Lift in m/s, speed in m/s, alt in ft, current in A, wind speed in mph. You guys are driving me nuts. Aside from that, awesome! Really interesting. The future is here :)

I remember being in primary school i used to spend all day after school watching your videos. I loved seeing you experiment with fpv and seeing you build your own planes. I just graduated high school and your channel is perhaps the only one i’ve stuck with for so long and that i still enjoy. You’ve come a long way and I hope i’ll get to witness your creations for many more years to come.

Hi, last summer our solar powered glider flew 14.30 hrs and 650km with this feature. We didn't use thermal hunting because it seems to fly away but the min and max altitude helps to save energy. Apparently, it's better to spend more power during a shorter time than a constant low current to maintain a constant altitude.

Your videos never fail to impress me, I can't wait for the next video every time one finishes. Please never stop making videos

You have to set up a geofence, when the plane hits the boundary in loiter the flight mode changes to RTL. It flies home and then continues the mission

I can't wait to see how much you're going to improve this! Rock-On Dude!

damn robots. First they came for our jobs, now they want also our hobbies

This is a great video. Awesome to see 3D positioning on a 3D landscape after the flight.

I think that the issue with the drifting down wind was that your loiter mode is just flying a turn rate, not tracking location. The elongated loops are because the change from upwind to downwind and back with no turn rate compensation to fly in an actual circle. I skydive and it's something we have to learn how to deal with to get where we want to go.

Now, just make it with solar panels, for fully automatic flights, and way to much flite time

Wow, can't believe the tech like this is at the hobby level now...amazing. Just getting back into RC after 10+ years, amazed at how cheap stuff has gotten, and how GOOD the expensive stuff is! My very first experience with an electric was a buddy's hand-launch 3-ch glider with a Speed 400 direct drive motor (w. folding prop of course) and had JUST enough NiCD juice to climb ONE time and circle back down to Earth. We quickly realized without at least 2 or 3 batteries it took longer to ride bikes to the airfield than any actual enjoyment time!

Amazing stuff Daniel. Glad you have the time to keep playing around with RC stuff and keep us entertained. Always enjoy your vids.

That's really an impressive test of the soaring system! He has collected and presented data in an excellent manner

Thanks for making this video! To prevent it from getting too far downwind you have two options 1) geofence, as some have mentioned 2) set up an RC channel using the SOAR_ENABLE_CH parameter, to inhibit thermalling when you want it to continue on mission. The feature is still under development and there are some improvements on the way.

Dude been amazing watching u through the years and see you not lose any enthusiasm for the Hobby. Thanks for inspiring me to start flying again.

Lol, that little “communication lost” at the end was cute. :)

Very cool! Love the efficiency of riding thermals vs. relying on the motor, just fascinating to watch. Looking forward to your next video 😊

It certainly did get the thermals and especially the second time, there was a clear gain in altitude. Thank you very much for recording this for us !

You definitely have the best ground station I've seen yet!

This was a super cool look into what I think is one of the most interesting aspects of RC flight.

I've been flying RC since the late eighties and the technology keeps growing by leaps and bounds. I always like to do my aerobatics without gyros or mixing and my soaring on slope lift the same and search lift by eye. Occasionally a thermal drifts into the slope on light lift days and is usually evidenced by seagulls or pelicans. I once got in lift with a huge golden eagle. That was wind shear lift flying near Davenport CA across from big creek lumber. Unbelievably strong with an unlimited ceiling but a very turbulent bottom that was about 500 ft elevation and really difficult to get into. I was flying a Bob Martin sr7 that I had for twenty years and had an amazing amount of countless hours flying. That thing was and still is unbelievable IMHO

This is the one time I could have helped you lol LOVE THIS TY @3DR @aurdo and @apm for the Pixhawk and the devs I love this software for my filming rig!

super interesting i always wanted to have this set up, can't wait for the desert video !!

I think you know, but a trick to stay in the thermal is: if the lift increases turn less and if the lift decreases turn more. and the more it decreases more turns. in that way you are getting closer and closer to the center of the thermal. I love your videos, thanks for sharing.

Love to watch these autonomous vehicles you make. It looks like the day you are flying, the atmosphere is very stable. Try it again on a day with a few cumulous clouds around, mid afternoon. I've caught great thermals during my hang gliding days. Cheers!

Watvching this vid I am impressed with how much knoweledge there is ahead of me, as I am just making my first steps in RC motorised gliders. Fantastic, stimulating, educative content. Keep up the good work!

So great to see you utilising this tech. A good reference to the good egg that figured this out would be nice but I understand your focus. Ridge lift is always going to be lift so figuring out an algorithm to quantify that should take some effort. It warms my heart to watch this stuff.

Wow dude! That was so interesting. Maintaining its altitude with minimal power input was pretty impressive at any rate!

You should really try this again! I really want to see more autonomous flight episodes, and this one sure is special!

WOW! This is interesting! Thanks for sharing, Daniel!

Really awesome stuff. Makes me want to dive in on it. Thanks for posting!

How you don't have more subscribers? Is just like free lessons. I love it!

One of my best learning opportunities....University of KZfaq does it again!

Very impressive ! And all that with over the shelf hardware and software hence with minimal cost !

Impressive. Your FPV gear setup will be used on my ASW from now on, just startet the change. Thanks

I am the reigning king of non-technical, so 99.9% of whatever you say goes in one ear and out the other. Still, I really enjoy watching your videos. Thanks for all your efforts.

Wow! Awesome stuff! thanks for making and showing this

Wow, the low flying over the hill with trees was reeeeally sketchy imo, dude you're the king of RC for me. I wanna try everything you make but this is whole new league of wallet/time killer. Love it!

Just wonderful man, looking forward to watch your superb experiments, .... Start feeling I'll need to install Ardu on my Matek FC, moving from INAV, and realy get into Ardu and all theses beautifull fonctions. keep soaring and many thanks for sharing

Love this channel

Love your videos man! This should be your FPV/RC link relay plane that lets you fly behind and around mountains :)

Awesome video! Thanks for sharing and giving a great commentary.

This is really cool stuff mate!

Super cool concept! Thanks for the video!

This is amazing. I love your videos. Thanks for all your efforts...

Finally someone took the trouble to try it out. Thanks for the video. Suggestion: Wouldn't a geofence with a few rallies be helpful against the plane leaving?

There is a very simple algorithm for thermalling, and looking at your track, it seems to be what your flight controller is using (or, at least very similar). 1. When first encountering lift, wait some period (we use 3 seconds in paragliding), then initiate a turn (it seems your controller defaults left). 2. While lift increases, loosen the turn radius (up to some preset maximum). 3. While lift decreases, tighten the turn radius (down to some preset minimum). 4. If there is no lift, wait some period and then return to mission mode.

your solar plane + ardu soaring

Excellent excellent video. I have two ASW 28s and they are fairly good soaring platforms for the price. Really excited about Ardupilot's thermal hunting feature. I'll squeeze a Matek 405 wing FC in mine in conjunction with a Taranis X9D transmitter and a R9 long range receiver.

There is a setting called a geofence that is essentially a digital fence that doesn’t let your plane leave the area. Don’t know if it would work for this but I have used it for autonomous search missions and it works great!

I loved the ending! "communication lost!"

Man this is so awesome. I wish I could afford the gear to build this. Autonomous control is sick.

That is so cool. I would love to build a plane like this can can fly to a certain GPS location, circle around take pictures and return keeping at a certain altitude the whole time. I used to fly RC planes years ago but at that time it was all glow engines. With these Lithium batteries and awesome powerful energy efficient motors this hobby is very cool indeed. I look forward to getting back into it.

Wow amazing now you need a few solar pannels !

Looks like a hoot. I'm ancient enough to remember going from analog to digital (pcm) RC, not to mention the "galloping ghost". lol. Thermals are generated by heated ground, the darker the better, ridge lift is an uplifting from the wind caused by the ridge, it would need to fly parallel to the ridge. (used to hang glide too. lol). Need to look further into this. Thanks for the effort you took putting this together!

I've been thermalling the same ASW-28 for years (by eye and with a vario). It works very well once you get the hang of it. From the KML file it looks like you were half in and half out of the thermal. On one side of the loops you were rising, and on the other side you were sinking. It's not enough just to circle when you detect a thermal, you've got to constantly adjust the turning radius to stay in it, otherwise it will just spit you out. Good idea to go to a large open area like a desert, a couple of days out there will really up your thermal skills, enough to let you tune the autonomous mode a fair bit better.

That was a really cool flight.

An incredible implementation, congratulations. Please publish a complete tutorial that I want to do the same.

Great info about your setup. I have the dragon link and similar video just haven’t had as much success.

Really neat, I might try to set up something like this, have a ton of little solar cells I can build into the top of a wing easily for forever flight.

Great video. With solar power for the servos there are places in Hawaii where this could potentially stay aloft for 3-4 months in the summer.

Excellent! Very impressive!

In the 80’s my grandfather and his friends started Soaring products a company that made the Thermic sniffler. The sniffler would send an audible signal to a radio that the pilot wore on his belt. You were able to hear the thermal. They later sold it to ACE RC. The soaring products snifflers are still highly sought after by glider pilots.

At 13:45 you see the air going down, even is ground level is going up (ridge). This seems to be caused by the cooler air over the trees. The air is going in up over the valley, which causes air to be drawn from the cooler places, in this case the hills with trees. I agree, no thermal bubbles here, just the general air over over the valley rising at the expense of the air over the forests.

Great video! I had just ordered an ASW28 from HK, then I see this video on KZfaq! I think the Phoenix 2400 would work better. You can get a PNF version on banggood for $130. It is a great plane. I flew it for 4 hours and 44 minutes using lithium ion batteries. There is a video of it on my channel. Thanks for the awesome videos Daniel!

Would you, or have I missed it? Do a video on all your long range gear. You know, a "What's on my ground station" video. Thanks. Love watching

Very cool. I'll put that in my Radian and let it fly all day by itself hahaha For the trailing edges, squared off is more efficient unless you make it perfectly straight, stiff, and razor-sharp.

Try adding solar cells to the wing to see if it improves flight duration. Try adding ground object recognition via live video feed. Then add ground object location coordinate triangulation from the aircrafts GPS co-ordinates.

Remember Professor 3d from RcPowers???? Anyway your still doing a good job kid!!!.... Keep it up bro

Really interesting! I guess you've already thought about implementing this sistem into your solar plane, maybe with a big battery tossed in. Would be really cool to see if it could achieve enough energy to sustain a 24h flight, wandering in the desert on a sunny day!

Very interesting and informative. Is the change in ground terrain height taken into account, or is it alll done by Baro/ GPS?

Trully amazing so far 👏 👌

stop playing games bro and have that thing follow a GPS heading in auto mode with one kilo of coke and makes some serious money

Love the technical details. I’d be interested to see if you set your waypoint mission so that it takes you over some elements which are more likely to be generating thermals, like an asphalt flat roof, a road, or a car park.

and because you know how to paraglide, you know all about that stuff already. cool project

Challenge. Fly from Chicago to Holland, MI. I think with a UHF you could get it all the way across Lake Michigan. Second, would love to see you get one of these in the jet stream. Nerding out over your videos. Thank you!

Amazing. It found a way to climb with the motor off. I could not do that manually. Damn I love these times we are living in.

That was beautiful, buddy. I do think that the powered glider was catching thermals though! consider the black body radiation of the paved road where there was a clear spike in altitude. The road heats the air directly above it well. Also, the forest vs. field data makes sense in terms of thermals because trees transpire and are excellent at absorbing heat and killing thermals. The albedo effect off the fields is notably higher where the heat may be better reflected out.

Cool plane. I have one and I love it :-) Pretty cool setup :-)

To me that looks similar to a paragliding track when in a thermal, you can actually tell if you are falling out of a thermal in paragliding so I'm guessing this does the same thing. Feeling which side of the wing has more life to find the middle of the thermal. Amazing tech

If you haven't already, look into the "forward slip" technique for slowing without flaps using the rudder and opposite aileron. Works really well once you get it down.

Great video as usual , if i remember correctly , you could use geofence to stop it getting "out of bounds" ?

I really have to get into to gliding And maybe autonomous gliding I love autonomy

Please combine with your solar plane! Great work. :) I'm a computer vision and machine learning researcher. If you can think of ways I can help, I'd love to. I think some very simple vision and reinforcement learning could allow it to actively look for likely locations for thermals. Rather than just accidental find them.

Enabling geofence may work for catching thermals within a particular range.. nice work 👍👍👍

Highly recommend staying within FAA drone flight rules, especially when publishing. Absolutely loved this!

You make such interesting videos, love to watch. I think it's not following the thermal but drifting away with the wind. Because it are not nice circles due headwind.

I would love to see the solar plane again.

Too cool! Thanks for sharing!

Wonderful videos. Thank you.

Dude that is two thermals being tracked right there. You see birds flying in tight circles in thermals that move slowly across the ground exactly like your plane was doing. The ardu definitely works!

I am going to try this. I have the 2.4m Volantex Phoenix v2, I intended to set it up with iNav but I like this much better. Thanks

Very cool Videos !!!👍👍🚁

Love the video! Especially since you are so local! I would love to meet up sometime! I currently go to University of Washington Bothell and head a quadcopter club there. Would love to learn some stuff form you.

Awesome. That looks like as much fun as trying to hunt down thermals with your thumbs.

As a pilot, I would suggest the following... When your plane got to the trees it would sink because of the air around trees being an average of 10 degrees lower than the surrounding air. So at the beginning of the slope (where the air hit the hill and trees) you had the maximum lift. Can you program the thing to stay and go back and forth in the spot where you hit maximum lift? Like set a number for the lift you are seeking and GPS-like stay there? Your "autonomous" lift seeking thing is just looking for the minimum up and drifting in that direction into lower lift areas that still meet the minimum lift requirement. When it starts getting a lower lift it should turn back to the maximum lift spot, right? Love your videos, thanks for sharing... bye

look at the horizontal-situation indicator during soar mode 5:50 and 11:00 negative AOA but still climbing with the motor off

Whooooohooo! Mount Si! Right? Very cool video! Even the blurry stuff.

I don't appreciate him not following up on this. I have Ardusoar flashed on my PX4 and will begin testing on my Multiplex Cularis within the week. I live in Austin where thermal activity is far more abundant in the summer. I'm very surprised more people haven't bothered with reporting on their findings. Seems like no one is out there making steps at optimizing this piece of firmware. I don't want to sound like a dick, but I think everything besides his actual execution of these systems is great. It makes zero sense to use a pixracer when the PX4 has been the standard flight controller for Arduplane. Honestly looks like "rctestflight" goes out there on a whim with little premeditation or refinement of the systems integration. I haven't seen anything interesting on his channel regarding flight automation, he reports far too many long-range mission failures for my liking, and frankly it's most likely because his overall execution of everything is half-baked as fuck. If this is the best of my generation, I'm far from impressed. I see weak performances on this channel. These are all things I've wanted to do, and again, I love the effort. But you're lacking something crucial RCTestFlight. It takes serious repetition to properly exploit the Arduplane firmware on the Pixhawk platform. The standard Pixhawk works fine, why would you use a FC designated for micro-sized multicopters? Oversimplification can be harrowing. I fly long-range without even needing to monitor my aircraft, but I've set forth serious dedication, and when I view your videos I sense very little behind the scenes involvement. You go out and fiddle with a build, but it's never fleshed out as comprehensively and methodically as I would have. Search "Freedom Plus Vision" and you will view my style of autonomous play. I love the effort RCTestFlight. Be great to collaborate one day.

Thanks for sharing this flight with us. Is the autonomous mode settable to work with AGL or ASL and is that accounting for the lack of climb above ground level? Cheers, Billy in Canada