Hey all.
I have had my 160m dipole down over the winter. It sustained damage where one leg of the wire antenna was ripped off. SWR wasn't so good after that!
That leg of the antenna got fixed, and it was time to put it up again. I bought a cheapie drone from Amazon on sale before Christmas. In flying it around, it was...OK. It had GPS, so it was supposed to hover wherever it was when you took your hands off the controls. It was supposed to send back video to a cellphone/iPad/Android tablet via WiFi, and it did, sort of: If you were in line-of-sight, it was great. Out of line-of-site, range was pretty limited.
There was a bearing I really wanted the antenna leg to go. That way!
I flew that route with the drone over and over. It was glitchy, but I thought I had become accustomed to the idiosyncrasies, so I began to prepare.
I began with taping a weight to the center of the drone to see if it would haul the payload of a lead sinker. It performed OK. A little sluggish, but it did what it was supposed to do.
Next I built the weight carrier with the "release mechanism." Really, I just got to where I wanted the weight to fall, spun the drone 180*, went in reverse and the 15# test fishing line attached to the sinker would pull it off the piece of wire that the sinker eye was over.
I tested this several times, too. Worked great. Didn't interfere with the camera, nothing.
Yesterday was the day. Winds were calm. Light was good. Drone and controller were charged.
Attempt 1, drone didn't quite go where I wanted. I aborted by spinning the drone 180*, dropping the weight, and returning the drone to it's takeoff point.
Attempt 2, the fishing line became entangled in my 2 meter yagi antenna on the tower. Again, spun 180* dropped the weight and RTB.
I should have quit then for the day.
Third attempt was going well. Then the video feed from the drone cut out. I couldn't see where the drone was due to the forest canopy. I moved closer to try to require the signal (never did) the drone started "wandering", like it lost the GPS lock. I couldn't see it from the ground to do the 180, and I couldn't see the video feed from the drone. I finally got to where I could sort of see it flying, and tried to send it back to a clear area, but without being able to see where it was pointing, every slight control movement took it out of my sight, and I essentially lost control. It crashed into some pine trees. I eventually required video feed (when my phone lost the drone, it unhelpfully connected to my home wifi network, and I didn't realize it until much later) and saw a lovely close-up of pine needles and bark.
I kinda felt like SpaceX: everything was going well, then...
Feel worse about not getting the antenna up than I do about losing the drone.
I have had my 160m dipole down over the winter. It sustained damage where one leg of the wire antenna was ripped off. SWR wasn't so good after that!
That leg of the antenna got fixed, and it was time to put it up again. I bought a cheapie drone from Amazon on sale before Christmas. In flying it around, it was...OK. It had GPS, so it was supposed to hover wherever it was when you took your hands off the controls. It was supposed to send back video to a cellphone/iPad/Android tablet via WiFi, and it did, sort of: If you were in line-of-sight, it was great. Out of line-of-site, range was pretty limited.
There was a bearing I really wanted the antenna leg to go. That way!
I flew that route with the drone over and over. It was glitchy, but I thought I had become accustomed to the idiosyncrasies, so I began to prepare.
I began with taping a weight to the center of the drone to see if it would haul the payload of a lead sinker. It performed OK. A little sluggish, but it did what it was supposed to do.
Next I built the weight carrier with the "release mechanism." Really, I just got to where I wanted the weight to fall, spun the drone 180*, went in reverse and the 15# test fishing line attached to the sinker would pull it off the piece of wire that the sinker eye was over.
I tested this several times, too. Worked great. Didn't interfere with the camera, nothing.
Yesterday was the day. Winds were calm. Light was good. Drone and controller were charged.
Attempt 1, drone didn't quite go where I wanted. I aborted by spinning the drone 180*, dropping the weight, and returning the drone to it's takeoff point.
Attempt 2, the fishing line became entangled in my 2 meter yagi antenna on the tower. Again, spun 180* dropped the weight and RTB.
I should have quit then for the day.
Third attempt was going well. Then the video feed from the drone cut out. I couldn't see where the drone was due to the forest canopy. I moved closer to try to require the signal (never did) the drone started "wandering", like it lost the GPS lock. I couldn't see it from the ground to do the 180, and I couldn't see the video feed from the drone. I finally got to where I could sort of see it flying, and tried to send it back to a clear area, but without being able to see where it was pointing, every slight control movement took it out of my sight, and I essentially lost control. It crashed into some pine trees. I eventually required video feed (when my phone lost the drone, it unhelpfully connected to my home wifi network, and I didn't realize it until much later) and saw a lovely close-up of pine needles and bark.
I kinda felt like SpaceX: everything was going well, then...
Feel worse about not getting the antenna up than I do about losing the drone.
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