Exoskid - Flight Two

tl;dr

• So we re-built it.
• And then we flew it.
• And it worked even better!
• And we tested all important stuff.
• And then we crashed again (material failure..)
• Rapid unscheduled disassemblies for the win..

Martin, Peter, Leon and Markus on a beautiful April day around the rebuilt Exoskid. A lot of improvements for operation were implemented, like a reproducible and secure way to attach and detach the wings without loosing taring every time. We were really hot to test our improved version. And this time we even had a checklist! So what could possibly go wrong?!?

Ready to launch! Below you can see almost the full Fluglicht crew with only Chris missing: Martin, Leon, Robin and Peter (left to right).

And here we go:

Everything went really smooth this time. Martin got the plane on propeller power quite high up to have more buffer for failures. Then he engaged autoflap with almost idle propeller. And the plane happily flapped it's way across the sky! The angle of attack and flapping cycle was designed with the help of Dr. Send, the father of the Festo Smart Bird. His body of research and support made it a lot easier for us to get thrust out of our system.

After successfully testing the flapping propulsion of the plane, Martin contentiously switched to the exoskeleton. And this time, it was not an immediate nosedive. Peter could induce a turn, but for some reason the controls were sluggish, and the plane started to roll. And then it started to suddenly dive and tumble head over toe, leading to a rapid unscheduled disassembly somewhere in the rapeseed field below!

What had happened??

To figure that out, we had to find the wreck in the ocean of yellow. Not an easy task. But after 2 hours, the remains were found. The search party looked horrible afterwards though, and we want to apologize at this point to the farmer for combing his rapeseed... Analysis of the plane, the separately found tail, and the ground video revealed that the tail had ripped off mid-flight. Layer delamination due to a crappy PLA filament. Oh, well... Martin had to buy an unknown filament, as the good stuff was empty and sold out. The wings, tail and electronics actually stayed intact due to the cushioned landing in the rapeseed. Only the nacelle and gears were ripped apart. So the plane could be rebuilt from the printer!

Again we faced a frustrating ending to the test, even though we could prove every part of the system. Nevertheless, we didn't let that drag us down and Martin went on to fly his MG6 till sunset.

Special thanks also to Andy again for the follower drone flying and footage!