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I have never flown on a day where I landed with a dripping airplane. This was a first. It’s not like it was raining as we were flying, but misty drizzle might adequately describe it; I had to wipe the mist off of Brady’s glasses. Martin guessed cloud deck at 1000ft and it was lower than that at times. Tom and Martin took turns off the winch set up the short way across the field. The wind was from almost due North and quite cutting. Both guys commented they had some miserable flights, but it looked like they had fun! Brady and Martin flew hand-launch a bit between drizzles. Brady flew the powered SBXC while my school colleague, Joe, flew the ground control station. We were able to climb out with relative authority using a Neu 1115/2Y/3.7 and 18x13 prop. Brady actually started finding some thermals while we were spinning up the autopilot configuration stuff. We transitioned over to autopilot for the first time on this plane and watched what Joe called “the ocean wave” as pitch slowly oscillated around a bit. I believe Brady’s description was “waggly.” Joe and I asked Brady to take over after a minute and half of this, made a few tuning adjustments, then back on autopilot much more successfully this time. We flew 18 minutes on AP, gradually reducing the altitude to duck the clouds. We started at 1000ft and ended up stepping down at 700ft and even that was rather wispy at times. On the computer, we were looking at an instantaneous watt-meter so we could tell the power consumption for different airspeeds. With the turbulence and the drizzle, the numbers weren’t of terrible much use, but now we have the process and know that it works. After all of the testing my numb fingers could stand (don’t know how Brady flew), we came in for an aborted landing approach to evaluate climb-out performance and got about 600 ft/min after a half-hour of flying around. Then Brady did a final approach and landed clean as could be done. We all came to a consensus that it was just not good to keep pushing in the weather, so we packed it all back up and headed home for warmth and a nap (I did at least). I must note that both Brady and Martin were hooking thermals with DLG’s after I stopped to watch. Pretty amazing for a day like today! I wasn’t watching Tom fly, but I’m sure he was having intermittent luck too :-) Thanks especially to Joe and Brady for flying in incredibly nasty weather and props to Tom and Martin for braving the elements! Perhaps next time we’ll have some better conditions for XC...
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Thanks to Slashdot, my meager site has seen enormous traffic volume in the two days after the article released. Thanks to Mr Site Admin for keeping up with the demand! It is sad that I have to say that the school research has come to a conclusion and is transitioning to a writing phase (it had to happen sometime). I didn't make my end 142mi goal, but I showed that with just a little know-how and some late nights coding, an airplane really can have a bird-brain and make 70 miles all by itself. In the three years of the project, ALOFT proved that it is possible to harness the power of the air currents to complete a mission that otherwise would have been impossible for the powerless glider. ALOFT completed three flights over 60 miles and had numerous +3 hour flights using nothing but the energy from a 400ft launch. I am now in the process of writing my dissertation and posts on this site will likely be minimal. It has been a great run and I thank all of you for your wonderful support over the years. I hope that this project has inspired even just one person to pick up and start working on beating my results! I have received several ideas over the email airwaves for additions and improvements and I will be doing my best looking into them, perhaps professionally after graduation .... for now, I write dissertation! Thanks everyone and green-air! Dan |
It took a little longer than expected, but I now have the Montague 2009 data files posted for public consumption. I'm posting both IGC and Google Earth formats so you can open up all the flights and compare/contrast to your heart's content! Specifically for the pilots, I highly encourage opening your own flight and trying to figure out what terrain features were producing the thermals you were using and how you went about centering them. Typical to the Cal Valley flight data, several folks' data starts well down the course. I understand Montague will attempt scoring next year using GPS logging devices ... I have a couple suggestions specifically for the teams having looked at EVERYONE's data in some detail:
Like last time, I split up one flight per file. I also only uploaded the cross-country flights (they're the interesting ones). If a team only has one flight listed, that was their only XC flight. I did miss several logs on Saturday, quite likely due to me taking care of clean-up of my own stuff.... if you have a log I missed, I would be most grateful if you would send it to me!
The supplied Google Earth files are created using the IGC file and a converter I wrote that uses the KML generation tool supplied on: : http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/. Thanks to those guys for making it easy! Additionally, I created a file with the Montague turn points (they don't seem to change from year to year, so these are probably good next year too): Montague turn points (Google Earth file). Dan |
Well folks, I have some good news and some rough news… we’ll start with the good news. The crew is up here at Yreka for the Montague Cross Country Challenge 2009 and the hardware checked out great on Thursday just before some rain rolled in. It was great to hang out and chat with the teams from Cal Valley and with the teams I met last year at Montague. Everyone was super happy and looking forward to some interesting flying over the weekend! Friday: Friday started with a pilot’s meeting. We went over weather, general rules, and all that good stuff. We had a total of 11 teams competing! The day’s task was open distance, that is to say leave the field and just keep ticking by the waypoints in any order you chose, with the exception of making laps (A-B-C-B-D is okay, but A-B-C-B-C is not). The winches opened around 10am. Teams started pretty quickly launching and looking for lift. Some folks really got up quickly and others started by sandbagging and watching others. Team ALOFT worked through checklists and preflight and finally launched about 10:30. Pretty immediately, Adam hooked up with the standing thermal everyone uses at the hangers to start working. We transferred control pretty quickly (3min air-time) to the autopilot and started the soaring software up. It worked us up to +2000ft and we decided it was time to get on course and banking miles. The second turn point after leaving Airport is Tanks and there are quite frequently good thermals to be found here. No exception, our third thermal was a good one here, putting away enough of a cushion to make the run to Church. We decided the morning of the flight to make the simple loop and re-evaluate as the weather moved around. Clouds and thundershowers were visible around, so it was certainly difficult to know which areas of the valley would work and for how long. We scratched our way to Church and then onward toward Phillipe. Getting relatively low, we were saved by our standard pre-Phillipe thermal. Then you know the routine, head over toward Oberlin and grind out to the quarry area, then easily zip over Montague and pick up better air flying toward Tanks. Re-banking altitude at Tanks, we decided to go for another lap.  In the end, we made three full laps of the 13.5mi loop before deciding we wanted to do something to the north-east since the rain looked like it was starting to push into the south-west corner of Phillipe and had already socked in the southern legs toward Grenada and Weeds. We made an on-the-fly call to head back to Airport, back to Tanks, and then gamble with a 6mi run to School. The gamble paid huge dividends and we breezed +3000ft thermals to and from Airport, then had enough downwind glide all the 6mi from Tanks to School. I figured we’d just end up quitting at School because we have had difficulties coming back upwind and uphill from this area before. However, we flew on the mountainous side and just beyond School we hooked a MONSTER at 1000ft AGL. This puppy started reasonable and then just went crazy, supporting a 7m/s (13.5kt) climb rate for better than 5 minutes. We breached 4500ft and decided we had to get out of this (lesson learned from Cal Valley). This altitude and the dolphin soaring style of speed-to-fly got us all the way back our 6mi and then an additional 8mi of gentle glide to a calm landing in drizzle just past Phillipe. WOW. We landed Saturday having covered 67.81mi of course distance with an air time of 5hr 17min. I’m telling you, for the way the day started, I didn’t think we’d make 15mi, but the soaring code kept grinding it out and finding good air at just the right moment. Adam flew all of about 8 minutes total during the entire day, including takeoff, landing, and one save at 850ft about 50mi into the run that lasted about 2mins of him doubling back for a thermal that ALOFT glanced and wouldn’t latch on.  Saturday: Saturday was a new day, coming into this morning for us with nearly identical weather and renewed hope for really letting the soaring software have more exercise. Pilot’s briefing at 10am and open winches shortly after got us all started. ALOFT left the field about middle of the pack on the 2hr minimum, overall speed task. We ground out a few starter thermals and started working with a little more cushion. We decided to take the same route as Friday, since we were starting to get familiar with where the thermals live. The run from Tanks to Church was again a long smooth ride with some light stuff we could work from time to time. Making the trip around the Phillipe turn, we stopped at the same thermals as always and worked around the bottom to Oberlin and beyond, starting really to get low. Magically, the house thermal over the quarry opened up and we rode to +2k and easily made the run through Montague. Working toward Tanks, we played some awesome leap-frog with a few teams and even saw an AMAZING low-save from about 100ft at close-range from where we were sitting. I can honestly say I NEVER thought an 11lb plane flying seriously about 75-80deg bank could thermal, but boy this lift just hauled this plane skyward. I’m telling you, it wasn’t the prettiest flying, even including an ugly loop, but the plane was definitely staying in the air that was going up. These guys skied out from this thermal. You don’t have to believe me, but you’ll see the data soon and you can watch for yourself. Unbelievable. ALOFT had good luck at Tanks again and slipped quietly back up to 3k and we decided a trip to Airport would be a good idea again. Just over Tanks, we found a monster thermal and very quickly drove up to 4200ft. Then, here comes the bad news… We left our thermal at 4,200ft and started though the sink that usually accompanies a good thermal. Speed to fly dutifully pegged the speed command at our max speed limit of 50kts (upped a bit from Cal Valley). We had to move the car to a different location, ahead of the plane, from a previous bad spot to sit before Tanks. This meant the plane would fly directly overhead and we could expect a short link dropout as it moved ahead and got into a better antenna orientation. As link started coming back, we all heard the vario was drooping and I started calling airspeeds because we figured the plane was really moving. Sure enough, 45kts, 50kts, 60kts, 75kts, ummmm what’s happening? 80kts, 95kts, 100kts, uh, not good and I’m starting to scramble and tried to re-command 35kts. The last speed I saw was 118kts and then I hear Adam and Chris both say “oh Dan it just came apart, it’s over.” The plane had lots of altitude left. I looked up and saw two pieces, Adam calling he’d watch the wing panel floating separately. I leaped from the (already parked) car and grabbed the high-zoom camera and started clicking as fast as I could. There was an awful lot of time to watch a broken plane coming down. The main section was falling like a maple leaf, spinning around and on its way down but not at absolute full speed, though undeniably broken.  Well, the fuselage landed relatively flat on cushy grassy dirt and did not seem to sustain any damage from touchdown. When I got up to it, I started taking pictures and then quickly opened the hatch to turn off the batteries and secure the batteries. Adam found the right wing panel overhanging a wet irrigation ditch. We did not see or find the two horizontal stabilizer outer halves. I know you’re reading and wondering what happened, so I’ll say off the top I don’t know yet. It will take a few weeks to really figure it out. What I do know is that the plane (for a yet unknown reason) went really fast, well above where it was supposed to go. At 135kts (155mph), it came apart. From the wreckage, it appears the stabs broke off downward. Extrapolating, the fuselage then pitched over and the right wing folded under the severe loading case it was not designed for. The resulting very dynamic maneuver with no stab and no right wing created an aero load on the vertical tail that fractured the fuselage just at the rudder pull-pull cable exits, just ahead of the vertical tail. Yes, some stuff is salvageable. Yes, the expensive stuff came out remarkably unscathed since the fuselage sustained almost no damage apart from the broken aft boom. I have not powered anything back on except for the GPS logger to download the flight. It is too early for me to know what I’m doing next, besides taking tomorrow to ride with another team and get a different perspective. It is still setting in that the original ALOFT won’t fly without major repairs. No, I don’t blame the airframe for failing; it is known that the SBXC has a do-not-exceed velocity somewhere not too far above 100mph and this is typically well outside of normal operating range anyway. Any more guesses are premature at this time.  What now? I’m sure you’d like to see pictures and data, which I will be sharing freely over the next couple of weeks as I get all of it/them collected. I have posted some pictures from Friday and Saturday already and will be posting more as I get some time. The IGC and KMZ log files from all the competitors will be posted also. Thanks again to all of the supporters and the generosity of everyone who has already offered replacements. Please hold the offers for a bit so I can recover and figure out what is salvageable and what the plan will be from here. The ALOFT SBXC ends a very successful career as a world’s first autonomous cross-country sailplane with 164 launches, 70.6hr of air-time, 45.5hr of autopilot time, and 19.8hr of actively latched soaring time. Well done ALOFT! |
As promised, I have posted the IGC and KMZ files from each GPS logger that successfully captured flight data during the 2009 Cal Valley competition. Some of the logs are incomplete, sometimes starting several miles down the road; chalk this up to the group learning curve of new hardware. My understanding of GPS is that sometimes it takes up to 15 minutes of sitting still in a new location to download the almanac, so I think this may have caused the slow boot-up time. The second day of competition we all did a better job of ensuring the green LED was lit and steady before taking off. I did have two teams whose data is unfortunately lost to the ether of bad downloads. I'm hopeful for a complete set from everyone at Montague! I also split up the flights in the IGC/KMZ file such that there was only one flight per file. This makes playback and data analysis a bit easier on my part. Also, the flights that were actually cross-country are listed with a *XC* to pull out the interesting flights easier. I also denoted the day's top team. Otherwise, these are in alphabetical order. Please let me know if I misspelled your team name!!
The IGC file can be played back in: SeeYou (which has a 1 month free trial) or any other free IGC file reader. The KMZ files can be played back in Google Earth. I highly recommend using the 3D view features and multiple simultaneous flight visualization modes of both pieces of software. The supplied Google Earth files are created using the IGC file and a converter I wrote that uses the KML generation tool supplied on: : http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/. Thanks to those guys for making it easy! |
Cal Valley is over and man what an adventure! I am proud to say the event was a great success! You’ll have to read on to find out the results ;-)
 Friday started with a scenic drive to the Call Valley Lodge and unpacking the plane after its cross-country shipping. There was no damage and we were able to assemble it with only one complication: somehow during packing, I missed my 0.050” ball driver that is required to take off two panels to install the battery. Fortunately, Jim Thomas had a spare to loan and proceeded to pick on me the entire weekend for “borrowing all his stuff.” Once assembled, the plane checked out just dandy. We also were able to sneak in two quick flights in the stiff northern breeze that was blowing through the valley. Nothing major going on during the flights, just checking that the hardware was still content being tossed back into the sky. Friday night brought some amazing chicken on the grill cooked by Rich Beardsley and company. Boy, this food and group surely can’t be beat! Rich was the stand-in CD for John Ellias and explained the task for Saturday; a distance run to turn point K was pretty much in everyone’s future. For reference, turn point K was slightly over 40 road miles south-east of the launch area. With winds typically from the north-north-west, this first leg was a downwind run. It would be the upwind leg that claimed most.  Saturday morning was more or less a hurry-up-and-wait time for me. Still slightly on east-coast time, I was up at 6am and ready to start flying. Slowly, everyone emerged from their rooms at the Lodge and we all were treated to another wonderful meal by the chefs of the group. Hash-browns, eggs, sausage, bacon, and more filled everyone’s stomachs. Over breakfast, everyone was strategizing how on earth to make a huge run to K and also have enough lift to get back. Some said to look for an area of convergence where the coastal marine air coming east met the warmer desert air coming west, creating a ridge of rising air. Others said to just stay over the road and find what you could in the open flats. Still others said to tank altitude early and make a long glide over “The Valley of Death” about 10 miles in. The game was afoot! Around 10:30am, everyone walked their planes to the winches and set up vehicles for the road trek. Team ALOFT was one of the first to the launch point to go through our relatively lengthy checklist procedure (compared to “switch is on, wiggle surfaces, launch!”). I believe we were third to launch just about 11:19am. Adam quickly found the house thermal that breaks just upwind from the launch over the one-story hotel. We transitioned to auto-soaring mode and proceeded to climb up to altitude. Once during the initial climb, Adam took over manual control to avoid a gaggle of sailplanes climbing in the same thermal and we decided to move on course to get some separation from the group. Four other teams had already moved on course and were out of sight down range. On course, ALOFT is an easy beast to fly. Once you “click the green button,” she’s on her own and heads down the road until she feels a thermal. Matt and I sat in the back seat of our rented Jeep Wrangler and simply monitored the progress. Thermal strengths were coming up as ALOFT climbed to cruising altitude. Seeing 3000ft slip past with no signs of stopping, Adam in the front seat was able to relax a bit and settle into a rhythm keeping his eyes trained skyward. Chris kept a steady driver’s foot on the gas and matched pace with the plane, also meanwhile playing team sanity check and keeping things safe. The run south was rather eventful. The Valley of Death was a droopy several miles between thermals. Teams Atomic Fireball and Dust Devils were having similar rough luck ahead. With ALOFT nearing only 1200ft of altitude remaining, Adam was perked up ready to take over at our newly raised 1000ft manual takeover safety limit altitude. Finally, the vario started to blip and we eased up toward the other two planes now having better luck. Wafting through 2500ft, the other guys took off down the road in search of something better. Somewhat of a sudden, the air let go and ALOFT started gaining real altitude. Climb rates were starting to really go nuts, showing short peaks of +10m/s and over 6m/s sustained. I started calling altitudes to the car in 50ft increments and barely had time to say “3750 feet” before having to say “3800 feet and climbing” and shortly thereafter “5000 ft and still strong.” At this point Adam said enough and we should get moving. I intervened in the ALOFT code and sent her back on track, watching another 400ft of free altitude as we worked out of the massive thermal. Adam still had eyes (thank goodness for 20/15 vision!) as we started down the road with the plane holding steady at our prescribed max speed of 40kt indicated airspeed heading down course. We soon overtook the remaining few teams and were simply cruising down the road burning off our altitude. Minutes and hours and miles flew by quickly at these speeds. Thermals were generally widely spaced, but well defined and strong when we found them. Staying over 3000ft was possible and ALOFT dutifully tracked several thermals downwind along the course. At the southern end of the valley, the two mountain ranges came together and meet, choking out the flat grassland and gave way to rolling hills that never seemed to produce lift that would stay together. Our altitude cushion was being eaten away by both the crummy lift and the ground altitude that climbed toward the plane by nearly 1000ft. The trip to turn point K became a real challenge, with all of us trying to will the vario to signal steady lift. As altitude gets lower, the plane gets more conservative and stops for lighter lift, so even too seemed the code to be clinging to any organized lift it could find. Finally, we made the jump across the humpy hills, around turn point K twice for good measure, and a darted back over the mountains to better air. Now back down to 1500ft above ground and fighting the wind, we figured the harder challenge had begun. The road north was much slower, but still in relatively good air for the first part. Any thermals we caught would drift back counter-productively toward the south, so forward progress took some work. We passed two teams still going south, one which had just landed. This far south in the valley was tough work for all. Slowly but surely, we ticked back the miles from turn point K with increasing north winds making an increasingly more difficult run. Finally, some 70.5 miles on course, the wind was up to 10kts and the plane was down to 1000ft with no hopes of making the run over the Valley of Death again. Adam took over manual control and did his best to find some air. At 4:45pm, ALOFT quietly met terra firma just 11 miles short of completing the full course. We heard that several teams had made most of the flight down to K! Greg Norsworthy even made the turn and tried to fight north. It was a tough but fun downwind leg for everyone. Saturday evening was a great time of swapping stories from the day and once again filled with terrific food, this time tri-tips and pasta salad. Yummy! The chatting went on into the evening and the ancient pool table in the closed restaurant saw some more use too.  Sunday morning was not quite the same flurry of activity. Everyone pretty much had settled in with their hardware, except for a few scrapes and dings here and there. Greg Norsworthy and company went out searching for a plane lost on Friday afternoon, bringing back aerial video that several of us combed through on laptops trying to spy his flyaway. Breakfast of champions greeted the pilots again with awesome pancakes, eggs, and sausage. I felt honestly quite spoiled to have home-cooked food on a flying weekend. Thanks to all who cooked! Sunday also brought some different weather conditions. It was rather apparent at the winches that nobody was hooking up with a real boomer. Rich Beardsley worked the first reasonable lift and took off down the road toward the turnaround at turn point F, which was ~12mi downwind. The winds stayed up and tore the thermals to pieces. Most folks attempted the course and disappeared from our vision. Team ALOFT wanted to stay conservative and wait to leave until we had at least 2000ft, but after several launches, this just was not happening. It seemed the crews that left early weren’t returning, so we could only imagine we somehow missed the boat. Once, we made a very meager 3.9mi just trying to get some points on the board and see how ALOFT stayed with the weak downwind thermals, but hopes looked rather bleak for a better run. The winches were scheduled to close at 2pm and everyone had to be back at the hotel with plane in hand by 3pm. Team ALOFT was launching even up until 1:30. Finally, we made a choice to launch and immediately start the course time by moving to and flying over the start line, then try catching something that would let us climb while drifting downwind while on course. This tactic seemed to work, letting us keep working with a very light 2m/s updraft for probably about 30 minutes while creeping along the road with it. Gradually, very gradually, the plane worked its way almost to 3000ft and we knew at least we beat our own 3.9mi from earlier. After losing this steady thermal, we pushed ahead down the course again. Along the south run again, the Valley of Death struck and we were scooting quickly through sink and burning our minor altitude reserves. With the terrain wide open and landing opportunities all around, we let the soaring code stay on even down to 400ft above ground level. Adam kept a watchful eye out and Chris kept us close to the plane to have Adam in good position for a quick landing. Quite happily, we rounded the half-way mark of turn point F and then just could not find any workable lift. The rather stiff wind from the north consumed quickly any altitude we could bank while circling in lift downwind. Just 0.2mi north of turn point F, we made a ceremonious landing in soft grass next to the road. We completed 12.03 miles of the 23.66 mile course. With the airplane on the ground and the winches closed, this wrapped up our flying for Cal Valley. However, we were still on the clock to get back to the Lodge to turn in a score sheet! We quickly took a few team photos and packed up the plane. It was a 15 minute drive back north to the Lodge and we had 15 minutes to spare. Whew!  In the end, ALOFT was in the air 7 hours this weekend, covering some 82 course miles. Over 94% of the flight time was completely hands-off autonomous and the soaring software was in command. The course times for the two day’s flights were 4hr 28mins and 45.8 minutes, respectively. Matt’s new unscented Kalman filter thermal identification algorithm worked beautifully both days and he has 127 minutes of auto-soaring test data to use for making improvements. As for competition results, on Saturday ALOFT flew farther by over 15 miles than any other plane for a total distance of 70.47 miles. Sunday was much more difficult, ALOFT making only 12.3 miles compared to the 17.53 miles of the day’s winner. However, in overall standings ALOFT had a commanding lead from Saturday’s distance event and took first place overall! I feel somewhat guilty taking home a trophy because this is research and not really meant to be in competition. However, everyone seemed happy and I am encouraged by some overheard comments: “Look at the straight lines the robot flies … I need to work on my flying.” I am happy that folks are taking on the robot as a challenge; Sunday’s flying proves that the XC pilot guys really still can whip the robot. It is from this healthy showdown that all our skills are sharpened. As a side-note, the Cal Valley event was really a research adventure for me, not just a fun time. Team ALOFT was able to sponsor the event with a SkyTrace GPS logger for every team in return for collecting the group’s flight information. This data is invaluable to collect tangible evidence of the day’s thermal activity and how teams were able to utilize it. There is not a lot of data in the micro-weather scale below where most manned sailplanes fly and I am certain that every participant has helped contribute to the body of knowledge more than they can realize. I will be posting the flight data from all teams on the results page soon and I encourage other researchers to use and reference it. If you have specific questions about the data, I would be happy to answer them via email as best I can. I will be doing my own analysis of the data and finishing up a paper I am writing about a thermal updraft model.  To wrap up this flight report, I would like to thank all my Cal Valley friends and flying buddies. Rich Beardsley did a great job standing in as CD for John Ellias who coordinated a wonderful event in an amazing venue. I don’t have room to name all the participants, but thanks to everyone for making this a fun weekend for all. More than any other soaring event I know of, Cross-Country is a team sport and takes all parties working together to pull off a successful flight. Thanks especially to Adam, Chris, and Matt as ALOFT teammates and a major reason why the auto-soaring was so successful! Last, thanks to you, internet reader; I get so much encouragement every single time someone meets me and says “I’ve been reading online and your stuff sounds neat.” It is fun that you too can share this adventure with me. Montague is in three weeks, the summer is not over yet :-) More Cal Valley pictures. |
The SBXC is in California! John Elias kindly is transporting it to the Cal Valley Lodge on Friday sometime. In other news, I happened to be in the Mojave area and made a day trip to Cal Valley to drive the course and see the accommodations .... WOW it's desolate! I mean, you can't ask for a better large open area to fly with huge open runs including massive dust devils that to an east-coaster like me look like what I image a miniature tornado looks like, but geez it's crazy desolate. I'm excited and you can see some course pictures here. The US National F3B team was practicing today, so I hung out with that crowd for a few hours watching and chatting. You won't find a kinder and cooler crew (except for the XC folks of course ;-) How desolate is this place you ask?? Check back on Saturday evening for more updates and again on Sunday for a full recap! |
Hello to all again and here is a little update. I have moved back to Washington, DC, and been getting ready for packing the airplane for a flight out west. This year, ALOFT is attending the Golden State Cross Country Race (aka Cal Valley) in under a month and then will also make a repeat attempt at the Montague Cross Country Challenge in mid-June. The code has been going through some minor tweaks since the big unofficial record in October, but is mostly the same. The hardware, fortunately, has not changed since over a year ago. I suppose you can say the stage is set. The big fun for flying is that I will simultaneously be collecting data from all the competitors (of course, with their permission). I have a SkyTrace GPS logger for each team that will give their location and climb performance. Ideally, enough pilots' and planes' skills will show through the data to really give a fair comparison to the ALOFT performance. It was rather telling at the 2008 Montague event that correlating flight paths was a unique way to gauge ALOFT against some very excellent pilots. With more real data, the comparison should be worthy of a detailed paper that documents some of the major areas of successes of this effort (and as always, point out some areas that need improvement). I don't have pictures for this post, nor do I expect really to have a major update until at/after Cal Valley, but I hope you will check back on May 22nd - 24th as I do my best to balance the online effort as well as applying lessons learned from each day's flying. Before even making the trips, I would really like to say a preemptive thank you to John Elias and Dean Gradwell for graciously allowing me to be a part of their events. Whereas I consider the ALOFT flying to be outside of the official competition, it is nice to be welcomed in as a competitor. I hope that one day I can give back in my own small way. Dan |
| Team ALOFT is prepping for the flying season this summer! We joined together with the Down East Soaring Society for a Cross Country competition, held on April 4th and 5th. Here are three flight reports of the event. Pictures are courtesy of George Oakey.
Report from Dan (yours truely) I think we would all admit this first-annual event was challenging, to say the least! The April weather played out with winds aloft in the 20kt range, from the West on Saturday and from the South on Sunday. What difficult conditions! Saturday started out with a pretty good breeze on the ground, showing little surprises for the conditions aloft. Team Old School managed to cheat the wind and gather some altitude to start the course first, around 1pm. Those of us back at the field watched them slowly make progress North, meanwhile fighting the wind and fast-drifting thermals. Team ALOFT finally found some altitude after over a dozen launches and attempts chasing lift downwind. ALOFT was commanded on the course and crossed the start line at 1:42pm. Conditions on course were rather ridiculous for ALOFT. Despite tracking straight down the road on the Birdie to Gas Station leg, the plane was crabbed a solid 45 degrees into the stiff West wind. Duane and Doug did diligent duty managing driving but weren't ready for the first challenge, as ALOFT rounded Gas Station and picked up speed. With a 30kt airspeed and 20kt winds, ALOFT cruised from Gas Station to Stop Sign with a 50kt ground speed, prompting Duane to safely go the speed limit of 55mph (ahem) to slowly catch up. Adam's eagle-eyes strained hard and kept a safe lock on the wings, but man the plane sure moved out. On the back leg, ALOFT's ground progress slowed and the Jeep caught up with no problems. We have to maintain about 1/4 mi behind the plane to keep a good data link (which gets better with distance actually because of the antenna arrangement), so this was now perfect. The ALOFT soaring code did its best to fight the wind, but on a due South course and winds blowing from the West, any altitude gains meant drifting far off course and burning most of it to get back on track. The leg to Saratoga cost a lot of altitude. Now tracking back North West into the wind yet again, ALOFT did not manage to find any good lift and Adam took over piloting duties at 750ft and within sight of the Birdie start/finish line. Unfortunately, the lift just wasn't there and Adam landed softly in a grassy green field. For the first lap, we made 8.74mi around the 9.52mi course. After heading back to the field to change batteries and get some food in us, we heard Team Old School made 7.65mi and re-lit to leave just left 10 minutes earlier. The competition was on! Team ALOFT spun back up to altitude and started gingerly down the course again. The day had opened up a bit with a few more hours to get the boundary layer height higher. Winds were still up, but at least we were able to work for more altitude. After some more fighting, ALOFT came around the course with 2300ft to spare and decided one lap at 9.52mi was just plenty. Team Old School attempted two more times, but the winds were just too much and their first distance of 7.65mi stood. Overnight, the winds dropped for Sunday's speed task. The forecasts were for less vertical motion and lower boundary layer height, but the winds would be smoother early and build throughout the day. Sunday was definitely a task for getting on course early and working the weak lift that was to be found. Dave Beach and Gordy Stalls had driven in specifically to attempt their LSF Level 4 task of a 10km goal-and-return. After driving around Sunday morning, they found a straighter run than the DESS Lap course could provide, so they drove out and decided to gamble with a three person crew that included two pilots, one driver, and no spotters. From what I heard of the trip, it was difficult for George Oakey to call back to both pilots of upcoming trees, so Gordy ended up losing sight of his plane and fortunately landing in a field a mile away with only slight damage to his Supra. Dave managed to push all the way to the turn-around at 10k, but said the lift just ran out of gas and he had to put it down at the turn around. Despite the struggles, Dave was in good spirits. Good shot at it guys! Meanwhile, over at the DESS course, Teams Old School and ALOFT were having good luck catching lift off the winch. Team Old School switched to the 24 year-old (and well seasoned!) Constellation that has seen much XC action before. With the trusty Constellation getting tiny in the sky, the three-man crew hopped in a pickup and headed out. Team ALOFT took a lot longer to get started. Launching at 11am, the soaring code just couldn't break through 2000ft. The day developed a lot and the thermals topped out a bit higher, so at 2400ft and 1:42pm (after already a long flight), Team ALOFT set out down the course. The evening before, I programmed in some additional wind-compensation, hoping to account better for the drift of the lift. Even with the winds aloft at only 7kts to start the day, the drift compensation was helping. Also, Matt Hazard brought a new Unscented Kalman Filter method for Thermal Identification and we were able to try it to great success. On this run of the course, we zipped around the first couple turnpoints and thought we were doing super when we caught up to Team Old School. We played the best game of leap-frog for 45 minutes before Team Old School finally pulled ahead and disappeared down course. The soaring code was doing better at making wind-decisions and I tried extremely hard not to click any buttons such that the performance was all due to the code. At approximately 3000ft and with only 3 miles to go, we realized we had the course made and I turned soaring off to let speed-to-fly dolphin soar the plane back to the field. Hitting amazing lift, we carried 2300ft into the start/finish line and decided to go again! Team Old School was only slight ahead and we caught up to them after a few minutes on course. Another great game of leap-frog commenced and we all were really starting to struggle with the now 20kt South wind. Both teams rounded the Stop Sign turn and got stuck on the due South leg toward Saratoga. The wind turned out too much for the venerable Constellation and Brady set it skillfully down in a field. Team ALOFT rode several thermals up and then made zero altitude gain coming back down course. We turned soaring mode off to see if we could just make the next set of fields and give the code another chance to find lift. This turned out to burn all the rest of the altitude and Adam tried valiantly from 750ft to find some lift at a small field just before the 264 crossing. We dabbled a little here and there, but the wind got to us too and we landed at 3:05pm after a 4hr flight.
Team ALOFT squeaked it out .... however, Brady posted a 25.5km continuous flight on Sunday and earned his 25k XC pin. He also posted a personal best duration of 3hr 16min. I must say, this was an extremely fun event and everyone who participated was asking for another one next year. Thanks to everyone for coming out and coming together to fight against mother nature. I learned a whole lot about flying in wind and was able to make some code updates to begin compensating better for the drift. Brady was super stoked that his 24 year old rudder-elevator-flap ship beat a $2000 composite full-house moldie with LOTS of electronic goodies installed. Goes to show, it really is the pilot making good decisions that wins a contest.
Report from Adam (the safety pilot): It was horrible! We had to sit out in the sun for hours and hours while riding around in the back of some pickup truck, and Dan forced me to stare up at this little dot in the sky all day long ;o) On Saturday, we had eight people at the field with five XC planes (two SBXCs, a Comet, a Constellation, and an Escape). Conditions were challenging to say the least. We got everything set up and were waiting for the day to develop. The air was buoyant on the surface, so the hand launch was doing quite well. Once the bigger planes made it into the air, we found it difficult to get up to starting altitude. The winds aloft ranged between 15-20kts sustained, which pushed any thermal that we managed to find quickly past the trees at the edge of the field, forcing us to lose most of the altitude gains limping back upwind. There were several instances where the Piccolo was holding the plane at near zero ground speed back behind the trees! We had at least a dozen or so good into-the-wind launches, but just weren't able to connect with the boomer needed to get above the low level stuff and massive sink holes. Brady Baggs was able to get his SBXC up and on the course by lunchtime. After an hour of hard-fought progress, he returned with plane in truck, landing out about two miles short of a full lap. As the day opened up, we were able to slowly work our way up to altitude. Once comfortable with conditions and altitude to make an attempt, Team ALOFT was on the course. After a few thermal stops on the north leg, we made it to the first turn. The plane made the turn about half a mile ahead of the Jeep and immediately rocketed downwind. We had plenty of altitude, but found a sink area and were plowing ahead at 35+kts with a 22kt tailwind. We were happily making 55kts down-course progress. On the South leg, things changed. Once again, we managed to get behind the plane. Dan announced that it had captured the turn point and was heading South while we raced ahead to the turn. I was in disbelief since the plane looked like it was headed back towards us and now off at a 90 degree angle. As we made the turn, it was apparent that the SBXC was being forced to fly at a 45 degree crab in order to maintain the ground track due to the wind! Ground speed was apathetic, and any thermal stops were challenging since we had to return to the course after being blown downwind. We made the last turnpoint, but were still struggling with the wind and a lack of thermals on the last leg. After dropping below 750ft, I retook control and tried to squeak out a save. I managed to find some positive air, but was not able to follow it downwind due to some power lines by the road. At less than half a mile from the field, we probably could have made it with the altitude that we had, but there would have been no margin for landing and we safety would have been out the window with such a low crossing over the highway. After returning to the field, we found that Brady had begun another run. He shortly returned after only making it to the first turnpoint. We returned to starting altitude and jumped back on course ourselves. This attempt would prove much easier than the last as the thermals were a bit stronger, allowing us to break 3500ft at points. We completed a single lap with copious altitude to spare, finishing all 9.6 miles in 69 minutes. Brady made a third attempt and could be seen from the field working hard on the backside of the course. Everyone was rooting for him to finish strong, but he was once again forced to land short a couple of miles. On Sunday, the winds were much calmer, with nice smooth air and gentle thermals. Several guys decided to attempt their LSF 10k out and back runs, but wanted to find a course that was better aligned with the roads, making the task easier. The left the field and eventually returned to the field later in the day with only half of the 10k completed by two pilots. After playing handlaunch to evaluate the air, we decided to put the SBXC back up at around 11:00. The inversion layer slowly lifted through the morning, allowing us to slowly work higher and higher, from one thermal to the next. Unfortunately, we were getting stuck at 1600ft, but the light winds allowed Dan and Matt to switch out thermal ID codes and evaluate their performance. I'm happy to report that Matt's unscented Kalman filter code worked quite well on its first outing, performing on par with Dan's code! We also tried out the Gedeon model and found similar performance. Dan was able to implement a new feed forward wind adjustment that seemed to help the drift estimate. Brady managed to work his RES Constellation up to about 1800ft and decided to go on course. After moving to the start point to allow us to climb out in position, ALOFT managed to finally break the 2000ft mark that we had decided would be good enough to attempt a run. We all took bets on what the max altitude of the day would be, with guesses of 2400, 2800, 3200, and 4000ft (Dan was being a bit optimistic there ;o). Progress was slow, due to the lethargic updraft velocity, but we eventually made out way all the way around, maxing out at around 3100ft. As we approached the start point, we caught up with Brady, who had a 20min head start. The first lap took around 81 minutes I believe. For the next 30 minutes or so, we leapfrogged Brady as we progressed around the course. The winds picked up on the back leg, with a 12-15kt headwind. The thermals were getting blown down course fast enough that all our gains were lost by the time we returned to where we started. I don't know if Brady was just trying to stay competitive and pushed too hard, but he made progress upwind, but at a dangerously low altitude. Eventually, he was forced to land out about halfway around the course. We concentrated on staying above the curve, but just weren't able to pick up altitude and make progress. Over a 30 minute period, we only managed to go from 1600ft to 1900ft with zero course progress. Deciding that we simply had to push ahead, we made some progress, but just weren't able to find a thermal when we needed it. Once again I took control at 700ft and managed to work up to 900ft or so, but at 1/3 mile downwind and at the edge of the safe landing field. Unable to follow further downwind, I returned to overhead, but couldn't find anything else. We landed approximately 6.3 miles into the second lap, after 2:20 of course time. For the day, we had one flight, so I guess that was compensation for all the consecutive launch and landing cycles on Saturday! Brady also broke his single flight TD endurance record at 3:16 and 25.5km distance! Woo hoo!! All in all, it was a successful event!
Report from Brady (the other competitor): Ok I am just happy riding around in the back of a truck (former dog in a past life). But put a transmitter in my hands and a plane in the air and it doesn’t get any better than this!! I want to thank Dan for having this event. We need to do it again before next year!! I would like to especially thank Dave who drove for us on Saturday! Dave If you need a driver sometime let me know I will do my best to be there. I would also like to thank Mihai and Dick for there support in driving and spotting/co-pilot, moral support etc. Now we are team Old School! Going up against team ALOFT with all of the gadgets is very intimidating and I tried to play my own game and not consider this as a competition. Well maybe at least until Dick became my co-pilot on Sunday! I think that some day soon, Dan and Adam will break all XC records. They surely are on the right track. A couple of things that I will never forget. Saturday, I had several low saves with the SBXC and Mihai coaching me on telling me "YOU CAN’T LAND YET." We rode the same thermal almost half way down the back leg drifting with it all the way. Somewhere close to the Saratoga turn as we were flyng down wind, it was if the elevator came off!! All at once, the SBXC was flying very fast. I had little control as the trees blocked our sight. Then as we cleared the trees Mihi calmly mentioned: "I think it's upside down." I said: "you know I think you are right." I regained control as there seemed to be nothing wrong. We didn’t see it loop. It just came over the trees inverted?? I soon realized that all the turbulence was caused by a strong down-wind thermal. I worked the bottom edge over a house and trees intersection power lines etc to try and save the flight. But I was a day late and a thermal short. It was a tight landing, having to clear the house and trees and getting it on the ground without running out of room. Sunday started out nice as could be: no wind, warm, early signs of thermals. I really had only planed to put the old Constellation up just for kicks. I never figured that I was going to go on the road with it. I really had planned to wait for Dick to get there before making an attempt.(Unless I got into some good lift). Well, I caught a nice thermal right off the end of the winch line. So what the heck, let's fly some. So after about 45min of playing. I couldn’t stand it any more and I asked Mihai if he wanted to drive and we would go. About then Dick came driving up and we yelled out "want to go?" I don’t think his feet hit the ground from his car to the back of the truck. We realized that we were not prepared to go. So Dick ran back to his car and got his stop watches, a pen, and paper. I really never figured we would make it past the first turn. I didn’t leave as high as I would have liked to, but it was nice to get the old XC back into the air one more time. We made the first turn easy as pie, caught the next thermal right were it should be at the corner, and quickly got back on course. We were just talking and flying just nice and easy. I realized about the same time Dick said it, that it sure is flying good and I agreed. We caught another very nice thermal along the way. And another just were it should have been right after the last leg stop sign. Just then Dick caught a glimpse of Team ALOFT's plane. It was like JAWS lurking behind us!!! DD… DD…. DD… (don’t know how to do the sound track) eeK!! At that point, Dick nudged me on to get a little more serious by telling me they were getting closer. I’m not sure were they passed us at, but the Constellation leaped into a another good thermal soon after ALOFT blew by. I think it was a wave that we caught, but when we left that thermal, we rode it all the way to the Saratoga turn, passing ALOFT along the way. We still had good altitude at the turn so we made the turn and I had enough to get to the next big field on the right that I had picked out. Sure enough, the next thermal was there waiting for us right where it should be. I really was only thinking about going one lap and only want to gain enough altitude to make it back to the field so that Dick could put his plane together and give it a go. Well, we over-estimated and hit the start stop line with plenty of juice. So we made a rolling decision to go. Quickly back to the first turn and the thermal was waiting on us right at the corner. Quick climb and back on the road. Caught another thermal around the Broken House and then all the way down the back leg. Again right in front of the noisy Dirt bike house. There was good lift there but I just couldn’t think straight with the noise of the dirt bike buzzing around. So I told Mihai to go a little more down the road. At this point again somewhere in here, we got a glimpse of Team Jaws-ALOFT and soon we were overtaken. It went from calm to very windy. I caught several thermals only to make little headway. So I decided to not thermal as high and next attempted to try a push forward as much as possible. We also noticed Team ALOFT having the same trouble and I could have piggy backed the thermal that they were in but only to end up back at the stop sign again. So I knew that this was my last ditch effort when I left this thermal to go upwind. My goal was to go to the tree line to the next field in hopes that a thermal would have gotten stuck in the corner. I lost a lot of altitude all the way passing ALOFT again and not getting to the next tree line. It just wasn’t going to happen. I tried worked a small thermal drifting back downwind only to lose it all coming back. I did every thing that I could think of surfing up wind and catching some small bumps. I have to say I pushed the OLD XCC to its limits it just didn’t have anything left to give. I hit one last low bump and decided not to risk it . On the ride back we were thinking that I would be very close to getting the 25K distance. After adding up the mileage including the distance from the winch to the road, it came out at 25.5km. I like this time of year for our little 9.7 mile course. The trees are not filed out. It’s not so darn hot and thermals are smaller/harder to find. It also makes it more equal for smaller planes and guys without gadgets. It was a heck of a lot of working your tail off flying all weekend. We all were very tired but very happy. |
