A Typical Flight

The whole sortie in one page — read this first to build the mental model, then fly with the checklists. Chapter links give the full procedures.

1 · Arrive & assess. Check the weather against the limitations: anemometer out, 30-second sustained wind reading, no precipitation, temperatures in band. Confirm airspace and your authorisations. Pick the pad: ≥ 2 m × 2 m, firm, clear climb-out, aligned with the outbound bearing — the aircraft should take off already pointing where it will fly.

2 · Assemble & inspect. Assemble from the transport tube (Part B procedure — wing spar, wings, GPS/mag cables before the wings slide home, R-clips, payload nose cone). Inspect unpowered: cracks against the 3 / 15 / 50 mm ladder, propeller perfect or replaced, witness marks intact. Balance check: CG between the arrow tips. Fiducials aligned.

3 · Set up the GCS. Laptop awake-locked and sounding, telemetry radio up, antenna vertical with line of sight, QGC telemetry logging on, RC transmitter charged and on.

4 · Power & connect. Anti-spark lead first — the aircraft sings its start-up tone, chirps the motors, sweeps its surfaces. Connect on the GCS; parameters load. Wait for GPS (≥ 10 satellites), EKF white, and confirm home is the pad.

5 · Plan & upload. Load or build the mission; review every altitude; upload, download back, read back. Take-off, transition, cruise legs, and the landing sequence — with ~20 m of clear air above the recovery point for the back-transition balloon.

6 · Final checks & arm. Run the pre-flight checklist card. Crew behind the 15 m stand-off. Mode = hover, throttle zero, ARM — the motor spools to idle.

7 · Fly. Select the take-off waypoint, switch to AUTO: the aircraft climbs vertically, then pitches over in a near-flat forward transition and settles on cruise speed. Your job now is the watch-scan: ground speed, altitude, battery against plan, link, EKF — with the watch / normal / act table as your guide. The battery is crew-managed: the autopilot warns, you decide.

8 · Recover. The aircraft arrives straight and level, pitches up, and trades its speed for a ~20 m zoom climb — normal, ride it out — then descends vertically onto the pad (expect ~0.5 m accuracy). Watch descent rate and drift; take hover control only if the point or rate is wrong. No go-around after a low-battery warning.

9 · Shut down & pack. Wait for DISARMED before approaching. Power off in reverse order. Post-flight inspection, battery cooling then to storage state, logs confirmed saved, technical log entry, disassemble and pack. Done.

Something abnormal at any step? Stop at the failsafe and emergency procedures in Flight Operations — and “maintain aircraft control, analyse, act.”