM BROKE

FINISHED THE BUILD OF THE STEPPING STONE FLYING WING

This is the flying wing i normally take out to fly and have fun, Ive had like 60% success rate with this model (without wingtip washout), Mostly because flying wings are hard to fly and i dont know how to fly

Good thing about flight computers is that they DO know how to fly so this would be a lil bit easier

Ive added 2.5 degrees of wingtip washout on this aircraft, also ran CFD sims on the entire wing profiile and saw that the stall characteristics are like a self stablizing feedback loop

I have done all the wiring and flying wing setup in the pixhawk, i just need to go fly to use the autotune mode to get the PID right for this model

One thing that is bad with this model is that the elevon throw when its going down is WAY less than compared to that when its going up so i hope that might not fk up the plane

Ive ran several indoor tests with the motor on and off, it does stall if not thrown properly but most of the time the launch is butter, lets hope its that way tmr too

IM HOME

Today as soon as i reached home i unboxed my telemetry radio and started working on my flying wing

Ill use this aircraft as a stepping stone to learn AP and its modes and if i crash hopefully the damage isnt that much

Logging time for builds irl is super hectic bruh i gotta figure out a better way to do this