Optech
Key Veteran
Location: Vista/Oceanside, CA.
| I have been using a Co-pilot on our camera ship with good success. Personally, I think over the ocean would the perfect environment for one. There will be no trees, buildings, sloping terrain, concrete masses etc... to confuse the sensor. In really windy conditions, I should say blustery(turbulent) conditions, you sometimes end up fighting for control and/or are constantly adjusting the sensitivity. Steady wind conditions are not so bad.
The one problem I do see in this application will be how to calibrate the sensor. Each day you have to lay the helicopter on its side so that the sensor can see a definite temperature differential between the ground and the sky. You then have to level the helicopter, stand well back, then move the cyclic stick to let the sensor know its "level". I put small bubble level on the frame under the swashplate then use rocks or sticks to "level" the heli. I don't see how your going to be able to do this while rocking and rolling at sea. I'm sure you could rig up something to get the temperature difference but I don't see how you could do the "leveling" set-up. I don't know what your scenario is but you could calibrate on a pier or something before heading out????
On another note, we are also using a video overlay with a GPS sensor to display the altitude, position, speed and such. However, the GPS keeps losing lock which freezes up the overlay text or puts funny characters on screen. Its such that I have taken it off the ship for now as its basically useless.
Here's a recent pic of our ship;
You can see the Co-pilot on a mount just in front of the swashplate. The GPS sensor is on the tail. Its the Garmin 35HV. We chose that one because of its WAAS capability thinking we could get better accuracy and the receiver and antenna are one piece. Its mounted so far out to get out from under the carbon blades but it still loses lock.
My question would be is there a better sensor or GPS antenna system so that we could maintain lock? Not long ago I was able to witness a Schiebel CamCopter crew working. I noticed that they had two little 2inx2in square GPS antennas for their autopilot. They were even mounted about half way out putting them under the rotor disc. Unfortunately, I didn't want to get in their way so I wasn't able to ask too many questions but they did say that they had very good GPS lock. Their system sure worked well from what I saw.
Mike
Viva La Airtronics! |
).
