Saturday, April 9, 2016

Flight Session 44 - Casual Flying

Dropped by the nice large middle-school field to do some flying. Multiple playing fields where already in use. A little too busy for my tastes, so went to smaller Rec-Center field instead.

79F and Overcast skies - Was still getting SATs 10-14 and HDOP 1.6-1.3 (after a short minute or so) even with the heavily cloudy skies.

Winds 15mph - A little windy, but if I wait for sunny day with lite winds (optimal flying conditions) I might be waiting forever. Quads flew fine and it was good (challenging) practice for me. I could tell quads were applying more effort, fighting to hold a Loiter. On Alt-Hold, quads tended to drift a bit more (so I had to compensate).

I haven't flown at this field in a while. On initially loading Tower (DroidPlanner-3) the terrain maps were completely blank. I used the WiFi HotSpot feature on my iPhone to download the latest terrain maps (it only took a minute or so).

I flew both Novas ... emptied 3 batteries. Tested all Flight Modes.  Flying low and fast in Alt-Hold is my favorite. Also, set to Loiter at 15meters and flew pretty far away ... down heavily-treed green-belt (really just using Tower's display-screen for actual location and directional orientation). Practiced manual landings in Stabilize, but also Land-Mode and RTL. Retracts are turning out to be much cooler than I originally thought they would be.

Several groups of neighbors stopped to watch. One boy liked the show and as I landed, yelled "That was awesome" before running off to join his friend.

Good session and nice to get in some flights.