SPinRH
Syllabus Consulting
Hello all! I just flew a Snaptain SP680 4-axis remotely piloted vehicle (RPV) for the first time yesterday for about a 0.5-hour training mission. Weather conditions: 080/009 SKC 10 84/66 29.99. SanDisk 64GB Micro SD card installed. Pairing controller and iPad with Snaptain app worked fine. Autotakeoff worked well. Trim at speed LOW worked. Auto-hover worked. Max altitude estimated at 100' (approximately four times the height of a nearby two-story building. Manual landing attempt from about 15' resulted in a hard landing (no damage to the RPV); assess it was due to holding the left joystick full-down from altitude resulting in rotor speed too slow by 4' to recover from rapid dive. Autoland and other manual landings worked well. Wind at 9 knots pushed the drone away at speed setting LOW; increased speed setting to MEDIUM, this enabled the RPV to hold position; increased speed setting to HIGH, enabling flight into the wind. Photos/videos taken from iPad saved to iPad. Photos taken from remote controller appeared to work (RPV lights indicated as expected for photo/video) but were not saved to SD card. Two batteries gave approximately 12 minutes of flight time each. Post-mission: SD card was extremely difficult to remove from the camera. I had to remove the camera from the RPV mount, disconnect the power cable from the RPV hull, and worked a fingernail under the card until I could remove it. Reformatted SD card (exFAT/default), ensured it could save data, replaced it in the RPV, and photo/video would still not save to the SD card. Future training missions: Attempt 360-degree flip and high-speed rotation; attempt manual takeoff; rehearse flying container pattern; rehearse flight near (uninhabited) structure.
