I just finished making a plug of the nose
section in witch Phil Nuza is going to mold it
using nomex honey comb core. This should
save a lot of weight.

I spend the last few weeks developing and
testing something I call "Auto Height" or
auto altitude. I have been using a platonic
range finder

http://www.robot-electronics.co.uk/htm/srf08bx24.shtml

along with a small processor to change the power
setting of the turbine to keep it at say 3 feet.
This was tested using a tail rotor on a stick. My wife
did not want me running the AT450 in the house.
So the tail rotor would change pitch and move the stick
up or down to keep the distance of the Range finder
and the ground 100 cm. I soon found out that
I needed PID (Proportional-Integral-Derivative) control
so the stick/tail rotor would not overshoot the target
height of 100 cm. After much tunning I found that it works.
So imagine a 7 foot long stick with a tail rotor and
ultra sonic sensor at one end. The stick is balanced and
rotates around a bolt near the center. Taped to the stick
is 12 ch receiver, speed control, 2 battery backs, and
a BX24 basic stamp computer.

The range finder may read 80 cm and tell the BX24 then
the BX24 tells the servo to change the Pulse width going
to the servo to push the stick up. The trick is, as the stick
rises it slows down before it gets to 100cm. Hows it know ?.

If the stick is hovering at 100 cm and you push it, it comes
right back. Not fast like a gyro, just nice and smooth.

The device may be put in the Rig later. Its not that the
Rig needs this thing, it would just make hovering at 3 feet
much easier.

The web site have been reformatted and will be updated
much more often as Rig #2 takes shape.

Eddie Weeks
http://www.corpcomp.com/weeks1/