FeralFlyer
lvl.1
Australia
Offline
|
Hi All,
I am using my M210 to monitor shore lines for significant distances (several kilometres at a time). To do so the RPA is deployed from a boat which acts as a mobile base station, transitting along the shoreline in tandem with the RPA so that when the batteries get low it is a short flight to the nearby boat for landing and battery replacement, before launching again and resuming monitoring. When conditions are calm and the water is flat, this is no problem, the RPA is able to be restarted easily and the IMU initialises quickly to recommence flying. However, this is not always the case, and if there is significant wind or swell the resultant waves cause the boat to move such that I have experienced significant issues with the IMU initialisation during restart after swapping batteries (i.e. not able to restart the RPA). I was wondering if anyone had some advice as to how to overcome this issue or if there is a way to adjust the IMU initialisation "thresholds" to permit the restart of the RPA whilst experiencing some movement without compromising flight accuracy? Or am I restricted to only being able to operate on calm days?
Additional points:
- Landing on shore and swapping batteries and restarting from the land is not always an option.
- I am flying using TB50 batteries, which provide approx 15 min flight time, so landing on shore, getting off the boat, swapping batteries and then getting back on the boat etc. represents a significant amount of time taken out of the batteries that could be spent flying and covering more area.
- I have tried pointing the boat into the waves to minimise rocking etc., but this didn't help (wind speed approx 25 knots, waves were about 30cm high). Perhaps slowly motoring into the waves to try and minimise the movement of the boat?
- I don't like the idea of "hot swapping" the batteries without turning the RPA off due to associated issues around voltage imbalances between batteries - ultimately leading to RPA falling out of the sky!
Any help or suggestions much appreciated. Cheers.
|
|