For the obvious reasons, I invariably get too busy to blog exactly when things get interesting...
The results of this test flight were nominal – just what we wanted. Happiness is three taut chains!
- GPS position keeping worked flawlessly, with the pilot maintaining a horizontal envelope of <40 m irrespective of flight altitude.
- Virtual Bob, in all configurations, worked exactly as intended, keeping the altitude to within several feet, controlling cable tension, and damping the whole structure.
- Deployment off of the figure 8 was smooth.
- Workload on the pilot was reduced significantly, with heads-in operation proving completely feasible.
In all honesty, this should not have been so difficult to do, but the best laid plans, etc.
A big part of getting it right was finding the right crew:
Doug Uttecht and John Peden of Northwest Helicopters
Our next step is to follow up with a high altitude flight to validate the end-to-end procedures. We need to work on a technique for graciously retreiving the climber when folding the pyramid, and we need to decide on whether cables will be reused once laid on the ground.
If all goes well, we’ll be able to do this flight in two weeks, and then turn our attention to running the games.