Flight 6: Conquering the Wind

Date: 7/8/09 11:30 am

Location: Baylands Park, Fremont

Plane: Parkzone Radian

Battery: 3-cell Thunder Power 2100 Start (full 12.68V), end (11.58V)

Duration: 20 minutes

Notes:

Was windy and a bit gusty (3-5mph wind w/ 9mph gusts), but I rose to the challenge. Had to fight the wind to the north, then would glide to the south back by me. Landings were a bit challenging but I managed it. I felt I had used the propeller more than ever before, however there was little drain on the battery.

Flight 5: Paradise

Date: 7/2/09 8:30 AM

Location: Baylands Park, Fremont

Plane: Parkzone Radian (Carbon Reinforced Fuselage)

Conditions: Perfect! (0-2 Mph Winds)

Battery: Start full, end 11.58 Volts

Flight Time: about 30 minutes in air!

Notes:

Today was the best yet, thanks to the perfect conditions and expansive flying room available at Baylands Park. It is best to make it here early in the morning I have found, among my few trips, and I have heard from the locals the earlier the better, now I believe it too.

Flight 4: Stall!

Date: 6/28/09 8:30 PM

Plane: Parkzone Radian (Carbon Reinforced Fuselage)

Location: Bellomy Field

Conditions: Windy 5-8 Mph w/ Gusts

Flight Time: about 8 minutes total.

Notes:

Having my confidence boosted from my last flight experience helped me get the courage to attempt flying with medium gusty winds. My first flight was about 5 minutes long and the plane was handling erratically in the air, I had to be heavy on the controls, as when I would turn into the wind the plane would seem to gyrate. I had to use nearly full trim on the elevator pushing the nose down. I was able to bring it in for a rough landing. I thought maybe the trim was off and adjusted the screw on the piano wire. Then I attempted my second flight, and a few minutes into it, just as I had told Kirsten I had it under control, I was gliding with slow speed, and a gust of wind came up, the plane starting maneuvering in a odd spiraling motion while seeming falling toward the ground. It looked as if I had been caught in a twister. Adding throttle only made it fall faster, and suddenly there was a big CRASH! in the trees right next to the road. I ran over only to find I had clipped a tree with the wing, but fortunately only a minor wing in the leading edge of the starboard wing. However I was impressed that the fuselage had help up without any damage, and grateful I had taken the extra time to reinforce it.

I was able to expand the indented foam on the wing using a mixture of boiling water and soap, then gluing the remaining crack.

Flight 3: Actual Great Success!

Location: Bellomy Field

Date: 6/26/09

Plane: Parkzone Radian (with new carbon reinforced fueselage)

Conditions: 2-3 mph w/ 5mph gusts, wind in total random directions

Battery: Started full (12.56V), ended at 11.3V (2100Mah 3-Cell Thunder Power Pro-Lite V2)

Modifications to Fueselage:

A new fuselage was recieved, and reinfoced with carbon fiber rod where the previous fuselage was shown to be weak.

Notes:

Today was overall a great day of flying! Flight duration was approximately 30-45 minutes, I should have paid more attention or reset the timer on my transmitter to get actual flight times. Once the plane was properly trimmed (Trimming is difficult without a neck-strap) it flew stable like a charm. Thrown takeoffs were easy, and once in the air the plane seemed highly affected by wind gusts. The wind gust direction was completely random causing some difficulty. I was able to catch my first thermals off the parking lot adjacent to the field, they were quite constant and I was able to fly without power for probably 5 minutes or longer, however, this resulted in some overconfidence in my part and resulted in a stall and near crash in the Leavey Center parking lot later when I was flying at low altitude. Also I practiced landing and found it a bit harder with the wind than I had practiced with the simulator. I found myself coming in too high and way too fast, which ended up with me performing swirls to land. I believe this resulted from my fear of flying to far away to get a good approach. There were no crashes, and the plane was nicely in tact!

Flight 2: Titanic Proportions of suck

Location: Baylands Park

Date: 5/21/09

Plane: Parkzone Radian

Conditions: Windy (too much)

Crash Results:

Notes:

It was too windy for my nimble novice thumbs to handle. My handy assistant Kirsten helped my hand launch the plane and the wind instantly took it into the trees resulting in an epic fail crash.

First Flight! Great Success! (slight scratches)

Location: Bellomy Field

Plane: (Brand New) Parkzone Radian

Conditions: 3-4 mph winds with 8 mph gusts.

Notes:
Flying for the first time was nerve wracking, and I had absolutely no control! I hand launched the plane with way too much throttle like a fighter jet from a battleship, and way overcompensating on the controls, I was doing some serious acrobatic flips, hoopla's, and what have yous just trying to keep the thing from piledriving into the ground with erratic throttling. The wind was no help either, and trying to slow things down I crash landed by catching the wing tip on the ground, everything was fine that time.

Pulling myself together I went for another try. Thought I would use much less throttle, and be gentle with the controls, the Radian is a very responsive plane! This time using very little throttle on the launch, I was able to have much better control of the plane, and I was able to even cut the throttle completely and fly into the wind, this is where I realized that the Radian can fly with absolutely no throttle whatsoever. When flying into the wind the controls extremely responsive, and with only a slight jog of the controls the plane flips completely around and zooms away! I felt much more under control this time, though I still had issues decoding in my brain what controls to enact in order to get it to do what I wanted when the plane is in different orientations, i.e. I always turned the wrong way when flying towards myself or at weird angles. Landing this time I was able to throttle off and glide towards myself which was into the wind, come close to the ground, and again turned the wrong way since I was flying towards myself and caught a wingtip resulting in a gracious crash.

There were a few more flights similar to the last one, and one of them had a picture perfect landing. During the last flight the wind really picked up, and I couldn't control the plane. I would try to fly into the wind, but with a small jog of the controls it would flip completely around real fast and pick up serious speed. The elevators also had high sensitivity when flying into the wind, and a few times I found myself flying near vertical. I decided to try and bring the plane in for a landing, and while coming in low with the wind I was having a heck of a time keeping control, and as mentioned earlier, my slow brain works backwards sometimes, and I did a 10 foot piledrive crash during the approach, resulting in the image above.

The break is clean, so I will probably go to the hobby store to get some balsa wood spars for reinforcement.

So now, I will pick myself up, dust my sleeves off, glue this thing back together, and fly again another (not so windy) day.

STM32 w/ 14pin JTAG RLINK connector

This is my STM32 schematic which uses a 14-pin JTAG connector since my board is so small I have absolutely no room for 20-pin. Please check that the pinout is ok to match the RLINK 14-pin adapter, pinout for rlink is located here: http://www.raisonance.com/Forum/punbb/viewtopic.php?id=2449