Boohoohoo

I learned of some unfortunate news yesterday with respect to the NCSU Aerial Robotics Club. Our pride and joy, the '12footer' crashed on Sunday. Check out the AR website for a video link and some explanation. Here are some still photos taken by the helpless pilot, Alan, at the crash site. It wasn't Alan's fault by any means, most signs point to a servo battery failure; it must have been a heart wrenching feeling to see it go down without any control.

This first image is created from the autopilot datalog and screenshot, which was then fed into Google Earth. The RC runway is in the fore ground. The 12footer went down about 1/3 of a mile away from the flight pad. The colored dots are the autopilot way-points.

Here you can see to bulk of our autonomous system: the engine and autopilot are on the left side; (no-so) safety switch, GPS antenna, computer antenna, and autopilot wireless card are in the center of the picture.

Most of the 12 footer came through the tall pines, some of it remained with the trees.

This is one of the wings, they got obliterated along with everything else.

Sigh


We are already underway with the mobilization of our backup system. Stay tuned to the AR website for updates on the Wide-body 8footer.