A brief opening of favorable weather conditions appeared over the weekend, so I was able to take the idefx prototype out for a few quick test flights.
Over the past few weeks a number of electronics upgrades had been performed. The entire power system had been redesigned to use a higher voltage, to reduce power loss on the main power lines that run fore and aft. The servos had been replaced to reduce jitter and improve smoothness. A GPS and simple flight data recording system was added. Finally, a FPV system was added. The FPV system is interesting, it has both an analog camera for real time video, and also a separate high quality digital camera and DVR for high quality recordings. This flight was not FPV, but the FPV system was onboard. The flight revealed there are still a few things that need to be adjusted. A few cables need to be better secured to prevent them from binding when the gimble mounts rotate. The mounts themselves need to be better secured; one popped off during a tight turn. The throttle mix for "strafe mode" (direct side to side movement) needs to be adjusted. And I need to improve my pre-flight checks as a few important things were missed before the flight. Overall, things are progressing.
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