8.2 Mile long range navigation project

The Project: We wanted to make a long range cross country flight from one area to another and land (basically a cross country flight for fpv) Our goal was to do this but without any navigation method other than maps and land marks! We wanted to try our hand at old fashioned navigating without gps or any osd functions so instead we had a team of navigators who each had a printed our map of google earth. similar to this one:

We chose our ground station to be located on top of a mountain, this way we would have the least amount of interference in the fresnel zone on the way to our destination. Our destination was an rc airfield that we had grown accustomed to over the years. We decided to have one team at the field waiting for the plane and one team of navigators to help us navigate our way there!

The ground station: For the ground station we set up on the side of the mountain where there was a viewing ledge. This provided us ample room to set up. Our set up consisted of a table with two monitors on it (1 for the pilot and 1 for the team of navigators) We used a tripod to support our video antenna (a 10 turn helical designed by IBCrazy) Our video system ran off of 5.8Ghz and our control to the plane was the EzUHF system.

Our plane of choice was the finwing penguin! We bought it from readymaderc.com and it proved to be a great platform!

The day of the flight our team woke up at 6:00am to get breakfast and study the maps again. Our team consisted of some neighborhood friends all highschool age! After breakfast we set off to the mountain!

We chose the early morning for flying so that we could stay away from as many tourists as possible and to keep the flight safe as possible.

(This was our team of navigators doing the Left Bros Salute on the mountain! The other half of our team is at the landing zone.)

The flight began with and audience behind us as we took off on our mission! Will we make it?!

During the flight we experience 51 glitches in our control system where we lost contact with the plane! However our video feed back was solid as a rock! :D Please comment and let us know if you want a raw video of the flight! Thanks for watching!! :D