Thor Flight 76

Adhika, Andrei, Arion, Brian, and Will arrived at ACRC around 9:00am to test the revised waypoint guidance algorithm, and to obtain flight data from GPS FASER for Adhika's research. For Thor, a 70x70m and 150x150m square pattern was flown with both the original waypoint guidance algorithm, and the newly revised algorithm. GPS FASER was flown once in manual mode to verify the navigation filter solution and GPS sensor measurements. Once verified, the revised waypoint algorithm was flown with GPS FASER in a 150x150m square, and again in a 600x250m rectangular pattern with limited bank angle and a slower airspeed. All flight ops ran smoothly. Software used for this flight was trunk/Software/FlightCode rev 914. Thor flight 76 was conducted using the same 70x70m pattern flown in flight 74, but with the revised waypoint algorithm. The effect of the different reachability maneuver is clearly visible in the flight data when compared to flight data from flight 74. There was strong wind throughout this flight which caused the airplane to miss certain waypoints. This resulted in the airplane spiraling in towards those missed waypoints. Increasing the waypoint radius tolerance from 10m to 20m would most likely eliminate this effect, as the airplane was very close to hitting the waypoints that it missed