Who has flown their SP140?

There is an altimeter on the throttle of the SP140

Gents, itā€™s cruise control like in a car. Holds power, but you still need to keep it on the road. I get to hold my throttle with my thumb for the entire flight. If my thumb gets tired, my motors stopā€¦

I would kill for a cruise controlā€¦

It is a bad idea to try and have automation control altitude. The unit has no idea what the wing is doing and if the motor starts pulsing, you will induce oscillations on some wingsā€¦

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no I wanted to see what the cruise control will do so I left the throttle alone. I was expecting it to hold the altitude but instead it was holding the RPMs, as Zach explained itā€™s designed to do. I am guessing a minute of that was too much for the battery and it cut out.

during the second time I played with it some more and the cruise control disengaged every time when I moved the throttle.

my carā€™s cruise control keeps the speed constant, not the rpms and not the power. If I go up the hill or down the hill, if I upshift or downshift, the speed is constant, not rpms or power. They seemed to have figured this out for cars, no oscillations or anything unexpected. I think this should be possible (and it sounds like it is) in SP140. Instead of the speed sensor weā€™d use the altimeter. Sure I can hold the throttle just like I can keep my foot on the gas. But I would constantly need to check the speed or altitude (if keeping my altitude constant was the goal, as I explain below).

I kinda wanted to see the best possible time I can get from the single charge, and keeping the altitude constant is probably one of the better, more gentle uses of the battery. I suppose you can get a longer flight if keep climbing at a small rate from the start but decrease the rate of climb, and eventually start descending, as the battery goes below some level (40-50% I am guessing). But holding the constant level (if the cruise control could do it) would have given a pretty good estimate of the max flight time

This is much much easier than holding altitude.
Throttle- speed response in a car is quite tight. The motor is pretty solidly connected to a pretty solid road.
Prop speed - altitude response is pretty loose. Everything is more fluid and tenuous.

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This was near the beginning of a fully charged battery right? If so, I doubt it was a voltage sag enough for the BMS to cut the power.

Looking at the ESC settings in the configurator, if the ESC reaches 120Ā°C it will hard shutdown to preserve the ESC. Although Iā€™ve never gotten my ESC above 70Ā°C. Iā€™d be interested to see your ESC logs. You can access them through the configurator from APD if youā€™d like.

@Pdwhite is battery temperature management also handled by the BMS?

yes, this was my first flight from fully charged. The battery was at 93% when I started and settled at 87% after I landed and reconnected the battery. We had 80F-something temperatures, so definitely above 70.

I am pretty excited about the unit, and after 2 days of flying it, definitely looking forward to flying it more. I should probably stop worrying about the flight time and just go back to enjoying the flight. So far everything works as expected or, as I now know should work, from Paul and Zachā€™s explanations. Summing up the two flights from day 2 I get exactly 40 min. My second flight I tried to be as easy on the throttle as possible, only throwing down a couple of spirals. This is consistent with about 6 kWt that I saw at level flight. This is before using the trimmers and the speed bar. I am curious to see how those affect the number for the level flight, and will try at some point.

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Only 40 min on the big 4kwh battery?

Wait. ESC settings? Where do you get a configurator?

correct. I expected as much on my wing, as it was also consuming around 50% more fuel on my old engine compared to a beginner wing.

APD ESC Configurator:

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What height did you climb to?

you can see my both flights from Wednesday here

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It would be great if some of you would post their flights to the XContest paramotor section. Just carry a flight recorder with you that logs igc files and upload them later, or use an app or vario that supports XContest upload right away.

A bunch of logged flights on different locations / altitudes / wings will help everybody to understand the real world performance much better than posting a handful of them here.

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Very well said Daniel!

In a survey on Facebook at ppg pilots, I noticed that pilots in the USA often donā€™t have any Varios or cell phones with an xc app with them because they donā€™t have to carry altimeters, airspace maps, etc. with them.

therefore, many have no relation to this technology because it is not necessary. I think maybe it would help if there is a video that explains to the usa pilots how easy xcontest works.

maybe the eppg pilots are interested in giving it a try. Every pilot has a mobile phone :slight_smile:

Yes this is true, I have never carried a vario, and I donā€™t even know what brands and models are best. I would like to get one but none of my friends know what model is best because they donā€™t use one either.

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in principle, a simple app on the cell phone is sufficient. only if you need airspace data like in europe and also want to use security options like flarm and fanet is a vario like zb. skytraxx 3.0 makes more sense than a cell phone.

https://vps.skybean.eu/repo/skydrop/doc/manual/Manual-of-SkyDrop.html

There are also small varios that can basically do everything you need and create plug-and-play igc files. are light, have a long battery life and are inexpensive.

This is my favourite vario. Iā€™ve had it for about 4 years now and have never had to plug it in to charge. Works awesome for thermalling. Then use my iPhone and flyskyhy app for tracking flight data.

I carry ppgps. Would produce the right kind of file?