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Altis V4 at Bartletts on Sunday


Jef Ott

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Hi Guys

I am entered for an F5J comp on Sunday at Bartletts Farm and have two Altis V4 logger / timers and I have no idea how to set them.

Will anyone be there that knows how to use them and set them up, and more importantly, if they are suitable for F5J?

I will bring my RC Altimeter #2s as well, but it seems easier to use the Altis as they have a screen.

Many thanks,

Jef

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PeteMitchell
2 hours ago, Jef said:



Will anyone be there that knows how to use them and set them up, and more importantly, if they are suitable for F5J?

 

Yes and Yes.

I have been setting these up for various competitors at every comp we have run.

You do not need the FAI firmware, but you do need to make sure you have the latest 'normal' firmware and as Steve has said it is easy to download and install.

Set it up exactly the same as for our new Bartletts rules,  (picture on the last page) but set the height cut off at 300mtrs.

If you fail to set up correctly, I will be able to do it for you on Sunday, but what with everything else going on at the same time I would prefer not to do it then. I am hoping to go to the field tomorrow and could do it then for you.

 

 

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I will bring my tablet along with the program on it to set it up. If you set it for the F5j set up which is easy to do, you will not get a motor re start, not a good idea at Bartletts

Brian

Barcs 230

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OK Lads,

I have had a steep learning curve in Altis V4 operation, one facet of which was losing the score from a flight due to the device not recording anything.

For UK F5J comps, where a flight has begun, a restart should remove the Launch Altitude that has been recorded.

To achieve that there are many ways you can do it, but the easy way in my opinion, is to simply plug it into a computer, running the Altis Flight Manager software, go to "Tools" then select "Device" and "Format" the device to clear out anything that anyone has previously done.

Do not be afraid of formatting the device, it only takes a second. 

You do not need to do anything else on this page, other than click "Next".

Select F5J in the competition type, on the second screen in the device (you can ignore the first screen). Then once the F5J settings have taken, click (in the 'Safety Training' field) the "Emergency Motor On" option.

Hit "Next". Look under the big F5J screen showing number "127.1" and select "Number".

Before hitting Next again, in the "Settings Screen Duration" put in a value between 4 and 9 (this is seconds).

This will give you time to read the device settings when you power up the device. 

Now when you use the device in anger, it will start to display the F5J launch height ten seconds after the motor cuts. It will retain this info forever, regardless of whether you switch the power off, but the display will clear if you restart the motor.

Simples! 

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PeteMitchell

When you set up via the 'Competition type F5J' you will note that this changes to the default 'Competition User define' when you tick the 'Emergency Motor on' and/or 'Automatic competition restart' boxes.

 

You must also tick the 'Altitude Switch' box which then enables you to set an altitude cut off.

 

It is required that an altitude of 300mtrs is set for BMFA-F5J comps.

Or  up to 200mtrs for other comps.

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thermaldoctor

Why can't the UK stick with the FAI ruling of no motor re-starts which is what happens in eurotours and what will happen in the 2019 WC? It seems to have already caused an upset and accusations of cheating.Just curious...

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Why do you say it is required to have an altitude set for F5J Pete?

I thought that it was up to the pilot whether to set for 300m (or presumably above), or not to have an altitude set at all.  

@thermaldoctor we use a restart option so that we do not land out in awkward situations - ie solar farms etc. and risk losing the use of yet another flying site.

 

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As somebody who doesn't do competitions (the only person that I compete with is myself), I am a bit confused by competitors reformatting and reconfiguring their run time limiters between flights. Shouldn't the settings of these things be checked prior to the contest and only changed subsequently under supervision? And shouldn't the logs be kept until the contest is over so that they can be made available to the CD on demand?

Steve 

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Nobody was suggesting that the logger should be formatted during a competition Steve J. 

My previous reply was to help anyone set up their Altis V4 so that they can enter a competition, information that I needed well before the comp on Sunday, which was not readily available.

 

 

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PeteMitchell
1 hour ago, Jef said:

Why do you say it is required to have an altitude set for F5J Pete?

I thought that it was up to the pilot whether to set for 300m (or presumably above), or not to have an altitude set at all.  

 

 

I am not privée to the decisions of the SFTC, but it seemed fairly obvious to me that for safety sake if nothing else, a limit to the altitude the model could go to under power should be set. I have never questioned the actual reasoning because it makes no diference to how the comp is flown and scored. But in this age of possible restrictions being imposed, especially on height, it makes sense to me to be that we be seen to be taking responsibility to have a sensible limit.

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PeteMitchell
1 hour ago, thermaldoctor said:

Why can't the UK stick with the FAI ruling of no motor re-starts which is what happens in eurotours and what will happen in the 2019 WC? It seems to have already caused an upset and accusations of cheating.Just curious...

We are not alone in using motor restart in 'local' competitions. It is used in many other countries, and not just Europe, where 'local' conditions require it for safety reasons. And lets not be shy about it, most of us would sooner save a model and loose a comp flight if it comes to it. 

This changes when eurotour type comps are concerned, or where we have a flying site where landing out is not a problem. Then full FAI rules are used.

This is really a good question that would stand alone in the forum rather than hiding here in the RC section so why not start another thread where it could get more attention.:yes:

 

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"But in this age of possible restrictions being imposed, especially on height, it makes sense to me to be that we be seen to be taking responsibility to have a sensible limit."

That is a fair point.

There are people that simply don't know how high their models are, so it is possible that a powerful model, launching in very, very good air, could exceed 10m/s climb for the full 30 seconds.  

 

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Bit of a strange debate in safety terms as all non-electric soaring doesn't have the option to power out of "difficult situations". You just have to fly according to the fact that you might land out. 

I've launched over 300m in f3b, which is higher than 30s at 10ms, and gone higher from there. Perfectly legally. I'm not sure what the problem is. You can easily go over 300m in a lifty/good slot in f3j/f3b/f5j etc. 300m isn't that high for 4m models. 

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PeteMitchell

Gliders OK, I hope no body tries to limit them. But here we are talking about a model under power, and you know that some want to impose a 400ft max height on powered models.

Why give them any reason to apply it to us?

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> But in this age of possible restrictions being imposed, especially on height, it makes sense to
> me to be that we be seen to be taking responsibility to have a sensible limit.

Yep, we're sure to be seeing more routine use of barometric sensors and logging.

Related to this, I've been playing with a FrSky hi-res barometric sensor, and now have a variant of my E-Soar setup with an integrated timer/height limiter and flight timer implemented via a bunch of logical switches. The idea was to create an OpenTx based emulation of a dedicated hardware unit, for practice/sport flying.

Features

  • Time and height limited motor-cutoff
  • Switch-selectable height limits (default 50/75/100 meters but easily altered)
  • Limiter can be reset in flight (quick pull on SH)
  • Flight timer. Starts on first use of throttle after a reset. Stops when motor is disarmed on landing (long pull on SH).
  • Limiter is tightly integrated with E-Soar's motor arming system.
  • Voice alerts

Apart from cost, the benefits of doing this via OpenTx and telemetry are voice alerts and the ability to customise. It's gone through a number of interations following flight testing on my Cularis, and is now working well. The idea is to publish it soon, meantime any ideas gratefully received!

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38 minutes ago, Jef said:

Really? Wow! Do you still have the altimeter trace?

Sorry Jef I had a look on my old taranis but there are no log files. But high 200s is the norm for launches in duration and obviously you can go quite high if the thermals are about.  In f3j they can launch over 200m.

Just seems weird to me given that flights are going to go over 300m when soaring with large models whatever the launch height.  300m is way more than the much touted 400ft any way. 

Restarting the motor is okay if people want to save models, but I disagree with calling it a necessary safety precaution.

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