Good news and bad news.

Good news: Colorado is just as beautiful as I remember it.

Bad news: It's as hot as Austin, and the asphalt is slanted.

One of the things I wish I had completed before getting to Colorado was some sort of working vectored control. I wanted to be able to tell the controller "hey, I want to go in this direction, at this speed", and it would be all like "boom. DONE!", minus the explody part.

Sadly, I was not able to get that to work. The goal was to use a feature in the IMU that I'm using to do all of the 3D Orientation calculations, and only periodically pull that value and do stuff accordingly. For reasons unbeknownst to me, this black magic is still black magic, and has left me grasping for straws.

Since one of the project's main goals was to learn Android programming, I'm going to give the smartphone's motion sensors another try. A few years ago, I tried using the sensors to stabilize a robot, but found that they simply weren't good enough. I'm hoping/expecting that they've changed/improved since then. I'll also be looking at figuring out the GPS.

I also managed to find a hardware issue, which while minor and completely fixable, still annoys me that I have to fix it. Oh well. So it turns out that the double-sided tape that I was using to bind all of the rudder parts together will not do. It breaks apart too easily during heavy usage to be reliable.

So for the time being, I'm going to use more paperclips! I decided to poke two paperclips through the entire rudder structure, and bend each end of the paperclip 90 degrees to keep it in place. What has resulted is a rudder that's much more stronger, and feels like it'll be able to take some punishment, and then some.

I have a long night ahead of me.