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March 9, 2024
Group members met with Mr. Rosenthal at the Farmington RC Club grounds in order to fly the RC Plane. Mr. Rosenthal went over basics for flying the plane with the remote control. Weather sensor fits inside the RC Plane!
March 20, 2024
Weather sensor and code picks up its first initial readings- testing begins. We used a hair dryer, pointing the heat directly at the sensor to create a hot and dry environment- the sensor started to pick up higher temperatures and a lower humidity reading. When the dryer was turned off, the temperature and humidity seemingly returned to base levels. A Success!
IMG_4867.MOVPictured to the right is readings for Temperature and Humidity. This was taken when the weather instrumentation first started working. It initially has no readings but then provides the Temperature and Humidity levels that it was picking up from our location within the classroom.
April 27, 2024
We met with Mr. Rosenthal to test final instrumentation data. We got the plane set up and then took it up for a short flight. Although the plane experienced some technical difficulties, dropping unexpectedly at certain moments during its flight, it was able to accurately record weather and humidity data. The longitude and latitude data was slightly off, as the system had not yet been calibrated. We were not able to see if it had worked until we arrived home and uploaded the data off of the SD card and placed it into a data table.
Pictured to the left is the plane landing and to the right is the plane being assembled before flight. The Wing is being screwed on, as we were working with the instrumentation data that is placed inside of the plane.
IMG_5814.MOVAbove are two videos captured during the plane's flight. The one on the left shows the plane mid-flight, also capturing one of the planes unexpected "dips" that can be attributed to a technical malfunction of two receivers interacting with each other and the one on the right shows the plane taking off.
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Final Analysis:
We started out this project with the goal of creating an RC plane that would be able to record air pressure, humidity and temperature data while also being low cost, reliable, testable, light weight and compact- in order to measure weather data above the ocean at a mid-lower atmospheric layer to better predict inclement weather and storms that originate over the ocean. Our final product is an RC plane that is able to measure humidity and temperature, latitude, longitude and altitude. The data we collected was accurate and would aid in helping to predict the onset of inclement weather. Our RC plane was relatively low cost, testable, light weight and compact. The purpose of our plane in helping predict weather over the ocean, was primarily to replace aircrafts- which would risk expensive equipment and valuable human lives in the event that it was caught in the storm. However, an RC plane would be somewhat ineffective in this situation as it can only fly in mild weather- due to the fact that it is so low weight, and the materials are so light, heavy weather would cause considerable damage to the plane. In this sense though, it would be easier and less expensive to repair than an actual aircraft. Our testing was also somewhat flawed as we did not fly the plane over an actual body of water- however we were limited as the field where we tested our plane was one of the only approved places to fly planes such as ours.
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