bacchusnovels Chapter 9 First Flight
Chapter 9 First Flight
Three days.
Su Chen spent three whole days completing all the core code for the flight controller firmware HY_FC_V2.0.
During these three days, he spent his days at the factory handling the company's daily affairs—returning goods, coordinating with suppliers, and reassuring employees—and his evenings locked himself in the second-floor lounge. He spent half his time in the virtual disassembly lab verifying algorithms and adjusting parameters, and the other half on his laptop converting verified solutions into compilable C language code.
The "scheme simulation" function in the virtual laboratory played a significant role in this process.
After writing each core algorithm, Su Chen would build a simulated flight environment in virtual space, map the code logic onto the virtual flight control board, and simulate various extreme flight conditions—strong winds, sharp turns, rapid ascents and descents, single motor failures—to verify the robustness of the algorithm.
Under normal circumstances, developing flight control firmware of this level would require at least a five-person team to spend three months, not including the later integration and testing.
Su Chen completed the core part in three days by himself, relying on three things: fifteen years of hardware product experience in his previous life provided engineering judgment, the knowledge acceleration and solution simulation of the virtual laboratory provided extraordinary development efficiency, and—he really worked very hard.
On the morning of the fourth day, Su Chen walked into Zhang Lei's workstation with dark circles under his eyes.
"The initial firmware version is complete."
He placed a USB drive in front of Zhang Lei.
Zhang Lei was soldering a modified flight control board—with the addition of a second IMU sensor and improved ESC control circuitry—and almost poked the soldering iron off course when he heard Su Chen's words.
"Three days?" Zhang Lei looked up at Su Chen, his shock undisguised. "Mr. Su, is this the complete flight control firmware? Not the framework code?"
"Complete. Sensor fusion, PID control loop, adaptive parameter tuning, feedforward compensation, and failure protection are all included."
Su Chen's voice was a little hoarse—the result of not speaking properly for three days.
How much of the hardware overhaul are you complete?
Zhang Lei glanced subconsciously at the workbench in front of him. Three flight control boards that had been modified were neatly arranged on it, and another one was being soldered next to it.
"Three boards are complete, and the fourth one is just one step away from completion. We expect to produce five complete modified flight control boards today."
"That's enough." Su Chen nodded. "First, we'll use a board to burn the firmware and do a board-level test. If the board-level test passes, we'll install it and do the maiden flight this afternoon."
"So soon? Aren't you going to do a few more days of simulation testing?"
Zhang Lei's concerns are not unfounded. The flight control firmware directly determines the flight safety of a drone, and even a small bug could lead to a crash. According to industry practice, after the firmware is completed, it must undergo at least two to three weeks of simulation testing before it can be put into actual flight.
"I've already conducted simulation testing concurrently with development," Su Chen gave a technically plausible but timeline-puzzling answer. "All extreme conditions have been passed, and the parameters have been pre-tuned to near-optimal ranges."
Looking into Su Chen's bloodshot but unusually clear eyes, Zhang Lei swallowed back the doubts that were on the tip of his tongue.
He began to vaguely sense that there was something about Su Chen that he couldn't understand.
It's not as simple as talent—talent can explain why someone is smarter than others, but it can't explain why a 23-year-old recent graduate can independently complete a set of commercial-grade flight control firmware in three days.
This goes beyond the scope of "genius," it's more like—
It was as if he already knew the answer and was just copying it down from his head.
Zhang Lei shook his head, dismissing the absurd idea.
"Okay, I'll start board-level testing now."
He took the USB drive and turned to walk towards the burning station in the corner.
……
The board-level testing took up the entire morning.
Following the test cases provided by Su Chen, Zhang Lei verified the firmware's operation on the flight control board item by item—sensor data reading, attitude calculation output, control signal response, communication protocol handshake, and failure protection trigger logic.
Every item passed.
Not only did it pass, but the data performance far exceeded Zhang Lei's expectations.
"President Su, look at this."
Zhang Lei turned the laptop towards Su Chen, and the screen displayed the output data curve of the sensor fusion module.
"This is the attitude calculation data after dual IMU fusion. I deliberately added artificial interference to the test—shaking the flight controller by hand to simulate airflow disturbance—look at this response curve."
Su Chen looked at the almost perfect smooth curve on the screen, and the corners of his mouth turned up slightly.
"The noise suppression effect is quite good."
"It's not just 'good'." Zhang Lei's voice carried suppressed excitement. "This fusion accuracy is approaching the level of military-grade inertial navigation systems I've seen in papers. And it's using a civilian-grade MPU6500 sensor—President Su, how did you design this filtering algorithm?"
Su Chen did not answer the question, but stood up instead.
"If the board level is fine, let's install it. The maiden flight is this afternoon."
Zhang Lei took a deep breath and nodded vigorously.
……
At 3 p.m., there was a vacant lot about 20 meters square behind the Hongyuan Intelligent factory, which was usually used to store packing boxes and waste materials. Today, it was temporarily cleared out.
In the center of the open space, the fuselage of a Hongyuan Flyer F1 aircraft rested quietly on the concrete ground.
However, its internal components are no longer the original F1.
The flight controller board was replaced with Zhang Lei's modified dual-IMU version, flashed with HY_FC_V2.0 firmware written by Su Chen. The control logic of the ESC was also adjusted accordingly. Apart from that, the fuselage, motors, propellers, battery, and camera are completely identical to the original F1.
This is the first engineering prototype of the Hongyuan Flyer F2.
Only three people participated in the maiden flight: Su Chen, Zhang Lei, and Zhou Ming, who was temporarily called in by Su Chen to help out.
Zhou Ming was responsible for setting up a DV camera next to him to record the whole process—this was specially arranged by Su Chen, as the footage from the maiden flight might be useful in the future.
Zhang Lei stood in front of the remote control, his fingers resting on the two joysticks, clearly a little nervous.
"Relax." Su Chen stood beside him. "Take off and hover at a height of two meters to observe your attitude."
"good."
Zhang Lei pushed the accelerator lever.
Four motors spun simultaneously, the propellers humming. The drone slowly lifted off the ground, wobbled at about one meter in height, then quickly stabilized and continued to ascend to two meters.
Then it stopped.
It came to a steady stop in the air.
Zhang Lei stared at the drone for three seconds, then slowly released his hands.
The joystick on the remote control returned to the neutral position, and there was no input signal.
The drone remained completely still.
It was as if it were suspended in the air by an invisible thread, without the slightest sway or drift.
"This..." Zhang Lei opened his mouth, but did not utter a complete sentence.
He spent over a year debugging drones and flew dozens of consumer drones of various models. In his experience, drones in this price range always have a slight, visible vibration when hovering—caused by sensor noise and control delay, which is an inherent physical defect.
But the F2 in front of us showed absolutely no shaking during its hovering.
This is not the performance expected of a consumer-grade drone costing two or three thousand yuan.
This is a level that only professional-grade drones priced at five or six thousand or even higher can achieve.
"Try a quick maneuver," Su Chen's calm voice came through.
Zhang Lei gripped the remote control again, took a deep breath, and then pushed the right joystick sharply.
The drone responded immediately—not in the typical way of consumer drones that "respond slowly and then accelerate," but rather it began to move at high speed almost the instant the joystick was pushed.
The response speed is incredibly fast.
Zhang Lei performed several sharp turns, rapid ascents and descents, and S-shaped maneuvers in succession, and the drone's tracking accuracy increasingly amazed him.
Every instruction was executed precisely, without delay, overshoot, or inertial drift during emergency stops.
The handling can only be described in four words: point and shoot.
"President Su..." Zhang Lei's voice trembled.
He wasn't trembling from nervousness, but from excitement.
As a technician, he was all too aware of what was happening before his eyes.
The same fuselage, the same motors, the same propellers—only a flight control board and a set of firmware were replaced—and the flight performance achieved a qualitative leap.
This means that the flight control firmware written by Su Chen has squeezed the potential of this hardware platform to its limit.
No, it wasn't about squeezing them to the extreme.
It unleashed more than 50 percent of the hardware performance that was completely wasted by the original general solution.
"Let's land," Su Chen said.
Zhang Lei maneuvered the drone to descend slowly, landing precisely back at its takeoff position. The four motors stopped, and the propellers gradually came to a stop.
The open space was silent for a few seconds.
Then Zhang Lei turned around, looked into Su Chen's eyes, and said a sentence:
"Mr. Su, this machine can easily outperform all drones on the market priced around 3,000 yuan."
Su Chen nodded.
"So we need to be quick."
He patted Zhang Lei on the shoulder.
"Starting today, you will lead the team to conduct integration testing of the F2. This includes flashing firmware onto each modified flight control board, installing them, and conducting flight tests. Within a week, I need at least ten engineering prototypes that have passed the tests."
"At the same time, I'm contacting Hengxinda and Jingwei to confirm the replenishment progress of spare parts. I need to know how many complete machines we can produce each day from now on, even at full speed."
Zhang Lei nodded heavily, took the remote control, and strode towards the factory.
Su Chen stood alone in the open space, looking at the F2 engineering prototype that was quietly parked on the ground.
The rays of the setting sun shone through the gaps in the factory roof, casting a slanted band of light on the white body of the drone.
The product's problems have been solved—at least technically.
But the money problem has not yet been solved.
After dealing with returns, compensation, and this month's expenses, the cash on hand is left with less than 200,000.
Parts suppliers need to be paid, employee salaries need to be paid, and new sensors and digital image transmission modules need to be purchased... Each of these requires real money.
There is at least a two-week time gap between the F2's engineering prototype and its mass production and market launch.
Two weeks.
Is 200,000 enough to last two weeks?
Su Chen quickly did some mental calculations.
The salaries and social security contributions for 52 people amount to nearly 300,000 yuan per month, or about 150,000 yuan every two weeks. Rent and utilities cost 20,000 yuan per month, or 10,000 yuan every two weeks. If we use existing qualified parts in stock, plus newly purchased sensors and image transmission modules, the material cost for the first batch of production will be approximately 100,000 to 150,000 yuan.
Total: 300,000 to 350,000.
Shortage: 100,000 to 150,000.
Small, but deadly.
Without those tens of thousands, the entire supply chain wouldn't be able to function.
"I need to think of a way," Su Chen muttered to himself.
He took out his phone and scrolled to a name in his contacts—Fang Xu.
The lawyer who helped him with the inheritance process.
Su Chen came up with a solution.
It's not financing, it's not a loan, but—
Recovery of stolen assets.
The police are already pursuing the 800,000 yuan embezzled by Zhao Guoqiang. Fang Xu said that Zhao Guoqiang owns a small apartment and a car, and with the frozen balance in his bank account, the recoverable assets are estimated to be between 400,000 and 500,000 yuan.
If the legal proceedings can be expedited, we can get a portion of the frozen funds returned...
Su Chen dialed the phone.
"Attorney Fang, are you busy?"
"President Su? No rush, please go ahead."
"How's the recovery of the stolen assets in Zhao Guoqiang's case going?"
"The police have frozen two bank cards under his name, totaling approximately 230,000 yuan. His house has also been seized, but liquidating the property will take time; going through the auction process will take at least two to three months."
Is there any way to return the 230,000 yuan frozen in my bank account to the company ahead of schedule?
"The normal procedure is that the funds can only be returned after the case is concluded..." Fang Xu hesitated for a moment, "But if the company, as the victim, files an emergency asset preservation application, and given the clear facts and conclusive evidence, the court might agree to return part of the frozen funds first. However, this requires the court's cooperation, and I need to communicate with them."
"Please expedite this process." Su Chen's tone was calm but firm. "The company's cash flow is currently very tight, and this money is crucial for our normal operations."
"I understand. I'll go and handle this first thing tomorrow morning, and try to get results within a week."
"Thank you, Attorney Fang."
After hanging up the phone, Su Chen let out a long sigh of relief.
If we can recover around 200,000 yuan in recovered funds, plus the less than 200,000 yuan we already have in the account, we can barely raise enough funds for the first batch of F2 production.
reluctantly.
But he had no better choice.
Financing requires time and opportunity, and loans require qualifications and collateral. He is unwilling and too late to sell his property.
The only way is to launch F2 to the market with the least amount of money and in the shortest amount of time, and use sales revenue to prolong its life.
Su Chen turned around and walked back to the factory.
At the top of the stairs, he encountered Meng Xiaoting, who had just come out of the warehouse.
"President Su!" Meng Xiaoting's eyes lit up when she saw him, and she quickly walked up to him. "I heard some noises over at the warehouse. Were they test-flying a new product?"
"Yes, the F2's engineering prototype has successfully completed its maiden flight."
A look of surprise flashed across Meng Xiaoting's face, but it was quickly replaced by another emotion.
"Ms. Su, regarding the channel restoration..." Her tone became hesitant, "I've been contacting the distributors who stopped ordering these past few days, and the situation isn't looking good."
Tell me about it.
"I called each of the 47 distributors one by one. Twelve said, 'Let's wait and see how your new products go,' twenty clearly stated, 'We won't resume cooperation in the short term,' and fifteen simply stopped answering my calls."
Su Chen remained silent for two seconds.
"Tell those twelve companies that are 'wait and see' that I will personally visit them next week with engineering prototypes of the new product."
"Okay." Meng Xiaoting nodded and noted it down, then looked up at Su Chen, "Mr. Su, do you think... F2 can really make them change their minds?"
"A product can convince people, but words can't," Su Chen said calmly. "They will come back."
After saying that, he continued upstairs and returned to the lounge.
The moment he closed the door, Su Chen leaned against it and closed his eyes for a moment.
After three days of almost non-stop development, even with the system's stamina recovery bonus, my body was pushed to its limit.
But he can't stop.
This is a race against time.
He must get F2 to start generating revenue before the funds run out.
Su Chen walked to the table, sat down, and turned on the computer.
The last code file he edited was still on the screen. He closed the code editor and opened a new document.
File name: Channel recovery and sales plan.
He began to write the first line:
Core strategy: Overwhelm channel concerns with product superiority.