High power antennas
Cell towers shown behind fire house
For the Red Eagle we came up with a solution to put on two GPS antennas. The second GPS antenna would serve as a redundant antenna in case one lost reception due to the high power antennas. Test were always performed with the two GPS antennas active. We did have one crash of the Red Eagle but this was due to one of the GPS antennas coming lose. The reason the second GPS antenna did not take over was because the first antenna still had reception. One of the two GPS antennas has to lose reception in order for the other to take over. Out of the ten flights this was the only crash Red Eagle had. The test flights on this day were impressive though due too the weather conditions. Winds were a brisk 20 to 25 mph with gust as high as 40 mph. We showed the Red Eagle could handle the winds well. This gave confidence in the Carova Beach fire department that our quadcopter could be used during rescue missions in bad weather conditions.
High winds on test day for Red Eagle
The DJI Phantom 2 was tested using its stock setup except we had the ability to record what was going on. The fire department has had past problems of the Phantom 2 of crashing at this site. Since past flights did not have a way to record flight data so if something went wrong it was a guessing game as to what actually happened. So with the added a data recorder and hoped for a crash.
Carova Fire Department Phantom 2
Crashed DJI Phantom 2
Within twenty minutes of flight we got the crash we were looking for. Since we were recording the flight data from this crash we determined the problem was not with the cell phone tower but this DJI Phantom had an electronic speed controller that was intermittently malfunctioning. From the data we can see the Phantom is trying to level its self but it can’t because one of the motors is not getting power.
This is vary good news for the Carova fire department though. This means they can safely keep flying in front of there fire station and reduce response times. With our results showing the real problem in the hardware is the true problem this can be easily fixed. We hope to get this DJI phantom rebuilt with new electronic speed controllers which is the hardware component that failed and fly in the same location to confirm our findings.
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