Heres the glider from this video: www.fmshobby.com/products/fms-2300mm-fox-v2-pnp/?ref=RCTestFlight Use code $10RCTF or RCTestFlight to get $10 off

We all agree that you should continue the Solar Plane series!

Those droneless camera birdview shots of the foam plane were top tier lmao

As usual, fantastic film. Re your vortex shedding imagery, I used to be a scientific photographer at the UK’s MoD Royal Aerospace Establishment, not really what you were trying to do, but in wind tunnels we used to use UV mini tufts on models to view localised flow patterns on the surface of the fuselage. Short lengths of thin string, with a UV fluorescent dye on it, at night with a good UV source and a camera with a high frame rate might give you some lovely images. Keep up the great stuff.

It seems like the feedback loop needs to account for both height above the ground and pitch. A pitched down plane nearing the water needs to pull up, but a pitched up plane near the water will soon be high enough above the water without further pulling up. In other words, the altitude adjustment loop needs to know if it is too low and pitched to go lower, or too low and pitched to go higher, with a weaker or even inverse adjustment in the latter case. Likewise for being too high. This was very apparent with the stick based design, but I suspect would be much easier to implement with the flight controller and ultrasonic sensor design.

You should measure the lag of the sonar sensor. Any lag in the PID "plant" moves the zeros and poles of the transfer function, which affects oscillations and stability

Wingtip vortices are fascinating things. At Oshkosh one year they had a Sea Fury with wingtip smoke being followed by a Mustang down show center. At the end of the runway the Sea Fury would pull up hard and bank to the right...which turned the smoke to a swirling mess behind it that in a couple seconds all came together in a perfectly round smoke ring...that the Mustang would then fly through. I thought this was the neatest thing I'd ever seen.

Great series! In my experiences with PID controllers, sometimes using x*abs(x) on the output can smooth out oscillations. In other words, square the output of the PID, but keep negative values as negatives. This results in exponentially lower sensitivity the closer you get to zero.

OMG that vape car hotboxed scene was hilarious! Actually made me laugh so hard. Thanks for that.

@rctestflight I've worked a bit with terrain following systems, and it might help you to aim your transducer more forward instead of straight down. That's generally the biggest flaw that most folks encounter with adverse pitch cycling is that the transducer is looking straight down, which causes the angle to point backwards when the aircraft is in a dive, and causes it to look forwards when it's climbing, and this creates a cyclic failure. However, if you mount the transducer pointing more forward as the aircraft climbs the transducer will not get the necessary feedback, and so it will slowly come back down in pitch which is much more controllable and creates a more expected less chaotic pitch control.

I'm flyin low checkin efficiency gains Testin wing shapes on RC planes Deep cords feel stronger ground effect buzz But thin ones might get better results This Fox glider got a long wingspan Should feel ground effect above a meter scan Installed sensors, art pilot too Try fly itself at the right altitude Tried followin the surface below But it kept bouncin, just wouldn't flow Tuned the PID but nothin worked right Still oscillatin out of sight Pontoons I added for water tests Flyin on the lake, flyin my best But the controller still had issues Keepin it steady, raisin fizzles Tried flaps next to make it rise higher Near the water, make the altitude wire But they couldn't stop the jumps The pitch and airspeed just too much pumps Wand concept next, canards it did flex Rotatin surfaces based on checks But responses had to be lessened Then it was too weak, flow now questionin Came up short on solutions galore But problems like these I want more Control systems is beyond me ya'll Hit me up if you can help it's not small Learned thick cords feel it most true But efficiency gain scales are tough to accrue Scale affects it heavy too it's clear Big planes don't feel it, only up close and near So ground effect tests will keep rollin on Till self stabilizin designs are fully gone Appreciate y'all watchin my vids Subscribe if you dig it, peace I bid

The Rate in witch you pump out such high quality Videos is just insane!

Flight ontrol systems engineer here. Your videos are a delight, but with a bit of frustration around control design. I am sure that if you invested half as much time in beefing up your control systems engineering skills as you spend with 3d printing and whatnot, you'd be much less often puzzling over what's happening and you'd cut on the trial-and-error stage. The hard part is probably the aerodynamics though. Unless you make a wind tunnel, or you invest in CFD software, you'd have to characterize the plant's response in-situ, which is challenging (but since you seem to be able to always have something that at least flies, it might be sufficient). Anyway, hats off to your dedication.

The polite abruptness of "thanks for watching, bye" - is art. Only reason I'm not mad when these videos end.

Great video! As a control engineer, I suggest using MATLAB or similar tools to collect, analyze data and understand how the aircraft behaves. Testing altitude control ideas in the software before trying them out at the lake can help optimize the system. Also, be mindful of potential delay or lag from the sonar system, as ignoring them might cause issues with altitude control. Excited to see your progress!

The text: My current project is building a plane which autonomously flies slowly and roughly low so I can run a waypoint mission and ride along with it on my bike, watching that footage of you flying your plane next to that boat got me hooked even more now. I got inspiration for this when watching your STOL multi-element wing plane flying a mission in that park. So yeah, shots of you chasing your builds are the coolest! 12:12: Shots like these are what makes your Videos special

Speaking as a pilot, I can say that when I went from low-wing aircraft to flying a high-wing Cessna, I definitely made some rough landings at first, because of the reduced strength of the ground effect. When I was learning to fly, getting a good flare was one of the hardest things, exactly because of the ground effect. When the aircraft almost touches down, the efficiency of the wings increases dramatically, which means that even a slight movement of the elevators might pull the nose up too high ("ballooning"), exiting the ground effect again, losing a lot of airspeed and coming down hard.

On hydrofoil sailboats, the wand connects to the foil via two bell cranks and a push rod. The forward bell crank has a screw to adjust the ratio of angle change to pushrod movement (aka the gearing). In heavier seas we up the sensitivity and in flatter water we keep it as low as possible (because any flap movement is increased drag). It would be neat to see a mechanical tuning system for the canard’s instead of just changing their area. Keep up the good work!

The large tall T wing on the purpose built ground effect plane stabilizes it by being further away from the ground effect itself, and losing more lift as the plane climbs, which makes it pitch down slightly. Maybe the same effect would work with a negative stagger tandem wing, or with small fixed canards near the ground.

As someone who formerly worked in a vape shop in the day of the classic mods. I definitely screwed several together and shoved up to 7 batteries in one stlet of copper tubes before it ignored several batteries and I had to throw it out of the garage door at the shop. It would probably create 1/2 the smoke of your machine only using 4 4680 batteries and a massive 8 coil atomizer with less than .1ohm guitar string colis. It was not in any way vapeble and required an air hose and a cut up 2 liter bottle to funnel air and a bottle of vg to prevent it from overheating immediately and going into flames. I installed the security cameras and my boss was there most of the time so he should have stopped us.

The fog machine in the car. I had a Cheech and Chong flashback moment!

While flying an IS-28B2 Lark sailplane (17 m / 55 feet 9 inch wingspan) on landing approach I was instructed to land long as the gliding operation was moving to the other end of the runway due to the wind direction changing. Fully retracting the air brakes while holding an altitude of about 10 feet and at a speed of 50 miles per hour the glider floated the length of the 2300 foot runway with very gradual speed loss, touching down at about 40 mph with an easy roll out to stop at the end of the runway. That, for me, was a very practical demonstration of ground effect. Thank you for all the analysis of the remarkable phenomenon of ground effect.

Something to look at is the airspeed at which the highest efficiency occurs. A simple starting point is stall speed, as this is easily observable. (other measurements will require data collection) Typically ground effect helps lower stall speed, and lowering the speed across the performance curve. Effect feels like flying a lighter aircraft, makes if feel more floaty.

After watching this fly I have a suggestion. Go back to the canard; this was on the right track. The problem is not the canard, it's the surface following wand. The wand is so stiff it is acting almost like a 2 position switch. As soon as it contacts the water, it's all or nothing deflection of the canard. Rather than using a rigid pole, try using a thin piece of stainless steel fishing wire. The wire should be thin enough to deflect at least 90 Deg with minimal deflection of the canard when force is applied to the tip of the wand. You want the canard to deflect more and more as the wand goes deeper and deeper in the water. It should be at full deflection only when the wand is substantially submerged. To achieve this balance, you may also need to increase tension on the rubber bands you are using to return the canard to a neutral position. By making the wand much more flexible, you are in effect adding mechanical dampening to the system.

You are a goldden god. Being able to fly from a speeding boat in rough water, and all the ground sensor elevator control, golden.

This is the most visually pleasing video you or any rc video…er er er has ever made 👍 following your plane with the boat and reaching out and giving the wing a 👊 was tool cool. It would be very interesting to see more videos following an rc boat plane as it traverses through you experiments and local terrain. Keep the videos coming 👍👍👍

I see one reason for the osillation in the linear actuation of the canards, the controller reaction should be weaker at low and stronger at high altitude. If you want to use a mecanical ground following controller, a possible solution would be to use a crankdisk and connect the controll surface at "top dead center" when the "ground following stick" is at its lowest point, with a second lever at the controllsurface right at 90°. But it would recuire some testing.

I'm a mechatronic engineer (control systems are part of that). A physical control loop, a digital one and an analog electronic circuit all follow the same rules and are modeled in the same way. In digital you have P, I and D. P reacts directly to the error, I reacts to the cumulative error over time and D reacts to the rate of change of the error. In a simple physical control loop you have a spring (which provides a proportional response to the error), a mass (which has inertia and doesn't want to change speeds), and a damper (which reacts to the rate of change). Your physical control loop has only a proportional response to the error, so it oscillates like any proportional-only control loop. If you want to add I and D to get a working control loop, you should isolate the probe from the control system with a rubber band, have a gear system so that a flywheel spins up in either direction as the error changes (to provide I) and a brake that rubs on the flywheel (to provide D). To providing tuning of I, you'll need a way to change the rotational moment of inertia of the flywheel, by either changing the mass or moving the mass closer to or further from the centre. To provide tuning of D, you'll just need a spring or rubber band that can have the tension increased to push harder on the flywheel. Probably the easiest way to achieve this would be by screwing weights into an electric scooter brake disc (about 75mm diameter) and mounting the disc to a drill's planetary gearbox (backlash in a 3D printed geartrain will not be kind to you). If you want to learn more about this, look into "spring mass damper" systems and state space modelling.

Real neat wingtip vortex visualization! I live under the flight path for 12R at KMSP within a mile of the runway. We can often hear airliner vortices interacting with trees on the ground sometimes after a minute or more after the plane has passed. It's really damn cool to hear!

I haven't felt motion sickness from a video till now. Congrats

Mechatronics engineer here! Click read more for some slightly nerdy control advice! I'd love to see this project developed further. Im lead to believe that the oscillation problem may also be a result of the senor range. If the controller always has an accurate height measurement using a range of sensors (like IR and sonar fused with some form of Bayes filter), then the PID gains can be dynamically allocated. An airspeed measurement would also be useful to scale the gains, as the controll authority dramatically increases with airspeed. I like this approach because you don't need a perfect plant model, but you do need a half decent starting guess. A motion model is easy enough to find insitu for the bayes filter, though changing wind speeds/ direction might make for a new headache. So with just height and airspeed measurements, the controller should have enough information to fly without oscillation at any altitude. Pitch sensors may not be needed as sinkrate is arguably more important for stable flight at ANY airspeed. The only other useful information would be the terrain height AHEAD of the aircraft, similar to the terrain warning in real aircraft. this could just be a simple IR senor with a 5-10m range in this case. I think I still have the code to do this from a similar robotics assignment from Uni. Id be happy to dig it out for anyone interested. Loving the ground effect series! I look forwards to your next idea! Thanks for listening to my TEDtalk :)

I think you should connect the giro to the sonar sensor, so you will be able to compensate for the angle change, and almost fully control the plane based on the giro, but adjust the altitude based on filtered and processed sonar data

What I have just seen has convinced me that the author of this channel is an unbridled GENIUS.

Wow flying from your boat looked so much fun with that floater :D

I love these technical videos of yours. I cannot tell you how refreshing it is to have a real long form video to watch rather than some clickbait BS.

Always love your engineering mate! Out of all the RC channels, you use the same principles they use to create real aircrafts.

My knowledge of the ground effect is that it's the wind that's normally kicked off of the wing reflecting back off of the ground then interacting with the wing underside and the flow of air, forming a standing wave. A high sweep flying wing should be able to catch some of that air bouncing back on the tips, and the stability can be modified with dihedral and wing twist nicely.

I love how you add an autopilot to anything that moves. Very skilled.

The ground effect on the lower aspect ratio ("deep chord") vehicle is more noticeable because it starts from a lower point in the efficiency scale, the glider is far more efficient with its high aspect ratio wings, so it seems less noticeable but is definitely there, glider pilots need to pay atention to it when landing. For the "terrain folowing canards" to work I would recomend using a thincker symmetrical airfoil (maybe an NACA 0018) and to limit its actuation to a incidence smaller then the stall angle, what is probably killing the idea is the stall od the surface and non linear response on the canards. For the flaps, it is true that lowering then increases lift, but it also increases pitching momment, so it would be necessary to compensate for that. If you want I'll be glad to help, I belive you come very close to getting it to work

“OUPES Batteries: When you forget to put the drain plug in your Boston Whaler and your EcoFlow Delta gets submerged”

Use forward sweep to get better ground effect by thinner wing chord, this will also Improve the turning ability with less roll. Forward sweep has a similar flow characteristic as ground effect, therefore it will improve speed , lift and weight

Daniels channel is the most interesting KZfaq channel there is. I even watch his ads. LOL! Seriously, this channel always is interesting. Even when he was a kid.

Apologies if the following has already been mentioned: - Using the flaps to control altitude failed because they add drag to the flight, slowing the plane and dropping it lower - oscillating AoA until power and/or elevator inputs change. - Canards are primarily used to add stabilisation to an aircraft to help reduce wing drop (left or right) when nearing or at stall condition. Independent pitch control of canards will result in unpredictable behaviour until you've thoroughly tested the flight model. Very few real aircraft use both a pitch-adjustable canards and rear-mounted elevator at the same time. They are either set in a fixed pitch angle when there is an elevator or they exist without an elevator and act in its place (eg. some classic Bert Rutan kit planes and the SAAB Viggen). - Throttle adjustments to control/stabilise ground effect shouldn't work as you're changing the airflow patterns with a prop at the front - the vortices need to kind of 'stabilise' or settle to even get a chance, especially on a tiny model (even with the prop positioned above the nose of the a/c). - Air molecules do not scale, so you need to keep this in mind when testing/building/evaluating. Wing chord can compensate quite dramatically for the "huge" air molecules you're dealing with when flying small scale aircraft. If you were to scale up the speed of the aircraft you're flying from say 1/16th to 1/1 you might be in for a big surprise as you'll probably find that some r/c aircraft with props go faster (when you scale their speed up to 1/1) than a full scale aircraft ever can/could/will! ie. Impossibly fast when brought up to 1/1. I hope the above makes sense. Keep up the great camera/video work - looks great. The models look great and no, I'm not yelling at my screen.. YOU are 😉😁!

For the active control, my guess is, you would need to mix some gyro signal mixed i to the control, instead of just playing with the PID coefficients. Because what is most likely throwing the loop off is the temperamental variation of the control surfaces authority. Moreover if I'm not wrong, the system becomes at least 3'rd order (or even possibly 4'th order): Control surface displacement gets integrated into pitch rate, pitch rate gets integrated into attitude and attitude gets integrated into altitude (or first into vertical speed and that into the altitude). So to me nearly impossible to stabilize with just a simple PID (a single derivative is not enough phase margin recovery from 3 or 4 integral system). By using an attitude gyro signal giving you the attitude angle, you split the 3'th (when not relying onto that fast elevation changes) order response into two max 2 order loops, while the dynamics of the inner 2'nd order loop (surfaces -> attitude) is suppressed by the gyro signal (use the gain and D coefficients to stabilize), so then what remains is just the outer loop (attitude -> altitude) which is just one single integration, so very easy to stabilize. You first adjust the attitude control response (gyro -> servo PID response; better to be on the faster side, but still stable), then by varying the altitude sensor sensitivity adjust the final altitude stability.

I think the camera shots in this video proved that aviation is so beautiful whether it be RC or full scale

With the caveat that I only have seen the footage you posted here, I think you were closer to it working with the Canard design than you think. Instead removing so much of the surface, if you can trim it towards a more neutral attitude and change the gear ratio I think it would be much more effective. You are spot on that the response is very large, and by changing the gear ratio so the change in angle of the wand causes a smaller commensurate change in angle of the canard. In PID speak, think of it as changing the proportional term gain.

You may wish to notice that PID works well only when there are no other hidden integrators in the system. Integrating twice produces a nice oscillator. Hidden integrators may come in form of inertia of any kind. Things to do about it is either turning off the I component of a regulator, or shifting its frequency window a full order of magnitude away from the existing hidden integrator.

the air to air thrown camera shots were great man

The mechanical control system on a foiling Moth (similar to the sailboat you showed), relies on what we call a "fast point", where you have maximum control input (rate) at the desired height, with diminishing sensitivity (rate of control surface change for a given unit of wand rotation) the further you get from the desired height. This is key to preventing the porpoising and oscillation you're seeing.

As always, very fascinating concepts and solutions to your hypotheses! Love your videos Daniel...they always inspire me and provoke much thought!

you cant tie the altitude error directly to the elevator. pitch controls vertical speed, which in turn controls altitude. so the altitude error must be used to generate a vertical speed command, which in turn generates an elevator command. i spent a fair bit of time myself dinking around with altitude control loops for uavs, getting a balance of stability and responsiveness is for sure challenging

Regarding the sonar, you should really look at recorded data; measurement, control surface response etc. This way you can seen if your sensor is behaving, and you'll be able to better tune the PID, possibly with one of those tuning methods like ziegler nichols

The issue is the input from your "sensors" and the output from your plane. Because the input from your "sensors" gets more intense the closer to the ground, and they seem to get way more intense before the plane has time to correct. So being able to adjust the sensitivity, or a delay or something along those lines would be the path forward.

9:00 That's not a vape, it's a Füm held next to something else LOL

Just a theory, for tuning the control loop you may make headway by considering both power and elevator commands. They say, "speed is life, altitude is life insurance" and while the saying goes for surviving (engine) failures, the same is true when landing. Landing aircraft must stabilize their approach, so that the aircraft's energy at the touchdown point is in a specific range. If they're going too fast, they can pull up and exchange the speed for altitude, and this exchange is done fairly quickly; a few knots for a few meeters is a balance between airspeed and altimeter readings. Their sum will calculate the aircraft's net kinetic potential energy, which you can add to by increasing power. You might have luck in your control loops by using altitude as input for the aileron loop, and altitude plus airspeed for the throttle. This would allow the plane to react to the situation where it starts too high, pitches down while adding power, and ends up low with too much speed. I would personally just use simple gains for both, but logic would say you'd need a gain for mass (speed and altitude multiplier), drag (speed multiplier) and should tune the rest with PID.

I LOVE your videos!! Keep them coming! A Close Coupled Canard may be better for ground effect. IGE pressure under the wing increases which causes an upwash at the leading edge which will increase the lift of the close coupled canard, causing a pitch up away from the "ground". Also a swept wing pitches down less IGE than a straight wing because of less center of pressure shift. In fact 25⁰ to 45⁰ swept wings with a tall OGE T tail will also work!

Oh my dear, i love your experiments, thoughts and your efforts. You should be a teacher, but not in school (is boring) but in a free class for all those children (and adults) who are willing to learn for their life and have fun! Thank you so much for sharing!! 🥰😘

You make just such high quality content and explain everything perfectly

To apply the flaps to the controll loop is the right step. You create lift without loosing energy for pitch motion of the entire aircraft. The flaps need to be much bigger though, at least by factor 5! The canards are different, because of their leverage to the centre of gravity and it's coupled feadback loop with two different sets of time constants for the same prameters. The surest way to figure out a stable parameter loop is to keep the number of degres for freadom as los as posible. For instance, for ground effect mode - freeze the pich attitude and work only with flaps and rudder. The pich should be controlled by a gyro, but still keept fixed, when flying in the ground effect mode.

One thing you could try is making the rods of more flexible material. Even more so you could have them of greatest flexibility at the point and gradually decrease flexibility down the length if the rod. This could be done in part by varying the width of a given material

I'm so impressed with the quality of your videos, thank you for making such interesting stuff without getting stuck in gimmick territory.

FMS are making some gorgeous aircraft lately. I've got the Moa 1500mm. Love it to bits!

After seeing what the plane did with the stick/lever mechanism, I had this thought: apply the stick mechanism to a ‘normally’ shaped ground effect vehicle/plane but instead of thinking of control surfaces for an airplane consider it to be more like pressure control valves. If each side of the vehicle had a few sticks that linked to aileron like ‘vent’ flaps, as that side/area of the wing chord came up to a wave/high spot the stick/lever would open the vent in that area reducing the air pressure in that same area keeping the wing level. It shouldn’t take a very large vent flap to reduce the pressure. The same principle, of multiple small vents along the trailing edge of each side of the wing to reduce pressure, should be able to be applied to an electrical/radar/servo arm mechanism also. Great video as always.

The plane with a crutch! What a mad idea!

Double-check the barometer and right around where the barometer hole is. This behavior the fox glider had where it just moves up and down a couple feet randomly sounds like a problem I had where a little tiny piece of tape was being blown into and out of the little bay where the FC was, and it was changing something about how the pressure would change in there, and making the quadcopter bounce up and down a foot at random times.

In the sonar code try adding a smoothing code RNGFND1_WSP_MEDF: Moving Median Filter = 0-255 unless you’re using a custom code in a ardupilot. I think some of the oscillation is the waves Sets the window size for the real-time median filter. When MEDF is greater than 0 the median filter is active

Wow what a great channel, so pleased I've found it. Can't wait to see what the next couple of years brings!

Cool progress in the ground effect experiments. Those fog shots of tip vortices is really cool.

The moment u started to throw the camera I scrolled down and tried to sub, yet I've been a sub for ages and u deserve more dude. Creatively your content is unique. Honestly lad keep up the good work, ya made us proud son.

The shot of the plane next to the boat with the seagull in the background is cool.

11:39 Your canard issues might stem from the sprung mechanism's reaction force, causing a mix of aerodynamic and mechanical forces in your feedback loop. Test this by balancing the plane on your fingertips and lowering it onto a surface with the mechanism activated; if it pitches up, there's a mechanical force in your feedback loop.

One of the best videos so far. Great explanations, education, great footage, and you used so much cool tech: 3D scanner, power bank, lasers, smoke machines, and much more. Very cool. Also hilarious when colin was driving around in a hot boxed car lmao

*Summary* *Sponsorship and Introduction* - 0:00 Video is sponsored by Opus. - 0:02 Creator found images online showing a WWII concept for early terrain following radar. *Project Overview and Background* - 0:15 The video will attempt to recreate the terrain following radar concept with an RC plane. - 0:19 The creator's interest stems from a recent obsession with ground effect vehicles. - 0:25 Explanation of what wing chord is and its significance. - 0:41 Deep chord designs have been the focus because they seem to create a stronger ground effect. *Choosing the Aircraft* - 1:21 The FMS Fox with a 2.3m wingspan will be used for experiments. - 1:27 First impressions of the FMS Fox show it flies well due to light wing loading. *Ground Effect Testing and Modifications* - 1:36 Sources indicate the ground effect becomes noticeable at half the wingspan's height. - 1:49 Despite expectations, the ground effect isn't strongly felt at expected heights. - 1:55 To measure efficiency in ground effect, a flight controller is installed. - 2:21 The plane is modified with foam pontoons for water landing capability. - 2:44 A waterproof sonar sensor is added to measure height over water and aid in surface following. *Initial Testing and Tuning* - 3:00 First test at the lake shows that the plane flies well with modifications. - 3:12 Surface following mode with sonar control initially fails, causing the plane to dive into the water. - 3:25 After tuning the controller, the plane still has too much response. - 3:47 The plane is flown beside a boat to further tune the surface following controller. - 4:18 After adjustments, the sonar mode works without crashing, but still oscillates. *Improving Water Takeoff and Landing* - 4:56 Modifications made to allow the plane to take off from the water. - 5:16 Successful water takeoff allows for more convenient testing. *Continued Challenges and Efficiency Measurements* - 5:24 Altitude oscillations persist despite tuning efforts. - 5:52 Efficiency measurements are taken to compare flying in ground effect versus normal flight. - 7:18 Data suggests an 8% efficiency improvement when flying in ground effect. *Aerodynamic Visualization Attempt* - 7:25 An attempt is made to visualize aerodynamic differences between thick and thin wing cords using fog and lasers. - 7:58 Visualization of wingtip vortices is achieved but not sufficient to draw conclusions. - 8:36 Creator expresses interest in using smoke generators on the plane for future experiments. *Sponsorship Details* - 8:45 The creator packs up after conducting the experiments. - 8:50 Information about how the fog was generated using an Opus Mega3 and fog machine. - 9:11 Opus Mega3's features and usefulness are highlighted. *Introduction to Opus Mega 3 and Its Features* - 09:24 Describes the Opus Mega 3 as a powerful, portable energy source. - 09:31 Highlights that it can be charged from the wall, solar panels, or a car's DC output. - 09:37 Mentions the convenience of wheels and an extendable handle for transportation. - 09:41 Details the various outputs available on the Mega 3 for charging multiple devices. - 10:00 Talks about the option to expand power capacity with solar panels. - 10:11 Introduces Opus Help, a welfare program for sustainable energy solutions. *Developing and Testing the Surface Following Wand* - 10:28 Discusses issues with sonar control for maintaining altitude. - 10:34 Introduces the dangling wand concept borrowed from hydrofoil sailboats. - 10:41 Explains the use of a 3D scanner to design parts for the wand mechanism. - 11:10 Recommends Onshape for hobbyists and offers access to design files. - 11:23 Describes the process of 3D printing parts and installing them on an airplane. - 11:31 Shows how the wands and canards should help the plane maintain altitude. - 11:40 Notes that the initial control response was too powerful, causing oscillation. - 11:52 Attempts to reduce response by modifying canards without much success. - 12:10 Concludes that reducing the canard size made the control too loose. *Exploring Alternatives and Outcomes* - 12:22 Repurposes the wand mechanism to control flaps instead of canards. - 12:37 Demonstrates the mechanical function of the new mechanism. - 12:45 Acknowledges that the flaps did not effectively control altitude. - 13:02 Considers the idea of testing the concept on water despite its issues. - 13:16 Reflects on the difficulty of solving the surface following aircraft problem. - 13:25 Suggests that designing an aircraft more sensitive to ground effect might be best. *Conclusions and Learning Points* - 13:40 Shares insights on the impact of thin Wing cords and ground effect visibility. - 14:02 Questions the correlation between the strength of ground effect and efficiency gains. - 14:12 Comments on the influence of wing cord length and aircraft scale on ground effect. - 14:19 Uses the FMS Ranger as an example to discuss the ground effect's relation to scale. - 14:38 Contemplates modifications to the FMS Ranger to potentially enhance ground effect noticeability. - 14:42 Ends the video thanking viewers for watching. Disclaimer: I used gpt4-1106 to summarize the video transcript. This method may make mistakes in recognizing words

Nice! Also, your initial plane mod (before the prop offset) made it look incredibly photogenic, no wonder the seagulls were envious

Thanks for sharing! Cool what you do! To learn about those wingtip vórtices and the efficiency of ground effect!

The ultra sonic sensor is picking up the wave height difference which is causing isolation. There should be a 2 second sensor delay once level on the water this will cause a less speratic data pickup. Then just adjust elevator sensitivity adjustments and should flow more evenly. The main issue is climate adjustment. To overcome this a larger heavier aircraft will be more efficient since even at a sensitive elevator rate the mass still requires more effort to elevate reducing the amount of oscillation.

Your deep cord tests are more effective because it takes more time to bleed the pressure off from under the aircraft. Think of it like a tarp gathering wind and billowing out. To stop the billowing you can put cuts in the tarp and the tarp will billow less with each cut. For a lesser cord there is a shorter path to release pressure despite more generated ground effect BUT the accumulated total air pressure under the wing surface would be less because of the amount that can escape relatively easily.

Couch man here: The problem I see with the stick changingthe flaps is the stick: -I would try a longer and more nimble stick. My guess is, that would definitely work. Currently the stick is way too long. Just scale the length and size to the water craft, you showed. (Compared to that you are putting a tree into the water to adjust steering)

The wand/canard looked promising at first, don't know if anyone has already mentioned but it could be worth changng the feedback loop by adjusting the throw ratio rather than the flap size. You could do that by changing your gear ratio, but probably easier to switch to a coupled control arm set with different hole positions.

Perpetual summer at rctestflight!

Fascinating! And i certainly admire your determination!!

My favorite YT channel.

dynamic soaring when! 😡 great work man, always love to see your projects

I think the sonar sensors would work better if there were more than one on the nose. Or if the airplane's pitch was accurately factored into the feedback loop. If it's nosediving into the ground then it needs to pull way up and fast. If it's just gently descending then it can take its time and think about pulling up. The wands would need a linkage that doesn't yank the stick back every time the ends graze the surface.

The Kasperwing U/L utilized a single surface airfoil between it's floats, it was very effective in shortening water takeoffs. Ground Effect was also noticeable with the wing between the floats, it might be worth a try on your R/C float plane.

Changing the wands so that they are curved, may help with the oscillation. As the plane gets closer to the ground, the curve would cause the flaps to be turned less for the same unit of distance closer.

He's doing a glue job on a carpet!!!! There must be a special circle of hell for these things =)

Definitely more difficult in smaller scale. Nice work.

I think maybe with the rolls on the water surface it might help to add dwell time to the surface indicated position as you would for temperature or water pressure. Those examples can take time to stabilizes as does the water level with a rolling surface. Up In Smoke has nothing on you and yes the license is on the back of the car.

Gas balloons used to terrain following by chucking out a heavy rope leaving some dragging behind, if they went over a cliff the weight of the rope dragged them.down with the terrain. Absolutely amazing work Dan.

This is very cool, don't give up! It reminds me of hydrofoiling sailboats like the Moth that use a "wand" going down to the water to control flaps on the front wing

I think that for a proper feedback loop you will need wands with progressive flex that match the weight of the aircraft. Think of it like a fishing pole. At the tip, the wand would deflect more allowing for less input. As the aircraft gets closer to the ground the wand provides more input because the wand gets progressively stiffer.

Such a picturesque scene with the plane on the water in the fog!

"Oh God Its CUUmingg🤫🫣😖" - 2:31

Love your videos. They are always educational and fun. Keep up the good work.

I love this channel. Always something interesting and I love seeing the scientific process in action. 👌🏼

aircraft are known to just oscillate without the computerized reduction that most aircraft have, it's called phugoid oscillation, and it can be amplified by the stabilization software since the oscillation will feed back into the input

Dude! Another awesome video! A++ all the way around. Content, editing, narrative. You’re nailing bro! Thanks for inspiring my inner engineer to play. RC, micro controllers, 3D design & printing. PID. Checking all my favorite boxes. Love it! 👍

This is fascinating, I believe that the efficiency gains of ground effect can influence the stability quite a bit which could be the cause of the oscillation, just my two pence.

I fly a powered glider similar to his plane. I was surprised when he said he didn’t feel(?) the ground effect of the plane before he modified it. Well you can see the ground effect. The plane just won’t stop it keeps going and going flying along a few feet off the ground with out power. That can be a problem for new pilots trying to land. Here’s it comes great glide slop, almost down but it just floats right on by you slow and happy.