Super-small FPV quadrotor

[RCMR]

Most people have seen quadrotors these days.  Four electric motors attached to four props, some gyro-stabilization and an RC set mean you can hover about  and have a ball.  Dave is even contemplating one for getting some cool canyon videos.

You can spend a bit of money and an awful lot of time farting around building your own quad and break a lot of props during the learning process -- but these days you can also spend about $100 and buy a tiny (100mm between motor centres, 32g) "off the shelf" machine like the Walkera Ladybird QR.

I bought two of these little quads a few months ago and have been having a ball.  Although they're *tiny* and use a single 260mAH lithium cell for power, these birds can actually carry an HD keychain camera (weighing 17g) to get some impressive aerial video.

However, I wanted to do live video and fly FPV (first-person view) so I fitted a sub-2g video camera and a 200mW 5.8GHz video transmitter module.  A bit of bodging was needed to add a regulator for the video transmitter module but it all seems to work pretty well.

Here's the build-video.  Some "pilot's eye"  flight footage (recorded live video) to follow when the damned winds and rain stop around here.

[Rerouter]

interesting, however i feel crosswinds would be a moderate problem for such a small quad, still interestered to know how long of a flight time you get out of it ?

[RCMR]

Without the FPV gear onboard, these little quads are good for about 6-7 minutes.

The extra drain of the FPV gear (about 250mA) will reduce the flight time (probably by a minute), as will the small amount of extra weight.

I'd expect to get around 5 minutes flying.

And they handle the wind remarkably well.  I've flown them in the turbulence of my back yard with a 15kph wind and experienced no problems at all.

[RCMR]

First flight tests: