[MT-ALES] First Flight Thoughts...

[Hal Aasen]

That’s pretty neat. Kinda, but not really flying on instruments outside the cockpit. Practice, practice,practice!

Sent from my iPad

On Jun 20, 2021, at 9:09 AM, CURTIS SUTER via MT-ALES <mt-ales at lists.webworks.net> wrote:


Humbled.

That says it all of my first experience with this GPS Triangle Racing.

I ordered a Finch/Sparrow from Rick Shelby and it was shipped and arrived a day earlier than planned with all the updated software and registration numbers already programmed.  Thanks for that!

The install was simple, and I programmed the transmitter to a three-position switch to move through the screen displays pages.  The data fields change in the Albatross app depending on whether you’re in Start, Thermal or Glide.  Very useful.  I fabricated a piece of wood that is velcroed to the transmitter that holds the Android phone and velcroed the Finch receiver to the back of that.  I never had an RF drop while flying.

I launched, climbed to altitude and entered the course.  It was quite windy at altitude, and it immediately became apparent the crab angle required to fly parallel to the course.  Pretty neat!
On lap 2 I caught a thermal before turn point (TP) 2 and worked it downwind.  Uh, well that sort of worked great but there was a lot of sink getting back to TP2 so I’m not sure it helped as it just seemed to waste a lot of time.  This was the realization that the strategy of this task is much different than any I’ve flown before!  If this were a TD/ALES/F5J task I could have easily made it to the landing area.  I also learned that I thought I was going to pass through the TP but actually ended up inside of it so I had to turn back.  I think the wind blew me inside.  I’ll have to watch the app closer to ensure I go around the point or at least get inside the turn area.  The best flight time I was able to achieve was a 7:35 flight and 2 laps.  It’s a start!  😉  Okay, I cheated with a blurp of power to get the second lap in.  Read on.  😉

I was surprised that I could fly the course easily, I could understand the audio to stay on course and the Vario seemed pretty accurate too.  All in all, things worked really well other than the winds.

Now to lay in bed and ponder all the different strategies.  Oh, I also placed the course so that TP2 was directly in the morning sun!

Here’s the Plan and Profile view of the flight.
To start the course you must enter below 200m and 60kph.  That was fairly easy to accomplish although I would have liked to have been a bit faster.
The black line is launch and the motor may be ran as many times before arming and entering the course.  This line changes to a color upon starting the course and changes colors depending upon altitude.
In the profile view you can see where I cheated and blipped the motor to finish the course.  So it was really just a one lap course but I wanted to see the behavior how things worked and finish two laps.
Oh, Since the time wasn’t up when I crossed the finish line I didn’t know how to finish the task.  When it detects zero airspeed/movement it ends the task.  I think it may have ended with the motor restart but I’m not sure how it would have known that.  Hmm?  I see the profile view shows the motor start but I haven’t figured out how it knows when motor is on or off?  Hmm.

Anyway, this system from the equipment to the app is well thought out.  Brilliant!

Curtis

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