One of the goals with getting the Ardupilot Mega (APM) is to have a means of collecting telemetry information during the flight of an aircraft.  This will have immediate uses during the spring when we start flight testing the senior design aircraft.

Keeping with this goal I took my aircraft with the APM on-board out for another test flight.  Yesterday’s attempt at telemetry gathering was defeated by a lack of  a defined procedure, so before going out the system was run up on the ground.  With this procedure in mind the same steps were performed at the field.  The result was the telemetry pictured above.  The data confirmed observations of the flight that winds above the tree line were fairly high.  This is shown by the close spacing of the data points on the up wind leg.  The flight was short and the temperatures were freezing, but the data is a significant step in the right direction.