Set up

Telemetry radio, RTK and Remote ID

Three pages for the equipment around the aircraft: the radio pair that carries the link, the base station that gives it centimetre positioning, and the identity it has to broadcast.

Telemetry radio

Program a SiK radio pair the way Mission Planner's SiK Radio page does, without leaving Corvus. Pick the port and press Load, and both radios come back side by side: the one on your cable, and the one on the aircraft, read through it over the air.

What can be set

Network ID, air data rate, transmit power, MAVLink framing, the frequency band, duty cycle and listen before talk, each with what it actually costs you written next to it. Air rates and transmit powers that the radio would silently round are offered as the list it actually supports rather than as a free number.

Settings that must match

Eight of these settings have to be identical at both ends or the radios cannot hear each other at all. A pair that disagrees is called out by name, with both values, and one button copies the near radio's values into the far column.

Saving

• Nothing is written until you press Save.
• The far radio is written first, because it is only reachable through the near one.
• Both radios are read back afterwards, so you see what took effect rather than what was sent.
• A radio at a baud rate you no longer remember is found by trying the others. Change the near radio's baud rate and Corvus moves the link to match.

Configuring the radio that carries the live link interrupts telemetry for the few seconds a session takes (Corvus stops the link itself and reconnects afterwards). A radio on any other port does not touch the link at all. Refused while armed.

RTK GPS

Centimetre positioning, set up by plugging in a base station. RTK is off until you switch it on on the RTK GPS page, so a fresh install opens no serial port looking for a base.

A base station on this computer

Once RTK is on, a base station connected to this computer is:

1. found by its USB descriptor (u-blox and Septentrio receivers are recognised),
2. configured as a base over UBX,
3. surveyed in: Corvus waits until the base knows its own position,
4. forwarded: its RTCM 3 corrections go to the aircraft as GPS_RTCM_DATA.

The flight controller's own port is never a candidate, so the telemetry link is never at risk. The defaults are QGroundControl's: survey until the position is known to 2 m, and for at least three minutes. Both can be changed. If you know the base position already, from a surveyed mark, enter it and the survey is skipped entirely.

A receiver that identifies itself is configured. One that does not, but is already streaming corrections, is forwarded untouched, so a base set up in u-center, or of a make Corvus has never heard of, still works. When Corvus lets go of the receiver, it is taken out of base mode again.

NTRIP

Where a network is available, an NTRIP caster is the other source of corrections, and needs no second receiver.

Reading the page

The page shows the whole chain rather than one verdict:

• which receiver, on which port,
• how far the survey has got, and what is holding it up,
• how many corrections the base produced and how many reached the aircraft,
• and the fix the aircraft ended up with.

A base that is still surveying, a base streaming into a link that is down, and a base that is working are three different problems, and the page tells them apart.

Remote ID

The identity the aircraft broadcasts about you and about itself. It is the one page here whose subject is not the vehicle. The serial number, your operator registration, the flight description and the EU class mark are not stored on the aircraft and no parameter holds them. They live in the ground station and are sent down the link once a second, and both PX4 and ArduPilot refuse to arm when that stream stops. So this is a preflight page, not a one time setup page.

It has a switch, and it starts off: an aircraft broadcasting a blank or half filled identity has made a false filing, not a small one.

What you fill in

Basic ID

The airframe's serial number, checked as you type against the ANSI/CTA-2063-A format, the usual reason a filing is rejected.

Operator ID

Your registration. If you paste the whole EU number, the page tells you the last three characters are the secret part, which is never broadcast.

Self ID

A line about what this flight is, and the switch that declares an emergency while the aircraft is in the air.

EU vehicle info

The operational category, the C0 to C6 class mark, and the operational volume for a Specific category flight.

Operator position

The takeoff point, or a fixed position you type, with a button that takes the aircraft's own position, since you are normally standing next to it.

Regions

Pick your region and the page lists what that region's broadcast format asks for and is still missing. The FAA's Part 89 and the EU's EN 4709-002 want different things, and the page says which. These are advice only: nothing is refused, because an aircraft flown under an exemption is not misconfigured.

Status

A live panel says whether the link can carry the messages at all (they are MAVLink 2 only), whether they are actually going out, and the arming verdict the aircraft sent back. The aircraft's own Remote ID settings (ArduPilot's DID_ parameters, PX4's COM_ARM_ODID) are at the bottom of the page.

The identity stays editable while armed, because a wrong serial number on a live aircraft has to be fixable; the vehicle's parameters do not.