This design was testing the stability of the mount if each of the four legs were made out of 1 foot tubes. The scale model performed well in the wind tunnel tests, with no wobbling at a wind speed of 55 m/s.

This design was testing the stability of the mount with a leg length of 1.5 feet. It was tested under the same conditions as the 1 foot leg design and performed similarly, with minimal wobbling at 55 m/s

1 Foot Leg Design

1.5 Foot Leg Design

Force on Both Mount Designs With the Base Plate

Force on Both Mount Designs with Base Plate Drag Subtracted Out

The mount was first tested with the original 3 foot mast prior to cutting the carbon fiber. The goal of this flight was to test the initial performance of the mount and to test the data logging capabilities of ssh when running on the raspberry pi's hotspot. We found that the hotspot was not powerful enough to send live data in this instance, and began looking into Wi-Fi extenders and other wireless data transmission methods. When flying with the full 3 foot tube, there is significant wobbling from the drone even in minor wind, but we expected this to be negligible once the mast was cut to its final size.

Once the mount was assembled, it was necessary to determine the optimal height of the anemometer from the drone's propellers. Since we are recording wind data there can be some interference from the drone when it is flying. According to the literature, an anemometer should experience minimal interference at a height of roughly 1.5 propeller diameters above the propellers. In order to verify this guideline, we performed a prop wash test to measure the interference of the propeller wind on the over all airflow around the drone. This was done by using a sage stick to visualize airflow around the drone when it was stationary and when flying, and comparing the two. In doing this, we were able to verify the literature and finalize our design, making the final mast 16 inches tall. 

Hover every 20 meters for 1 minute

Continuous flight through altitude range