MADS spent this past week finally tracking down and solving all of the little issues and problems that have plagued us and prevented us from continuing flight testing for the past few weeks.

The full sensor package is now complete and includes a custom IMU (3 axis acceleration and roll rates), accelerometers at each deployment mechanism, and flow meter in the fuel line, a horizon sensor, and an eagle tree system measuring all RC control inputs, pitot tube pressures, temperature and engine RPM. It has been tested on the ground and installed in the primary vehicle.

Fabrication of the linear actuator mounting brackets was completed this week as well, and the deployment mechanisms are now fully assembled and installed.

It was a big week for electronics. After struggling last week with DM control boards made in-house in Tim May's shop, it was decided that the quality of the boards we could make was not adequate for the project. The corrected design was sent back to Advanced Circuits to be printed, and they arrived on Friday. Nearly 48hrs of constant work allowed us to populate, test and install them before an attempted flight test this past Sunday.

Software is nearly finished, and the finishing touches are being made to the Matlab GUI. Software in conjunction with electronics was able to command and control a simulated deployment in the lab.

So despite several very late nights this week and a lot of work on everyone's part to be ready to test this past weekend, the weather was against us. The system was fully checked out in static, ground test and ready to go Sunday morning, but winds were too high and forced us to postpone the test.

Hopefully testing will happen some time this week before a well deserved Spring Break.

Thanks for following along.

Posted by Travis Schafhausen

This week was about putting together and presenting IR 2, as well as getting ready for full system testing as well as deployment testing one week from today. IR2 was presented Thursday and can be found on the MADS website for those who are curious to see specific updates over the past month.

In order to prepare for next weekend, everyone has been hard at work:

The electronics and software team have been diligently working every night: Four new deployment mechanism circuit boards were ordered from Advanced Circuits and should be in soon to be populated and tested. Originally, these boards were being made in Tim May's shop, but we ran into difficulties regarding the through holes and decided that getting them created professionally was the best way to go. The initialization GUI has been completed and looks amazing! And the deployment code is ready to go for static deployment tests this week!

Sensors are all functional as of this week: The dataloggers have been figured out and are now working, and we have a new horizon sensor all ready to go. Re-calibration of all of the sensors, as well as synching data remains for the work this week. The giant sensor package will be flown this upcoming weekend to verify the stability models of the system and allow the team to analyze what is going on during flight in case anything happens.

This week it was discovered that the the autonomous SV is just under the required weight by about 15 grams without including room for a 100 gram sensor package, therefore the SV is on a diet. The team chose the lightest basic SV out of the four available and are trying to cut down on the extra mass; wires are being shortened, excess glue removed, DM attachments to the canopies redone, and possible trims to the canopy, etc.

With the DMs needing to be trimmed, manufacturing and structures ended up with a little bit more work on top of re-doing the shaker test for the new DM bracket design and SV canopy reinforcement, and the static deployment test. (This new bracket design is pictured in IR 2.)

Everything should be completed by the end of the week and we should be looking forward to an awesome weekend of flying the full-system and deploying SVs!

Posted by Leah Crumbaker