V chip accelerometer

I guess the only way we will ever put this to rest to Prove without a shadow of a doubt how well a airplane fly's is with the V chip accelerometer. Taking the human (BUDDY, PAL or FRIEND ) out of the equation . The V chip would record a 10 min. flight in a hemispherical pattern. Be down loaded to a lap top and scored accordingly. To what ever parameters that were agreed upon. (pattern).

That's when the performance of a aircraft would be determined. Not because of the way the plane presents it's self. So If a toilet seat had a motor on it and it flew with in the guidelines you WIN!!! LOL

But I wonder how many people have the guts to do that? I'm ready and willing to pay the money for it.

Sparky,

Send any and all contributions to Preston Briggs. He's already building a data logger.

However, it is for data and analysis of same. Not intended to "prove" anything seen by our judges. And I really doubt, for example, that it will "prove" the 40VF and 46VF are "too heavy" for a PA application.

My man, get a grip!!

I have a grip and some class to boot. The chip is already avilable in the motorcycle industry. Also It wasn't my intention to say a VF or for that mater any other engine was or wasn't better than the other. It was power to weight.

Sparky,

It's a long way from an accelerometer to useful position data. Analog Devices makes a small, low cost accelerometer (ADXL series), which finds application in lots of places, including air bag triggers for cars. There are 1- and 2-axis versions, and they can be calibrated to a useful range. You can even purchase a small "one-inch cube" with two of them already packaged to provide a 3-axis accelerometer. Combine that with a cute modern programmable data acquisition system (the little PIC controllers seem very attractive), and you could create a system to gather some interesting force data. (BTW, we've been discussing this for years, as well as gathering engine RPM data, and other parameters.)

With such a system, you could definitely answer an argument about a 5' corner, anything you can infer from force measurement. Interesting stuff.

However.

That is a "fur piece" from any sort of usable tracking system. You are not the first one to fantasize about such a capability..

I've heard folks suggest that a GPS receiver would be workable, but I think the practical resolution (~ 1 meter, worse in altitude), would be too coarse.

The notion of some sort of "inertial" tracking system (say, using the accelerometer outputs, and integrating their data to velocity, and integrating that to provide position <relative to a start location>). Sounds good, but if you research inertial guidance systems a little you'll see that it simply is not practical. Noise and vibrations just integrate away and muddy up the data, and the precision of the sensors needs to be fantastic, with a large amount of data, and a great deal of precision calculations. Forget that.

Well, how about the video tracker idea. I'm quite familiar with such systems, as they have been used on the missile range for decades, to do precision tracking. They are rather "heavy duty" type systems, of course! Dozens of them are located at very well surveyed points, and they are surrounded by azimuth calibration points (on telephone poles) around their perimeter. They use very high quality, high speed cameras, looking through very high quality telescopes, called "cinetheodolites". The tracking mounts have precision "dials" which continuously register azimuth and elevation pointing. The dial readings are recorded with each frame of film.

Film, eh? Many folks wonder why they haven't "graduated" to modern video cameras. There are good answers - first, the bandwidth of film is difficult to match (at least with quality commercial video), and second, the 25/30 Hz "TV" frame rate for video isn't fast enough. Although effective frame rate is doubled at 50/60 Hz (which eliminates "blink" effects to human eyes), a whole 33 milliseconds passes between frame samples. A high speed object like a missile can travel quite a distance between frames! (Remember, during the Gulf War, when Patriot missiles were shooting down Scuds, and TV cameras were viewing it? People insisted they could SEE direct hits, but no one could seemingly convey the 30 Hz frame rate problem..) Tracking cameras can have very high frame rates for this reason.

Yes, White Sands Missile Range just received an allocation to update tracking systems to video. However, you can bet that this involves some very special and high quality video cameras!

OK, back to tracking by triangulation with "cines". Let's say we take our Sonys out on tripods and set up to track. Assume that the logistics have been solved, you can in fact position your cameras very precisely. And you have excellent human operators to point them for tracking. What else is needed?

Well, first, you need MORE than two cameras. Two cameras may theoretically yield a triangulation solution, but when they point directly toward each other, the "simple mathematics" accuracy fades. Three, preferrably more cameras are needed. The more the better.

OK, assume you DID use three, what else is needed? Well, first you need an accurate time base, and all three cameras synchronized to it! By accurate, I mean 1 millisecond (actually, that is not too accurate, but would be workable). And yes, frame rates in modern video cameras are extremely stable and accurate - however, they aren't synchronized to other cameras!

You also need some method of continuously monitoring camera azimuth and elevation angles. One might argue that you simply retrofit something like shaft encoders to each axis on your tripod mount, and have a synchronized single data acquisition system, which acquires pointing data from all cameras using a single timing source. THAT is doable, let's assume you solved that.

Now, what I haven't mentioned is the additional (necessary) refinement of tracking data. Even with the best operators, perhaps filming a very visible X marking on the ship, you will have what is called "boresight" error. That is, your tracker won't be able to maintain the image in the precise center of the screen (even if you gave him cross hairs).. So that needs to be corrected.

How that is done for range tracking is to project the film image on a very precise screen (the image is perhaps 1 meter wide), in front of a human operator who moves crosshairs to the target (that "X", say) and it measures and records the boresight error. On each FRAME.

One other thing - you probably want two (or more) X's on the stunt ship - so you can track its angular orientation as well.

The machines used to acquire boresight readings for range tracking are very expensive, with super quality optics, made my companies with names like Contraves.. In some cases, raw angular readings have been encrypted into recorded optical grid data and other schemes, and various computer graphics methods are employed (say to track a missile plume). However, humans are typically STILL involved in much of this work.

OK, suppose you now have your azimuth, elevation, time, boresight, and perhaps angular readings - time to compute! (You also have very precise position data for the tracking mounts - er.. tripods!). Yes, the solution is a simple matter of triangulation!

Here's another example of something which is quite possible (in fact the government has been doing it since the late 40s in some form), yet it is not necessarily that practical for a limited "commercial" use today.

Oh, I don't dispute that wonderful (even real-time) graphics software can be written, no doubt even exists, which can take over the boresight reading task. But I submit that it isn't "commercially feasible", at least not at this time.

I have belabored this discussion with such details because I'd like to make a point about "technology" - it has to be practical. What is practical for White Sands Missile Range is likely to be impractical to people trying to track control line model airplanes.

Yes, there are multiple paradigms for excoriating felines. (I didn't mention trying to measure altitude with electrostatic sensors, that's another subject. I also left out laser ranging.) But how practical?

There's a wonderful naivete nowadays about technology - a belief that almost anything is possible, and therefore commercially practicable! (For one thing, a MARKET needs to exist, just ask The Daniel!)

Heck, we see it in the movies, right? The real thing can only be a few years down the road! Not really, folks. Not really. As my work mate frequently said: Don't hold your breath!

I certainly don't mean to throw cold water on anyone's innovative and clever ideas. I'm glad they are thinking about such things. But, as a practicing engineer for the last 34 years, I feel I have developed just a tad of insight into what it takes to actually do something! I've seen so many "piece of cake" solutions go by the wayside when realities of implementation were revealed! I suspect that Mr. Buck and others might say something similar, but I'll let them express themselves.

Just remember that the world has not been operating in some void where folks haven't been thinking about these problems and solutions for a long, long time.

Finally, I'd like to encourage folks to get on Google and look for things relative to such interests. A wealth of information (and disinformation) is there, mostly for FREE. Educate yourself, learn all that you possibly can, start from THERE, instead of ground zero on your ideas.

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"Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent." -Laurence J. Peter

I see common features in your recent posts, Robert.

1) They tend toward subjects which have been discussed (here, SN, and other places) in considerable detail in the past (and have often been beaten to death),

2) They involve overly simplistic notions about CL stunters, and lack serious or detailed technical thought,

3) They invoke a wide range of responses, from simple patience and information to mild irritation.

At the same time, they serve to stir up interest, and no doubt many lurkers have questions on similar/related subjects, and find them instructive.

I do recommend that you to use the forum's search feature and find out what has already been said on these subjects.

Meanwhile, I'll steer you to an interesting, unrelated site that came to my mind after reading the current post: http://www.josephnewman.com/.

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"Never raise your hand to your children; it leaves your midsection unprotected." -Robert Orben

> I guess the only way we will ever put this to rest to Prove
>without a shadow of a doubt how well a airplane fly's is
>with the V chip accelerometer. Taking the human (BUDDY,
>PAL or FRIEND ) out of the equation . The V chip would
>record a 10 min. flight in a hemispherical pattern. Be down
>loaded to a lap top and scored accordingly. To what ever
>parameters that were agreed upon. (pattern).
>
>That's when the performance of a aircraft would be
>determined. Not because of the way the plane presents it's
>self. So If a toilet seat had a motor on it and it flew with
>in the guidelines you WIN!!! LOL

I think you would find it to be too inaccurate and too prone to alignment and scale factor errors over the course of the flight to get the required accuracy. Of course, you need gyros as well, since the acceleration data would be in the body frame, and you would need attitude information as well to reproduce the trajectory of the airplane. I would guess that you need a maximum error in position of about 3" over the 8 minutes.

I'd be quite happy to see the data, if for nothing else, for experimental purposes. Whether anyone would ever buy it for deciding contests is another matter, but until the capability is demonstrated, it's not an option.

>
> But I wonder how many people have the guts to do that? I'm
>ready and willing to pay the money for it.

Well, by all means, proceed. Package it and sell it - if the performance is adequate, and the price is right, I'll buy one.

Now we are getting down to more interesting stuff! Keep going Sparky. I've been trying to figure out a simple tracking system fo years, and I think that there will always be a lot of resistance to the concept. It would have been fun to have a couple of planes at the last world champs fitted with trackers, to try and figure what the judges were actually looking for. I guess that Billy figured it out in the end! All I know is that is that they were not looking for a flight according to the rules. If you don't believe me, ask anyone that videotaped with a tripod behind the judges, and then have a good look.

Brett is right though, the problem is not that simple. The accuracy required to record the pattern is rather high, otherwise it will have little value. Although, having said that, it would still show whether or not the tops of the maneuvers are higher that 45° or not. This would be a valuable aid to training judges, so keep going!

LAST EDITED ON Jul-29-04 AT 00:25 AM (CDT)
 
We could do away with judges. All someone would have to do is read the print out??

LAST EDITED ON Jul-29-04 AT 00:51 AM (CDT)
 
Brett,Greg and Dan,

I think a leveling program for the scoring and a revised K-factor type schedule used in full scale aerobatic competitions would be much more realistic and readily attainable. Baron suggested it years ago but it went nowhere.

The g meters would be worthwhile for engineering purposes though. Bob could see how little wood and glue he could use in his scud missles.

When I got tired of subjective judging events I went racing. When I got tired of bad contest commitee calls, I came back to subjectively judged events. Maybe Bob could go racing if he doesn't like judges.

LAST EDITED ON Jul-29-04 AT 05:51 AM (CDT)
 
Well Chris You have now made 3 personal remarks to me. If you don't like the subject material whats the beef? K factor I'm more concerned about the BS factor.

Copyed from thread above. "I think that there will always be a lot of resistance to the concept. It would have been fun to have a couple of planes at the last world champs fitted with trackers, to try and figure what the judges were actually looking for. I guess that Billy figured it out in the end! All I know is that is that they were not looking for a flight according to the rules. If you don't believe me, ask anyone that videotaped with a tripod behind the judges, and then have a good look."

In a previous discussion of figuring out what airplanes are doing in corners, Dr. Briggs proposed using quaternions. Have you considered getting you some quaternions to do this tracking? They seem well suited to the job, and they aren't that expensive.

LAST EDITED ON Jul-29-04 AT 12:36 PM (CDT)
 
>Brett,Greg and Dan,
>
>I think a leveling program for the scoring and a revised
>K-factor type schedule used in full scale aerobatic
>competitions would be much more realistic and readily
>attainable. Baron suggested it years ago but it went
>nowhere.

Well, that's a different subject - but it went nowhere because it didn't really work properly. A subjective event is *subjective* - there's nothing at all you can do with post-processing to find "anomalous" scores. Parts of it are OK - normalizing the scores, then throwing out high and low on each pilot is marginally better than throwing out high and low without normalizing. But you have to wait till the end of the round to post scores. And, when people applied some of the ideas to actual contest data (ex post facto, of course) it didn't make a significant difference in the results in any case it was applied.

There is no magic formula to be applied to take out subjectivity, or any real way to determine and eliminate "bias", intentional or otherwise. Of course, Bob's premise was that intentional bias was rampant in the event, which as far as I can tell is utter nonsense.

The ability to grab the trajectory, as Sparky suggests, even it were perfect, is only part of the issue. To use the data, you would have to write a program to analyze the results. Inherent in this program would be a "weighting" for each type of error - which are certainly a matter of opinion. For instance, do you weight size errors 75%, position/bottom errors 20% and shape errors 5%. What you you do really tight corners and really consistent shapes? Maybe you want the shape errors weighted higher.

So the arguments would switch from which judges are biased, to what the weighting factors should be. But we'd still be arguing.

Brett,
Interesting point about the normalizing not amounting to much of a change. Time has also made me forget Bob's main complaint of the international judging issue.

It is a bit of time before the scores come out. Often times guys are hanging around at the board with weary eyes waiting for the tabulator.

>Interesting point about the normalizing not amounting to
>much of a change. Time has also made me forget Bob's main
>complaint of the international judging issue.

Well, if you think about it from a theorectical standpoint. as long as the judges go up and down similarly from flight to flight, it doesn't really matter if one of them averages a 570, another 470, and the rest 520. Take out the high and low, and you still get the same *rank* of the fliers. The fact that in practice, it hardly makes any difference, implies that the primary effect is of just a "high judge" and "low judge" and not of bias.

He had some fairly good ideas about changes to the scoring process for FAI, but changing the FAI rules is not a matter of having better ideas and presenting them - note the "Return of the K factor", and the W/C format fiasco. It'll be a long time before I get up any hope about FAI cleaning up their act.

>It is a bit of time before the scores come out. Often times
>guys are hanging around at the board with weary eyes waiting
>for the tabulator.

You should have seen this years NATs. With 120+ on Advanced and Expert, and 4 judges per circle, the ladies were strained to the limit, and at times there were some pretty impressive waits for scores. Given that most of us were concerned about even making the Top 20, that made for some pretty tense hours.

LAST EDITED ON Jul-30-04 AT 11:28 AM (CDT)
 
Aw, forget it.

I never saw what you wrote Ted, it must have been good.
Chris...

LAST EDITED ON Jul-30-04 AT 06:07 PM (CDT)
 
>I never saw what you wrote Ted, it must have been good.
>Chris...

Oh, yeah, I suppose it was but...

Life is too short to waste any on alley cats pretending to be King of the Jungle.

How's that big white PM? Wouldn't like to trade it for a set of used golf clubs would you? I'm about a gallon low on airplanes!
Ted

If you really want to track the airplane, we need a video imaging software whiz to write the programming. Two video cameras, set at 90 deg. to each other around the circle would do the trick. If you want even better accuracy, mount a third one up 45 ft. on a pole.

the gotcha is proper software to analyze each frame from the cameras, and locate the plane. Once you have that calculating the plane position is simple trigonometry.

Biggest problem will probably be getting a consistent picture of the plane. Even the flashiest paint jobs tend to disappear a lot against the background on video.

LAST EDITED ON Jul-29-04 AT 10:05 AM (CDT)
 
You know I have never jumped into any of these heated debates. One because you always have people on both sides of the fence throwing rocks. I am not going to sit on the fence, (might get hit with a rock) nor get on one side or the other. I am just going to stand far off and make a few observations and think out loud.

Me thinking out loud…..
OK so you take the human element out of the equation. Now you have the type of plane, color of the plane, weather, and the person at the controls to deal with.
Someone will complain that it is not be fair because of the type of plane. OK lets give everyone the same model plane.
Now someone will complain that the colors play a role in how someone wins.
So paint all the planes the same color.
OK someone will still complain that the person on the controls is taller and has an advantage. So everyone has to be a certain height to fly. If your too short or too tall you will have to stand in a hole or on a bucket.
Now what to do if it is windy one day and not windy the next day.
Throw out all the flights that had to fly on the windy day and let those guys have a “do over”.
I did not know very many people at the Nats, but everyone I bumped into was very kind. I could not ask to be around a nicer bunch of folk.
I did see a group of hard working people standing out in the hot sun. ( a few of them sun burned) doing a job that I would have not wanted.
Most of the pilots when they got done thanked the judges. That showed good showmanship.
Bottom line is there will always be some type of element when you have any type of contest. And one element of a contest is Showmanship and being a good sport.

Just me thinking out loud.

Paul

Bottom line, what we do is as much Art as it is Science. Oh true, the aerodynamics play a big role, but as stated and restated before, a 5 foot corner don't make any difference if it doesn't look good. If you paint your aircraft in a manner that makes it hard to look at, say Pink for instance, you could lose points just because the 'Big Picture' has been ruined.

But if you feel a need for another gizmo to tell you that you are flying better, or the engine you have is too big or too powerful, well go right ahead and hopefully for you someone will buy it. I already have a gizmo on my billfold that will prevent me from buying one, it's actually close to a self-limiting govenor. You can't take out what you don't put in.

Other than that, this is the last thread on this subject by you that I will read.

Stunt judging is and always has been subjective and that's the way I like it. There are variations in judging/scoring not only from man to man, but geographic area to geographic area. I might score high in Michigan and only mediocre in Tennesee flying the same model under the same conditions. I like the human element in judging, its another issue to adjust to and fly against. If all human failing could be removed from judging I think it would get pretty boring pretty fast. If all human failings could be removed from a pattern (the perfect pattern) I think we would all be surprized at how odd the shapes looked. If you consider the radius of flight as level vs at 45 degrees its plain that using the cadence method we all seem to use does not creat a "square" loop. The horizontal legs of the loop are different lengths, the top one being shorter then the bottom, the difference is even more pronounced in the square 8.

Nah, I wouldn't want to have my flights judged purely on a mathmatical basis with no human interpretation, contending with the variables is what makes it interesting.

Do I dare disclose to the WORLD my own thinking on this and other subjects? (Yes, I have patents, but not on these ideas.. do I need them? Based on my experience with my existing patents, I don't think so!).

Now, here's my solution, which has evolved from old, old ideas of several years ago. Feel free to "poo poo" it away!

Video cameras - well, they sure have come a long way. Tiny, inexpensive, very capable. Pin-hole cameras already exist that work extremely well.

Serial communications - well developed. There are some very nice, inexpensive, practical ways to string arrays of things together, involving only a couple of wires. And there are very practical WIRELESS networks.

Nano-engineering! (I already hate that term, I'm just using it to irritate myself and other people.) Anyway, suppose you are able to manufacture large numbers of items (thousands at a time) with very precise control (like you might use for a silicon chip). And suppose further that you use a cute little "modular" communications architecture to connect them together, in an ARRAY. As an example, consider some type of SENSOR - say a tiny pinhole video camera. Suppose you could imbed hundreds or even thousands of these little guys into a flexible (rubber) "strip", one that you could mount in a ceiling corner.

Fine, you have hundreds of tiny video cameras strung together in a strip, connected by some serial network. Surveillance! Instead of one or a few conventional cameras with lenses and zooms and pan/tilts, you have hundreds of fixed cameras that you can switch between. The cameras don't move now.

While I physically connect the string of cameras in the array with a serial network, I collect/control their data "locally" and I link this controller to a computer(s) with a (bidirectional) wireless link. Cool idea for a surveillance product, perhaps? I disclosed this idea to a brilliant young student from Mexico City several years ago - he was headed to MIT then - and I expect him to hire me someday as an Old Technical Fart for payback.

Anyway, I'll just say here that particular idea is still not even half-baked, maybe a quarter-baked, or an eighth-baked.

But this idea of "bringing the mountain to Mohammed" (poor analogy, I guess - I mean NOT moving the camera, just having lots of cameras and selecting which one is being viewed) is pretty practicable nowadays. In fact, we've all seen that special effect in movies and commercials, where an image is "frozen" in time and we "walk around" it, viewing it in essentially "3D"?). That's done with a whole bunch of video cameras, in a string, arranged in some way, electronically controlled.

Get the picture?

Of course, if you see the movie rigs, these aren't pinhole cameras, there are dozens, not hundreds or thousands in the string, etc.

Now, hold that idea, of SCANNING the viewpoint by sequential selection of multiple camera images. Ah, the TRACKER idea starts to emerge!

Let's say I really CAN just make up flexible strips with thousands (well, at least hundreds..) of cameras, all very precisely space in horizontal rows. Say, for argument, 3 rows. The bottom row is positioned to a level, horizontal view (0 degrees). The middle row is cocked up just a bit, so it is looking up at say a 30 degree angle. The top row is looking up higher still, say a 60 degrees elevation. I now have a whole bunch of cameras - what TRIANGULATION possibilities!

Further, I can optically restrict field of view to a narrow one, perhaps only a few degrees, and still have COVERAGE of a large area.

Now, only one remaining thing to do - COIL this flexible strip in a perfect circle around our CL stunt circle! All the hardware pieces are there now. You can incorporate either some sequential or "random access" scanning technique, all under control of the Digital Demon (tm). All that remains is to compute our butts off. Tie the tracking task in to this approach.

(Yes, I know you all want to see everything in real time, on a large 56" wide screen plasma monitor!)

All that remains, of course, is what we hardware design engineers refer to as a SMOP. A Small Matter Of Programming!

Poo poo away, now, I'll sit back and grin. (I can personally think of dozens of obstacles to doing this, but let's pretend, OK?) I just want you to remember, years from now, when I'm out in the Old Engineer's home, muttering something about not being allowed a cigar, and the sun in my eyes, lifting the nurse's skirt with my cane..

Remember that Ole Cunningham was talking about that idea, way back in '04..

There ya go! Git-R-Done!

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"It is after you have lost your teeth that you can afford to buy steaks." -Pierre August Renoir

Think I'll just try practicing. I don't have time or money for another hobby. But I'll remember what you said, if you can get it down to 25 words or less, I'm not very sofisticated.

Very Good Larry!

LAST EDITED ON Jul-29-04 AT 11:51 PM (CDT)
 
'Parky,

I was only joking around.. (Sometimes I just LIE. Terrible, I can't help myself.)

Made you look!

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"If you were going to shoot a mime, would you use a silencer?" -Steven Wright

Remember my idea for throttling up and throttling down an engine using the doppler shift from a beacon planted in the downwind side of the circle? (This allows the plane to "brake" on the downwind leg and "power" into the upwind leg, while preserving the "braking" on downlines and "powering up" into uplines, unlike piped setups, which behave as you want them to going up and down, but not when going up and downwind.) Sort of a "private GPS".

Anyhow.. Mount the beacon on the airplane, place two or more receivers somewhere in the circle, and from the doppler shifts, a computer can probably reconstruct the flight.. Private GPS in reverse!

LAST EDITED ON Jul-30-04 AT 06:40 AM (CDT)
 
Isky, I remember. I also remember I suggested much simpler, maybe too trivial and not so perfect solution with centrifugal pendulum on spring. I did it, I tested it, but I did not like it. I think it is not what we need. I do not think that absolute constant speed to the ground is what we want and neither is constant speed to the air. I think something between is taht magic sweet point. At least I like little acceleration downhill (I mean the model, not the engine) I would tend to agree with constant prop rpm. ... I will tell you when I will finish my electro stunter ... FAI will allow regulation so I will have constant rpm power train.

BUT ... R/C guys uses those piezoelectric accelerometers. They intergarate the value and they have angluar speed used for negative feedback to servo. But now they have double integration and they have absolute angular direction. It works well, drift is small for time of one flight, so having such signal from 3 axes is enought to figure out position on hemisphere in real time, it is not difficult to do it without interaction from outside. But tell me, what now??? I am missing point what is it for???

I don't remember the pendulum. How was it set up again? How does it sense the up and downwind sides of the circle?

I suppose if you don't want absolute constant speed, you could always tone down the "gain" for the throttle, so that the plane decelerates going up a little bit and speeds up a little coming down, as well as slowing down a little going upwind.

The main reason I proposed this was because the usual piped setup works against you in horizontal flight in the wind (especially in a strong wind), as it causes the plane to slow down going upwind (there's less load on the prop so it makes the engine think it's going downhill and the engine will, if set up to do so, four cycle) when you really want it to put out more power going upwind.

It is trivial accelerometer in span-wise direction with fedback to the throttle. It means it keeps constant speed to the ground upwind and downwind giving little extra power overhead (because of gravity). It works well and I stopped to use it when FAI disallowed engine throttling. It is nice in calm, but if you imagine what is happening in wind before maneuver, after flight down the wind with throttled down, you enter the maneuver with closed carb and it is not the best way to do it. It is because you not need "proper speed" you need also thrust, does not matter what the speed is. You just cannot do good corner with relatively heavy modern model without enought prop thrust.

Ah OK, I remember this now. Hmm.. Yeah, that would work at keeping angular speeds the same. How does it work in the verticals, though?

You don't even need a transmitter. Nowadays it is possible to do a "passive" radar tracking, just using the RF energy already all around us..

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"A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist." -Louis Nizer

I think that's how flies work.

I am sorry to be so blunt but I think this type of thing is dumb.

That's my opinion and I can have that if I want.

On another note. Say you actually get this dumb thing to work.(by the way the reverse GPS sounds like the most feasable and cool and simple way to do it) Are you going to incoporate it at the Nats to figure the winner? You just told every possible competitor if they really want a shot at placing high or winning you are going to have to purchase a V Chip thingie and have a PC at your field to analyze data between flights. (my feild has no electrcity) Not only are you going to have to have your propgram analyze data and spit out a score it is going to have to tell you where you did bad and where you did good so you will know how to pracrice. The days of O'Toole telling you "Hey Doug your triangles stink. Hit the entry corner better."(by the way he helped to get killer triangles in about 3 flights at the 99 Nats I still use what he said today, Thanks Ronnie) are gone. This removes the entire impression out of the event. Pilots can make good impressions and bad impressions. It is part of the game, a big part.

Talk about ruining the event! Removing BOM doesnt hold a candle to something like this. It is so far off that you dont hear people really coming on here and trying to kill the idea. But if it really gets going you will and I will be on board with them.

I know Ted, Brett, myself and some of the others who really respect the pattern and the artwork and skill needed to fly a good well presented pattern wont stand for something that would remove THAT PART of it all together. At least I dont think they would.

Also I know if it gets close to happening there are those who want to keep this a hobby and adding in electronics will make some on this board go to screaming. Leonard wont like any added costs and I know many who wont want that to happen.

It would probably take a rule change of some sort to get this into action at the Nats. Rule changes dont come easy so something like this is not really a feasable idea.

Like I said I think it is dumb.

I don't think you'll have to worry about it in the immediate future.

LAST EDITED ON Jul-31-04 AT 00:12 AM (CDT)
 
I agree, Doug, it is dumb. And my fickle attempts at humor about it are admittedly quite dumb. I apologize for my lame posts on this and similar subjects.

In all honestly I see no practical tracking systems at all in the future, near or far, for CL stunt competition use. Nor are any needed.

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"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." -Shakespeare (Hamlet Act I Scene V)

Most of us who suggest things like this (including me and my "reverse GPS") are doing it with tongue planted firmly in cheek. I don't think Sparky is, though.