This is not FG related, but I figured I'd do a little show and tell.
I've been collecting a few pictures, so I thought I should share them.
I may have mentioned in the past that I do a bit of R/C airplane
modeling. Last fall I found such a good deal on a ready to fly, kit
built Citabria (with engine and radio) that it was impossible to pass it
up. It's a beautiful plane and relatively big. It has an 84" wingspan
(which is about 2.14 meters.) I flew it Thursday for the first time,
and then Saturday in my local club's scale fly-in. I have a couple
pictures here:
http://www.flightgear.org/~curt/Models/Current/MidwestCitabria/
If you scroll down a bit there's a take off picture (with the tail wheel
just coming up) and then two landing pictures (notice the position of
the airplane relative to the shadow.)
I am also involved with the UMN Aerospace Engineering department
building a UAV. I am the airframe assembler/maintainer and chief test
pilot. We've done a successful maiden flight of our airframe, but
haven't started plugging in any avionics.
http://www.flightgear.org/~curt/Models/Construction/Rascal110/
It's not quite a "predator" or "global hawk" but it sure is a lot of fun
to fly. :-) It's by far the biggest R/C airplane I've flown.
Oh, and if that wasn't enough to distract me from my FG duties, I'm also
building my own "low cost" UAV. I have the airframe up and flying. I
have the stabalization system installed and tested. My next step is to
get the flight computer up and running and begin working on the
programming for that. My primary goal is to get a self stable, self
navigating airplane up and flying very inexpensively. Beyond that,
we'll just have to see what little toys (radio modem? wireless video?
etc.?) I can sneak into the family budget and stay under the radar
screen. :-)
http://www.flightgear.org/~curt/Models/Current/EGN-1/
I do hope at some point to tie in FG to both of these UAV projects.
Specifically we want to try out some ideas of using FG as a real time
visualization tool for the UAV in flight ... either to draw a 2d live
updated instrument panel on the ground station, or to draw a synthetic
view of the world from the UAV's perspective or probably some of both.
Because the UAV and maintain straight/level flight and can navigate
itself (I guess I should say "will be able to") flying the airplane
could simply be a matter of plunking down new waypoints on a virtual map.
This isn't quite as exciting as those posts about people getting their
full scale pilots licenses, but it's nice to get away from the computer
screen once in a while and do something "real" even though my feet have
to stay firmly on the ground. (Unless I crash, at which point there is
a lot of subsequent jumping up and down and vocal noise.) :-)
Regards,
Curt.
--
Curtis Olson http://www.flightgear.org/~curt
HumanFIRST Program http://www.humanfirst.umn.edu/
FlightGear Project http://www.flightgear.org
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