Task 2

Flight Data

Matthew Berk, Michael Vegh

Test data for an approximately 10 minute flight can be seen below; the first plot is a 3d plot of the overall mission trajectory, including landing. A 2D plot of the overall aircraft trajectory from the ground perspective (i.e. latitude and longitude) can also be seen below that, along with a plot of altitude vs. ground distance traveled.

In addition, airspeed (both the true and indicated airspeed from the pitot tube, as well as the airspeed calculated from GPS measurements) can be seen below. Note that there is a fair amount of noise in all the data, and that although there is some amount of agreement between the plots, it will likely need filtering for subsequent analyses.

Battery power consumption was also calculated (based on smoothed voltage measurements, as well as filtered time sample data). The regions of near-zero power consumption are indicated of glide tests to determine L/D performance estimates. In addition, there is a plot of time between samples below, illustrating the need for a filter During the last two minutes of flight, a steady powered level flight was attempted to be maintained for the majority. Additionally, t=0 refers to the take off time, and that any time that predates t=0 refers to instrumentation testing. The mean time between samples is .0059 seconds, with a standard deviation of 1.4373e-005 seconds.

Finally, for the sake of completeness, plots of battery voltage (filtered) as well as battery current drain (in mA-h) can be seen below.

A full history of the attitude of the aircraft was obtained during the flight, including heading, pitch, and bank angle. Interesting features include the glide tests from 150-300s which show up as peaks (from the climbs) with low alpha valleys in between. Similarly the roll angle appears very steady during those tests. Heading can be somewhat difficult to read as when it crosses pi it jumps from one end of the scale to the other.

Angular rates were recorded, showing how the aircraft typically responded to control inputs during the normal flight regime. Similar observations from above apply here as well. Of perhaps more interesting note, dynamic response tests performed from times ~320-350s are easily visible as dense blocks where the rates were changing back and forth rapidly..

The control inputs were logged, showing a subset of the flight's control inputs as the full 10 minute flight gave difficult to read output. Of note are the glide tests for L/D (seen as the zero throttle portions) as well as the dynamic response tests, which are noticeable as the dense blocks with end-to-end input on aileron, elevator, and rudder successively.

Zooming in on one of those dynamic portions, one can see how the yaw response appears as a damped oscillator. While it is in phase with the rudder, there is residual oscillation of the aircraft in yaw after the rudder input is removed. This is shown below: