I updated George's pulse emmission detecotr (PED) design as one of my final projects years ago. For me these devices are critical to setting up a new aircraft. They are especially useful where CF is employed, gas engines, etc.
Although diagnostic by nature, in aircraft where I have them employed full time, they have prevented serious failures by just observing the recorded results after every landing. The Picalario idea is a good one; essentially the same thing. Most folks are just plain not aware how many times the RF link has failed on any given flight until they actaully witness it for themselves. Non-believers become believers in very short order. You can not see EMI/RFI, until it gets past the point of being serious in nature... Quoting [EMAIL PROTECTED]: > > In a message dated 2/16/2006 11:49:14 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > I tried the thick walled plastic tube along the tailboom - works > but only what I consider to be very marginal range (approx 120 feet). > > > > DARN! I was hoping Hartmut/Dave/Simon were on to something, but I guess > we're still groping around. > > The next time you do a range test, plug up your Picalario - that nice > itty-bitty lady in there will likely start saying "ATTENTION!" before you > start > seeing the controls twitch (particularly if you set the sensitivity up) so > you > won't have to walk so far/strain your eyes/get muddy. Then, (for those > antenna configurations in which you have the MOST confidence, PLEASE!) fly > the > airplane and keep track of of the number of "ATTENTION!"s (glitch/pulse > omission > reports) vs flight time for comparison. That might take a > pencil/notepad/assistant (or other talent, writing with your toes comes to > mind), since AFAIK > the Pic doesn't keep that data in memory (HELP Hartmut!). There are other > such (older & new) sensors out there that do (I've got one I bought from > Mark > Schwing (EMS) someplace, and RC guru George Steiner had DIY articles on such > in > RCM). If enough folks do this and (carefully!) report the results, we > might start to get a stochastic (yeh, eye are an injenyr two!) insight into > the > practical effects of carbon structure vs antenna performance, since the > application of more elegant em theory is (as yet, apparently) inconclusive. > Maybe > Gordy could do something REALLY useful by compiling the data. Might be more > > helpful than the "I wrapped my antenna around a pair of needle-nose pliers > and never had a problem" approach. Good Lift! > RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
