Quad copters are somewhat in vogue to act as avionics stand ins for rockets for avionics development. Its not an exact replacement and there are pitfalls that are not immediately assessable when moving from one to the other. However, it tends to have more accuracy than simulators alone, unless some moderately extreme software development takes place. After resisting the approach at first, Team Phoenicia has embraced the concept with a vengeance. Below Eddy Vromien, part of the Team Phoenicia avionics team, discusses the quad copter.

A flight video:

A flyover:

Finally, a discussion by another Team Phoenicia avionics team member, Brad Leung, discusses the design of the second generation avionics simulator we are building. It will have a thrust layout closer to the final pre-prototype lander design than the original quad will and allow us to develop higher fidelity software algorithms.

The second gen avionics testbed will probably be ready no later than next Friday. We will post videos of it then, too.

Note: in the videos one of preprototype rockets of The Wind at Dawn class can be seen. There are three in various stages of construction. More soon about them. However, next up will be the next - and oft delayed - lunar mining post.