my project of the past few months

[Mechatrommer]

who are you to judge what i  like or dont like! though, i like how much they've put an effort on that video! and the heli! i hope they have the contingency plan as i've mentioned above, coz thats 5D (and the lens) is one heck of a "rock"! if its out of RF or mech failure
ps: contact Karl! he'll buy one of those and ya! thats cool, i can use the idea to get some money out of our cinematograhpy here.

[Mechatrommer]

in fact i already have that in mind, but just with smaller camera for surveillance purpose. but there is no strong reason for me to do that project

[firehopper]

i would turn that f15 into a lawn dart if i was on the sticks. 

so no scratch builds other than the aeroquad eh?  my best flying plane is made out of about $3 worth of dollartree foamboard.

i killed my dx7 upgrading the power regulator... everything went smooth, current consumption went from like 160mah down to like 60mah, then i pulled the probe off the battery instead of powering down with the switch. low voltage took out the eprom. 

heres a transmitter i built. its got a acrylic base & lcd now though. rf deck is a spektrum dm9. a much more "intuitive" interface.

you tried fpv yet?
-sj

nope not done fpv, need the proper equipment for that

[sonicj]

who are you to judge what i  like or dont like! though, i like how much they've put an effort on that video! and the heli! i hope they have the contingency plan as i've mentioned above, coz thats 5D (and the lens) is one heck of a "rock"! if its out of RF or mech failure
ps: contact Karl! he'll buy one of those and ya! thats cool, i can use the idea to get some money out of our cinematograhpy here.

it has failsafes in place for loss of rf. there is no flybar on the heli so that means it has to be electronically stabilized. you could switch off the transmitter and it will level itself out and hover in one spot until rf is reconnected or the batteries run out. LOTS of time/skillz to properly set-up.

not much you can do about mechanical failure after the fact. motor or esc failure is recoverable as these will autorotate just like a full size heli. lots you can do preventative to reduce the chances of failure. use quality fasteners, everything metal to metal HAS to be locktite'd, attention to cable routing, proper receiver placement, routine rebuilds. all the same sorts of stuff they do with full size helicopters.

in fact i already have that in mind, but just with smaller camera for surveillance purpose. but there is no strong reason for me to do that project

check out the 808 camcorder. HD doesn't get much cheaper / lighter.

hd hero is a popular lightweight camcorder

nope not done fpv, need the proper equipment for that

i've got the equipment!  just lack the skillz   

[firehopper]

nice video, too bad about the landing though
looked like you were repeatedly stalling, did it get out of range?

[sonicj]

the plane is grossly overweight so it needs to fly pretty fast. the porpoising is typical of a easystar with less than perfect cg &/or trim on the verge of stall. some of the odd behavior was me battling pterodactyl sized mosquitoes.

things start going horribly wrong shortly after turning base (about 1:50). i lost all rudder control and since i have no ailerons, i was pretty much f***ed. first thing that popped in my mind was that a brownout caused the gyro to reboot and i needed to wait a few seconds for it to re-calibrate. well a few seconds and it was going to be out of site, so i decided to aim for the parking lot. NOPE, two women standing talking and a couple of vehicles! definitely didn't want to put it in the retention pond! so aimed for the face of the trees. overshot by about 30'. "landed" about 40' up and 30' deep into spider & mosquito infested swamp land! 3 miserable hours later she was recovered without damage. 

rudder worked fine when checked out on the ground. opening the servo revealed a broken tooth on one of the gears. i think the tooth likely got stuck during the flight and worked itself loose somewhere between the tree and terra firma. lesson of the day: if you fly anything of significant value, metal gear servos are a worthy investment!
-sj

[firehopper]

cool I have some new airplanes to play with after a fleamarket trip on saturday, got a Autogyro, and a rc eagle also picked up a pair of IR tanks to play with, neither worked, but changed the crystals and now I have a working one, the otherone needs a few parts before it should be ready to go.

[sonicj]

don't forget the video camera when you maiden that autogyro! i like going to flea markets, never seen any legit rc though...

a tank sounds like fun! i have a couple of tracked tamiya robot kits, but they aren't really rugged enough for outdoor abuse.
-sj

[firehopper]

the tanks

http://s597.photobucket.com/albums/tt51/firehopper/Vstanks/

the rest of the stuff. (Not all is mine )

http://s597.photobucket.com/albums/tt51/firehopper/fleamarket%20stuff/

One of the things I got was a small light video thingy so I'm gonna put that on the autogyro when it flys
dont know if its gonna fly this year though, its getting very cold around here now.

[sonicj]

tanks might be fun to mod! wonder how fast they'll go with brushless?

those twins look expensive.

im not a big nitro fan... too loud, too messy, too expensive, etc.
-sj

[firehopper]

the two on the table he got for under 250 for both, so he got a good deal. the one in the box he had for a long time, has been trying to sell it for $600, something like $1K retail..

nitro's okay once in a while.. that autogyro is going to be my first nitro plane. so we shall see how it goes

[firehopper]

fourth video. it flys better!

[Time]

I'll pay you to come mow my yard too.

I think I am want to take a similar project now.  This seems pretty cool.

[firehopper]

lol

aeroquad.com << all the info you need to make one is here

[firehopper]

video from a onboard camera



two videos of it flying some

another vid