Good news/bad news

Well, I'll start with the good news. Today we took Catfish out to the RAMS field to dial in the APM settings and had some outstanding flights. We went through the APM recommended tuning procedure, tuning roll, pitch, yaw, and autopilot navigation. The results were so good compared to the out-of-the-box settings that Marcus even said he might like flying in fly-by-wire mode better than manual. We got response in FBW to be crisp and manageable, something we have not seen before. We got flight in auto mode to be extremely accurate in most cases, making tight turns to stay on track and hugging the planned flight lines. We also
worked out how to fly the same flight plan multiple times while staying aloft. And a great part is that after tuning roll/pitch/yaw we spend the rest of our time flying with hands off the stick and only me giving control from the computer. Performance in the auto modes (Auto, RTL, Loiter, Guided) was really excellent. The even better news is that we will be getting our airspeed sensor Monday, which should make things even better. Our plan for the next time we fly is this:

• Calibrate airspeed sensor
• Mitigate slight altitude loss in turns in Auto mode. We know the settings to adjust to do this, we just didn't have time today.
• Configure and tune TECS (Total Energy Control System). This is the new APM algorithm for throttle/pitch management and should give us some better flight times.
• Test auto takeoff/land
• Collect imagery of the flying field to see that we are able to create mosaics

Now for the bad news.  I was out flying DeaconEye to get a photo of it in flight for our lab poster and things didn't go so well. In PH and AH I noticed that it was a little squirrely, more so than normal. I put it in CF (making the control heading directly away from me), rotated it to face me, and was getting ready to get the shot. At this point it was in a much larger than normal oscillation due to PH. I am quite certain I gave it left stick, as I should have, but I did not get a satisfactory response. I tried right stick in case control was reversed from what I expected, but still had no good control. DeaconEye continued to my right and into a small tree. Damage was minimal, only a broken leg, 2 broken arms, and a damaged gimbal motor, which have already been repaired. Unfortunately, the SD card was, for some reason, not logging and is totally unreadable in the computer, so I am unable to review flight data. The only evidence I have is a snapshot of the MK Tool OSD from when she hit the tree. It shows a magnet error and distance to the PH setpoint of 8 m, which is far from correct, along with a magnet error. I am not sure if poor GPS reception and magnet inaccuracy caused the accident, but it seems likely to have played a significant role. We are getting a new, functional SD card and gimbal motor and will have her back in the air for testing next week.