First Flight!

So uh ... I'm sure you guys are wondering why there has not been an update from this in so long. Well that is for a lot of reasons:

1) I moved states

2) I started like 4 new jobs in the mean time, and got fired from 1, quit another... but hey... I still have 2 left, not bad right?

3) Well... you can see for yourself in the rest of this post.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/555574_cc31ffcc37fe4264adfd569deea59c11/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

First Flight did not go well

Fortunately... all damages were cosmetic only and the aircraft was able to be re-assembled easily for another flight. So... how did that go?

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/555574_c32eec8b43a24ba7bdf039788baa0bb2/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

And thennnnn.... we never saw it again.....

What went wrong?

Firstly, I would like to point out that we went to a park where flying drones (both quads and fixed wings) is allowed and is legal. It was our intention to fly below 125 metres and stay within the boundaries of the park, however, we had NO IDEA this aircraft had such a ballistic thrust to weight ratio, NOR that autopilot would NOT be able to really control the aircraft.

It has been 6 months since the incident and I hoenstly still couldn't tell you what went wrong... but here's what happened:

1) launch

2) seeing the aircraft dive into the ground I realised auto-launch had simply never actuated and the aircraft was now in manual control. Yes, FULL MANUAL, not even horizon mode.

3) I barely managed to get the aircraft into the air manually and switched on horizon hold in an attempt to buy some time to figure out what to do.

4) I noticed the aircraft suddenly stalled and was plummeting to the ground and this was because in my panick, I had somehow lowered the throttle and it was now sitting at 10%

5) I hit full throttle and set it to RTH mode.

6) we never saw it again.

Based on the final telemetry message we received from it, it told us it was travelling at 90km/h... pointed 12 degrees down, facing south.

Map of incident

After walking the entire field, we never found it, however, we did come across this:

Upon seeing that, we decided quickly it was probably not a good time to be somebody with a drone remote in their hands, so we left.

Was that fire really caused by our drone?

Honestly who knows. Based on the fire registry, it was down to vandalism. Additionally, this fire happened an entire hour after our flight. Could the battery have taken that long to combust? Most likely not... Or maybe we did cause it... but fortunately it was put out quickly anyway.

What lessons can we learn from this?

I think the biggest takeaway for me was that the Atom RC Dolphin was really just not a good aircraft to begin with. It sort of had way too much ... everything. Thurst to weight, way too unstable, way too high of a stall speed... It was just not a great platform at all

Moving forwards I would aim to use a platform with a significantly lower stall speed... My friend recommended getting a self-propelled glider as those have incredibly low stall speeds and would be easy to practice on. Unfortunately, the problem with those is the limited space to mount FPV equipment.

Another thing I should get better at doing is line of sight flying. Flying an aircraft from a 3rd person while not moving in the same frame of motion as it is incredibly difficult. Unfortunately for me, the o4 had overheated from being on the ground for so long, so by the time the dolphin got in the air, it had already shut down. This meant I could never really have salvaged the situation in FPV mode. I guess I never really forced myself to get better at flying in 3rd person view because I had boldy assumed there would always be FPV to fall back to.

Perhaps we should have gone VTOL. A VTOL fixed wing would have solved the issues of limited air real estate and it would give us a lot more time to check all systems are working before truly flying. Granted, a VTOL is significantly more expensive and comes with other issues to deal with, but perhaps those are worth solving for the significantly higher chances of not having a broken drone.

Lastly, having experienced this, I now know this is not going to be my final crash. I full heartedly believe there will be more in the future. Until I perfect my skills and the launch process, I believe in investing into cheaper ecosystems so that flying more drones in the future would be financially viable still.

What next?

Mark my words, I will be back. This is SO not over.