There are quite a few photos that I’ve uploaded and they’re in the gallery below, just open them and use the left/right buttons at the bottom of the viewer pane to move between photos.

There were a lot of great pilots at the NEAT fair and some really fun events as well.  The helicopter section was a bit quiet but there Kyle Stacey and someone from Team Just Go Fly were putting on demos throughout the day, and there were some neat R/C Helicopter models flown there from time to time as well.

By far the majority of the aircraft at the NEAT Fair 2010 were airplanes, everything from flat foamies to large highly detail scale models.  Everyone looked good flying out there, and while there were some crashes and planes lost in the hills I would have to say most flights were successful and enjoyable to watch.

I didn’t take any models to fly at NEAT, I’m don’t fly well in crowds as they make me nervous, maybe one day I’ll get over that but I’m pretty happy flying my RC aircraft with a few friends and not an audience.

One of the coolest planes to see for me was one pilots hotliner which just ripped up the air.  The plane accelerated from a gentle glide to high speeds in no time flat, and actually cavitated in the air when accelerating from a low speed, which sounded pretty cool. I did see some other hotliners, but nothing like that kind of acceleration. It might just be because I’ve not had a lot of exposure to hotliners, but it was a lot of fun and I might have to get into that!  Here’s a quick photo and a video.

There were also some neat helicopters, tri-copters, octacopters and all sorts of stuff.  The guys from Heli Flight Center were there and seemed to have a lot of people moving through.  They were one of the few heli specific booths at the show and they got a lot of interest from passing pilots, lots of questions and over all their booth looked good.

Bryn picked up a Blade MSR for $120 (BNF), he’s never flown a real R/C helicopter before and he tried it out this evening.  He got that thing right up and hovering after about 4 attempts, I think he’ll pick it up pretty good in time and might move into more advanced helis.   That Blade MSR is a great little RC helicopter.

I picked up some LED lighting strips to add more lighting to my Mini-Titan RC Helicopter. I bought 2 feet of blue LEDs and 2 feet of green LEDs. for $5 per foot.  The lighting on the Mini-Titan is great for flying at dusk when there’s not enough light from the sun to make out the position of the helicopter very well.  At some point I may even try flying it at night.

The videos will take a little bit of time to process but will be here soon so please bookmark the page and check back for new videos, there are some great shots and views of the demos and events.  Some of the events were the NEAT Fair Multiplex EasyStar Combat competition with about 8 Multiplex Easy Stars and one or two collisions and a crash (video further down).  Then there was the NEAT Fair Warplane Mass Launch with what looked like 30+ models in the sky at one time.

One flier at the event had a 4 bladed Trex-450, this model was a standard T-Rex but the head had been replaced with this 4 bladed version.  Each individual blade grip was pivoted for up and down movement (a flapping head) and the rotor blades were made of an extremely flexible material. At one point the guy bent the blade up almost to 90 degrees while he was showing it off, pretty cool! Here’s some photos and a video.

The pilot with the above heli also had a nice twin-rotor Chinook helicopter (Might be the wrong revision I’m thinking of) It’s based off of some T-Rex mechanics for the heads, and they’re linked internally via a torque tube drive. He described a bit about this helicopter but I only caught a small part of the description on video so I did not upload the description part.  It’s pretty weird to watch it fly in some maneuvers, but fun to watch.

Also in the helicopter area was a younger guy flying a Tri-Copter setup for FPV. He was not flying it FPV at the show because AMA requires that you have a co-pilot on a buddy box when flying FPV at an AMA venue.  He picked up the information on how to build the model from rcexplorer.se and said that it felt a lot like flying a co-axial helicopter, but performed very well in forward flight.

The basic design of the Tri-Copter is 3 ‘rotors’ which are airplane props, on brushless motors, each with it’s own ESC. One motor is on a pivoting joint to allow it to be tilted left or right by a servo and provide rotational maneuverability.  3 rate gyros are used to stabilize power to the 3 brushless motors, and one heading hold gyro is used to stabilize the rotation of the aircraft via the servo-controlled tail motor angle.

One of the heli guys also had a Parrot AR.Drone, which means ‘augmented reality’ drone.  This is a pretty cool new product that runs about $300.  It’s controlled by an iPod or iPhone through the Wi-Fi and it sends video back to the iDevice and shows it on the screen. If you have multiple Parrot AR.Drones in flight, you can actually shoot at each other virtually and blow knock each other down.  I see one(or two!) of these Parrot AR.Drones in my future just to play with! I posted an article about these earlier in my ‘AR.Drone New Augmented Reality + FPV Combat Product‘ article if you want more details. The one in the picture below looks a bit different because the foam fan shrouds and canopy is off.  Yay technology!

There was also a great Multiplex Easy Star combat round where people put their Easy Stars into a fight to the death battle to be the top.  There was only one mid-air collision that I saw and recorded and I’ve put the video below. I cut out most of the combat where no contact happens because I know folks like to get right to the combat.  The overall battle lasted about 8 1/2 minutes for that round. I’m not sure if there were more rounds, but by then we were pretty well sunburned, sore and tired and decided to call it a night.

Speaking of Mid-Airs, Bryn managed to record a midair crash between two smaller high wing airplanes during a non-combat event, which means they weren’t trying to hit each other. The video is short but pretty good, and as always it’s available in High-Def if you want to watch full screen and burn up some bandwidth.

Another thing that was pretty neat was that I shot a video towards the end of the day when they had a bunch of big electric warbirds in the air. I was trying to shoot the B17 and this little flying wing came into the scene and I was like ‘what!? aww c’mon’ but a few minutes later I found out it was an FPV pilot who had been filming the warbirds from the air and then, of course since it was for the cause of FPV I was then all cool with it.  Yesterday the FPV pilot (FPVFLIGHTSCHOOL)  subscribed to my YouTube channel and I saw he had posted his FPV view of the B17 so I posted my video of the B17 and his FPV plane from the ground. Both are below.  Again the FPV video was shot by YouTube user FPVFLIGHTSCHOOL and the ground video was shot by myself.  His video is first, check it out! If you like the videos, make sure to click on the YouTube icon in the video windows and thumb up or leave a comment to the creators.

And my video from the ground (sorry no audio, it’s mostly just me complaining )

I want to say thanks to the folks who let me photograph their aircraft, video their flights and ask a bunch of questions. There were truly many friendly and helpful folks at this event. Also thanks to the folks who setup and run the NEAT Fair, without them this weekend would have been a lot less interesting.  They did a great job keeping the place cleaned up and looking good, and they kept a good flow of flying and events throughout the day. I wish I could have stayed up through the night/dusk slow flying events that they had planned, there were quite a few planes to be seen with LED lighting strips on them. Hopefully someone else will post up some good video of that.

I will upload more videos to this post tomorrow, so be sure to check back.

Please enjoy the photo gallery below, and feel free to comment below if you know more about the airplanes or models shown or their pilots. I wasn’t able to get a lot of names as we moved pretty quick and some of the name tags were pretty blurry in the photos.

If you desire more NEAT 2010 Photographs, check out RC Groups – Neat Fair 2010 at http://www.rcgroups.com/neat-fair-2010-698/

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3. First Inverted Hover Attempts on My Mini-Titan Heli

I’ve been flying quite a bit and not paying much attention to the load I’ve been putting on my speed controller. Today I plugged my CC50 ICE into the computer to check out my last few flights. I was quite surprised. Most of my flying did not load the ESC as much as I had expected. While I had a few high spikes on current and wattage, overall my flights were pretty average.  I’ve mostly been practicing flips and inverted hovering, and most things I attempt do not qualify as hardcore 3D. I’m slowly getting there though.

My inverted hovering skills have been honed over a few flights.  The majority of it was done during one evening where I attempted it for the first time and then flew 3 more battery packs over the evening.  You can see this in the video of my first inverted hover attempts below.

So I’ve been working on those but I’ve also just been screwing around.  The log chart below is based on a flight where I was flying fast forward and then did a hard breaking maneuver by the following: Fast forward flight, rotate the heli 90 degrees(nose to the sky) and then applying high collective.  This spiked the power readings on the ice as you can see, pulling out a large amount of current. Just click on it to see a full size version.

When I did that I pulled the current up to around 50 amps on the ESC, which is within it’s >peak< rating by quite a bit. I have another flight on which I screwed up and I did a recovery, highly loading the rotor disc and you can see that chart below.  Again, just click it for a larger version

You can see in the above graph that I pulled nearly 60.3 amps,, again well within the limits.

Basically by analyzing the information from my speed controller I have a better idea of how my flying is affecting my system, and as well I know I’m well within the systems limits.  Chance of an electrical failure due to my flying abilities is pretty low!  Carry on!

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These outrunner brushless motors were shipped straight from China and took about two weeks to arrive and cost about $12 each shipped. Here are a couple of high resolution photos of these motors, they have a nice flat gold color to the ends and the bell is chromed a good overall appearance at first look.

The motors were recommended to me by a fellow Radio Controlled FPV flyer for use with the Skyfun jet-like foam glider from HobbyKing. I bought two of the gliders and had tried a couple of different motor combination with not too much luck.  When I saw his video of his Skyfun with this motor, I sent him a message and found out what he was using.

These motors are relatively cheap so I had assumed that the quality would be questionable. I wanted to see if this was a viable option to use for a cheaper radio controlled airplane and for various small projects that I didn’t want to risk more expensive motors or where it simply doesn’t make sense to spend a lot of money for a motor.

The machining quality overall does look pretty decent on the motors themselves, but unfortunately the prop adapters are a bit mangled.  The one on the left has the cross cuts way off center and the one on the right has the hole off center it appears.

I also checked the motors against the specifications.

Specifications for BC2826-6 Outrunner Brushless Motor from rctimer.com
Model:  BC2826-6
Motor size: ?28*26mm (I measured 28 * 28. This was measured from the base of the motor to the exposed part of the shaft)
Shaft size: ?3.175*37mm (3.17mm x 42mm)
Weight: 50g (50g with no accessories, near 60g with back plate and prop adapter, this scale only shows 10g steps)
KV(rpm/v): 2200 (untested)
Max Power: 342W (untested)
Battery: 2-3Li-Po
Test Prop: 7×3/7×4 (untested)
Ri(M ?): 0.033 (tested under 0.1 ohm)
ESC(A): 30A (untested)

I thought it was pretty odd that both the motor can length and the shaft length are longer than specified by the manufacturer and markings on the can. I tried to measure the can a couple of different ways but nothing came up to 26mm.  In the end I measure from the base of the motor to the top of the motor where the shaft exits.

Once I get some leads attached to one of these brushless motors I’ll test it with and without a prop, disassemble it to check out the magnet mounting and winding quality and dump some CC-ICE graphs in this article as well to see how it matches up to the specs.

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Hi folks, as you may know from watching the videos, I put my Twist 60 into mother earth a couple of weeks ago which resulted in some damage to the brushless electric motor I use to power it. Most of the damage was to the bearings, they sounded kind of crunchy.  I also replaced the main shaft and prop adapter to make certain it would run true again. Below is the footage of this so called ‘crash’ and further down is a quick video on the repair of the E-Flite motor.

I ordered the new main shaft and prop adaptera from Horizon Hobbies for the Power 90 motor but they didn’t carry a bearing set for this motor model. In fact even individually I could not find the proper bearings on their website.

This is when I turned to a reliable bearing source.  Now truth to be admitted, I have purchased bearings from Boca Bearings in the past for one of my nitro-methanol powered radio controlled helicopters, but I have not ordered from them in a long time and not for a brushless motor.  Recently Boca Bearings friended me on YouTube which was pretty cool.  So when I thought of replacement bearings for the E-Flite Power 90, of course, I instantly thought to check the Boca Bearings website. Good marketing!

The bearing part numbers for the E-Flite Power 90 brushless motor from Boca Bearings (the ceramic variety) are SMR696C-YZZ NB2 for the larger ‘rear’ bearing and SMR626C-YZZ NB2 for the smaller ‘front’ bearing. (Rear and front are interchangeable terminology depending on the prop adapter and mounting of the motor.. smaller/larger is the better bet!)  They were 9.95US a piece, but high quality and I expect that they will last a long time until I perhaps crash the Twist 60 once again.

The E-Flite Power 90 brushless motor has been an excellent motor, so I wanted to replace the bearings with only the best quality substitution bearings for my motor. It’s not often you can spend so little for the something of very high quality in this hobby  The bearings from Boca Bearings are probably much better than the original and will be more than sufficient for my flying needs.

I’ve posted a video of how to replace the bearings, motor shaft and prop adapter for the E-Flite Power 90 brushless motor below, please check it out and let me know what you think of it!  (Yes, I am aware it does move a little fast, please use the ‘pause’ button if you want to hold on a step and I’ll remember that in future video slide-shows )

New Video 9/14/2010 – 12:30AM — I just did a run-up on the motor tonight, it sounds great. I ran it up bare/unloaded and then I ran it up on a 16×8 3-bladed prop. While I know 3-bladed props aren’t preferred for 3-D I have a ground clearance issue with this plane. As it was I had to re-form the landing gear aluminum to fit this propeller.  The system is two 3700mAh 14.8 volt packs running in series for 29.6 volts at 3700mAh.  With the previous prop, a 15×7 3 bladed prop I would get about 10 minutes of flight, most of it full out. I expect the time to drop dramatically with the new prop, but I should be able to use less throttle with a larger prop if I’m not aiming for speed. It should be a lot of fun at any rate, I really love this plane and motor combination.

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Have you seen the Parrot AR.Drone?  The Parrot is an Augmented Reality + FPV combat product that is controlled via Wi-Fi from your iPod, iPad or iPhone touch. But they say they are working on support for other platforms, hopefully Android is in the list, and I bet it is. It’s bound to satisfy some or all of your air combat and dog fighting needs.  The Parrot AR.Drone is a cool looking product with a heck of a lot going for it, and some improvements required, but in general I think it will be a blast. The biggest complaint I hear is that the frame rate is pretty low, around 15 frames per second.  When you consider the processing and other things involved this is not too surprising, but could seem a bit choppy.  I think for being

The AR.Drone’s have markings on them which let the camera on your iPhone, iPod or iPad identify what you are aiming at, via networking you and your opponent(s) dogfight against each other to shoot each other down through the augmented reality interface.  The leaning and tilting of the phone control these hovering aircraft, which are quite similar to the quadrapod type designs seen in other FPV and autonomous model aircraft designs.

Do yourself a favor and watch the video, then think of what you might be able to do with a model such as this. Rumor has it that the selling price will be around 350USD but it looks like fun and may be worth it to have a cool little piece of tech. Maybe get a few people at the office involved and buying some Parrot AR.Drones and have lunchtime massive FPV dogfights! I think I’ll be getting one once they come out with an Android compatible version.   Multi-platform support will be awesome, even your like/dislike for another persons mobile platform won’t keep you from  dogfight, and heck might even be the cause of some!  Which is the better dogfight controller?  The Android or the iDevice(?)

What do you folks think!? Do you own one, do you want one, do you not want one? Let me know in the comment section below I’d love to hear more from everyone.

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I’ve been working on the Spirit 100 glider to convert it to an FPV platform for the last couple of weeks.  Today I finally was able to get the plane up with the First Person View gear and the results were awesome.

Having so much wing area is a huge bonus when flying FPV because it really slows things down and when you are just gliding your video is so smooth.  With the addition of some moderate piloting skills you can get some awesome results and a ton of enjoyment.

The first video I have to show you today is the test video. I always fly a plane in ‘normal’ line-of-sight mode with all of the FPV gear, receiver, video recorded and goggles running but I let a friend wear the goggles while I fly the plane.  If there are any interference issues they can tell me if there is a problem and I can go back and review the video later to see what is going on. Bryn wore the goggles for the first flight, I don’t think he’s worn them before and he really enjoyed the view as I flew around. I think it’s a view that everyone into R/C should get to experience.

Here’s a hard link to the video on YouTube (where you can vote and comment ): Spirit 100 Glider FPV-First Person View Setup Test Flight or you can watch it with the embedded player.

Once the test flight had been performed and I received good reports from my goggled co-pilot, Bryn, I proceeded to get some batteries charged up for the next flight, which was to be a true FPV flight.   My buddy Ollie spent some time flying his discus glider while my batteries charged up.  He built this thing from scratch and it flies great.  It is amazing to watch him spin around and throw this thing a hundred feet in the air. Check out the gallery then scroll down for more FPV testing!

I hope you had fun checking out those photos. After quite a few launches, flights and catches of OT’s DLG (Discus Launch Glider) my batteries were finally charged and I was ready to do my first real FPV flight on the SPirit 100 (2.6 meter) powered glider.  The first launch from FPV ever was pretty rough, I did not power on the motor soon enough and/or did not pull back and time and the glider left a nifty divot in the field.  After checking things over and the glider (seemingly) looking okay Ollie threw it up again and this time it took.

Now, I had reset the camera to default settings because I wanted to go through it and demo all of it’s options, a project I still need to get to, but having forgot this, the camera was doing very poorly with the low level of lighting.  Everytime I lifted the center of the camera to the horizon, it blacked out the video, and when I pointed it down everything lit back up.  This was very difficult to fly with as I kept getting ‘blacked out’ and I finally decided to land it.  I did get a good 2 and 1/2 minutes of flight time, and that 2.5 minutes was great. I really look forward to getting some full flights in!

Here’s the second video, again here is the hard link in case you want to comment and vote: First FPV Flight on Spirit 100 Glider or you can watch the embedded version below.

After the flight I found out that the root of one of the wing sections had been broken at the rear mounting point. I think the sudden deceleration caused the wingtips to move forward under inertia and the rear mounting points to pull forward and shear out of the wing-bolt block. the 1/4-20 screws seemed no more worse for that wear though.  I’m going to strip the covering from this part of the wing and fiberglass it, at the suggestion of Ollie, and it should be all good to go again.

Also another problem discovered is that the motor I used for the power-pod on the Spirit 100 has a bent shaft which is causing excessive vibration when I power up the motor. If you watch the videos you can see the video ‘wiggling’ occasionally, this is the cause.   I’m ordering a new shaft and bearings for this motor this week (probably Boca Bearing ceramics) since I also need to order a new shaft, bearing and prop-adapter set for my Twist 60′s Power 90 motor.  I’ll try to get some shots of those two motor repairs in case anyone is interested in ‘how to replace bearings and motor shafts’

Thanks for watching!

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Yesterday I began the process of learning to hover my RC helicopter inverted and made a video of the good parts of the 4 flights. I’ve been getting a lot more flying in lately with my Ace R/C Mini-Titan.

About a month ago I was flying a bit late and lost orientation of the heli and put it in. You’ll probably see lights on the heli here and there in the video, but I’ll make another post on those. The lights do help a lot when the sun goes down and it’s hard to get perspective.

The video below shows my progress with inverted hovering over four flights.  I have practiced this only for about 10 minutes on my Phoenix R/C flight simulator, but the sim just never feels right compared to the real thing, so I just decided to practice with the real thing.  The first and second flights are pretty rough but you can see a slow improvement over the duration of the video clip.  My goal is to be able to hover a complete flight (4:30 minutes) inverted.

My accumulated RC heli experience before attempting this is quite a few years of semi-sedate stuff. I’m competent with hovering, fast forward flight. I’m comfortable flipping the heli forwards and backwards, as well as side to side. I’ve rolled the heli while pulling up into a vertical climb (kind of like a stall climb with a plane) and while not totally comfortable with it I can hover nose in alright.

Last week I spent about an hour practicing inverted blow-outs where I flipped the heli and hammered negative collective to push the heli up into the air to try and get a feel for the collective when inverted and the responsiveness, as well as trying to remember the right way to punch the collective when inverted.

Overall I would say in less than 20 minutes of flying (4:30 minutes x 4 flights) I’ve made quite an improvement on inverted hovering.  There is plenty of room for improvement of course, but I think at this rate it will come quickly. The biggest part of learning new skills when flying models, and in fact doing most things is to find the time to put into actually flying or doing those things.

Once I get good at hovering inverted nose in, then I will spend some time working on hover inverted nose out as well.  Hopefully in a couple of months I’ll feel comfortable in all positions of upright and inverted.

The video is uploading right now, and I’m about to go test out my new FPV Glider. I’ve set this post to auto-post at about the time the video is complete.

Update: The video is here or embedded below

Feel free to share below if you’ve recently been trying out some new moves with your RC heli or airplane.

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I’ve intentionally blown a few Lithium Polymer R/C battery packs when they have reached their end of life.  Unfortunately while my Outrage XP25 2200mAh packs still power my rc helicopter, they are beginning to puff and I don’t trust the pack to not burst into flames while I’m in mid-air.   To alleviate the temptation I destroy the packs.  In the below video you can see an Outrage XP25 pack being burst into flames. I connected the pack to a jump-start pack and hit the on switch, the pack eventually burst into flames and combusted gloriously.  Enjoy!

Hard Link to Li-Poly Fire

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Last week I test flew the glider.  As you can see in the previous post “FPV Spirit 100 Inch Brushless Powered Glider Test Flights“, it flew pretty good.  The glider weighed in at 1990 grams with the radio, speed controller, motor, motor mast and battery (and other associated equipment). I had to add 136 grams of lead at the tip of the nose to bring it within CG balance.

I spent some time this weekend working on the glider to do the final conversions steps for First Person View flying use.  I ditched the old canopy, it was almost 100 grams by itself and while it looked nice, the plastic pilot, plastic lid and canopy frame were getting in the way of mounting equipment and they were old and starting to crack. I made a new canopy for the glider out of some 3/32″ balsa and 3/16″ balsa.

The new canopy only weighs around 60 grams so I saved a little weight there which is an important consideration when it comes time to balance the whole plane out again. I’ll be removing the lead weights in the nose which will gain me 136 grams, and by replacing the canopy I saved another 40 grams, so that gives me about 176- so far on the conversion (not counting the addition of the FPV equipment).

In the fuselage itself I built a platform above the elevator and rudder servo to support the Eagle Tree eLogger v3 and the OSD Pro, a servo line runs up to the front of the fuse which is the video line and the camera mount is secured to the nose of the aircraft.  I also made a bay that the battery will fit in, and a smaller platform up front for the GPS.  I am going to mount the barometric altimeter on the underside of the new canopy so that the numbers show through from the top and I may consider trying the barometric airspeed sensor with pitot tube on this model as well.

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Well, the new glider destined for FPV (First Person View) flight is ready.  I built a power-pod, and as you can see in the new video.  The power-pod is based on the Electrfily 35-36-1200kv Rimfire brushless motor that I had on the Great Planes Reactor Biplane.

I built the power-pod out of some 3/8″ light ply.  The main tower section is laminated 1/4″ ply to achieve a total 3/4″ ply or something like that. I used the Gorilla Glue urethane stuff for the lamination.  Then I laminated on the 2×3/8ths some smaller pieces shaped to the wing, using a Dremel to shape everything out.  It turned out good! I aimed for about 3-5 degrees inclination on the power pod, but it still noses down a bit when power is applied. I’m going to add a couple of spacers under the front of the mount to add a few degrees and see how that goes.

I flew this plane 3-4 times on the tests, but I forgot to blue loctite the screws.  That’s a bit of a mistake, the plane started up with the vibes in the 3rd/4th flight and I landed it early. Always remember to loctite your metal to metal fasteners or things might fall off in flight. It could have gotten pretty ugly.

You can watch this video on YouTube by clicking this link:  Great Planes Spirit 100 Inch Glider With Power Pod or watch it embedded below.

To check out the progress you can view my Spirit 100 Glider FPV Conversion Progress – New Canopy post, the Spirit 100 Glider – First FPV Flights – OT’s Discus Launch Glider post and of course please check out My YouTube Channel for my latest videos.

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I managed to smash up my FPV (First Person View) plane, the Reactor Biplane a couple of weeks ago.  I had just remounted the motor after I broke the mount on a previous FPV Flight(Video (new window)). So once I had the motor remounted I went to test fly the airplane. I didn’t want to fly FPV the first flight after a repair so I let one of the other club members wear the video goggles while I flew LOS (Line of Sight).  Unfortunately I accidentally grabbed a partially discharged pack from the battery containment unit.  Since I wasn’t wearing the goggles I couldn’t see the voltage and the pack died, the plane ended up crashing and getting destroyed.   After the crash I looked over at the guy wearing the goggles and he had both fists clenched like he was holding a flight control yoke.  I’m not sure if it broke him experiencing his first FPV crash.  I mean.. with FPV it looks like you really just fell out of the sky and crashed, but there is less physical damage to the pilot/co-pilot    Here’s the flight video including the FPV Crash.

Well! That was fun   Now it’s time to pick a new FPV aircraft.  I like the larger balsa planes. They have plenty of lift, power and the capability of carrying excess payload without suffering too much. Of course using a built up model for FPV means that crashing your plane generally causes damage that takes a bit more time to repair, etc. but that’s how it goes. There always seems to be a trade-off.

And now I present: The Great Planes Spirit 100 a 100″ wingspan glider kit manufactured by Great Planes.   There are two versions of this plane, the built up model that comes in the puzzle box, requires assembly, sanding, covering and finishing and the other is an ARF (Almost Ready to Fly) with a fiberglass fuselage. The non-ARF form of this model was thrust into my possession about a month ago at a local club meet.  People were apparently giving away planes that they didn’t want/need/plane to use so I got this.  It turns out the guy I got it from had purchased it as part of a larger collection but never flew it so now it makes it into my hands, no assembly needed.

As I mentioned the model has a 100″ wingspan, I can’t even fit the wing standing upright in my living room. There’s 3 servos in the wing, 2 for aileron and 1 controls the flaps. I had some HS-65MGs from the Reactor Bipe so I used those on the ailerons and I had an old wing servo, now missing it’s label (I think it is a Futaba) which I used for the flaps. I used normal sized servos for the elevator and rudder. A high torque Hitec for the elevator and a Futaba 3009 for the rudder.

The receiver is a Spektrum AR7000 with the satellite receiver.  I’ve had bad experience with my Airtronics 2.4 Ghz radio in FPV aircraft so I stick to the Spektrum for that purpose. Which is unfortunate, the Airtronics SD-10G is an awesome glider radio!

The Spirit 100 was originally set up for a hi-start type launching system but this isn’t quite my speed so on Friday and Saturday I built a ‘power pod’ for the glider.  I used the brushless motor from the Reactor Biplane and using some light ply I assembled a pod that sits atop of the wing. You can see the pod in the photos below.  The glider has plenty of room inside of the fuselage for an ESC (Electronic Speed Controller) and the Li-Poly battery which powers the motor.  Now I’ll be able to launch the glider by turning on the motor and throwing it rather than messing around with 200 feet of rubber surgical tubing as a giant rubber band!  The motor, mount, ESC and battery does add weight to the plane of course but not too much. As it was the plane had 160 grams of lead weight in the nose as this particular model always comes out tail heavy.

If the plane tests successfully without the FPV equipment I will mount all of the FPV equipment into the canopy and do some FPV gliding with it and the prop won’t interfere with the camera either.  It should be nice, IF all goes well

Here are a few photo’s of the Spirit 100 in my living room, hopefully this week I will have some photos of the plane assembled and possibly some flight video. This thing should float, though I don’t know if it will be able to thermal with the extra weight.

Related Posts

1. Reactor Bipe EP, Sky Fly 2, Hangar 9 Twist 60 (With Saito 1.15) (video)
2. Great Planes Spirit 100 Inch Glider With Power Pod
3. Spirit 100 Glider FPV Conversion Progress – New Canopy

As of last weekend I have made my first FPV flights. It was really amazing, big grins all around and well worth the time and effort. Video below!

This weekend was the first time I was able to fly in First-Person-View, also known as FPV. The basic premise if you haven’t read my other posts is that you mount a camera and video transmitter to your model and transmit the video to a receiving unit. The receiver then projects the image through the geeky looking goggles with video screens in them.

I wasn’t sure what to expect for my first FPV flight. I have flown R/C aircraft for a fair amount of time, but am by no means a pro, it’s just a hobby that I enjoy. I have also flown various standard flight simulators on the PC. Microsoft Flight Simulator being the one I used the most. In that regard I have a lot of experience flying a plane from the cockpit view. It turned out it was no problem at all!

My friend Ollie stood by to take over the controls in case anything happened to the video signal and my other friend Bryn monitored the video down-link and handled the video recorder. In these first stages I’m very cautious and concerned about failures of the system which may lead to a dangerous situation so it’s good to have others looking out and offering pilot assistance. Thanks guys!

On the first flight I caught a wheel on the grass and a friend had to move the plane back to the gravel runway. On the second attempt I took off. It was an instant ‘woohoo!’ moment and I got a bit disoriented at first. Aside from Google Earth I had never seen the field before.  After I flew around a bit and started to recognize landmarks it was much easier to know where I was in relation to everything.

I flew around quite a bit and experimented some, then as I saw my battery voltage getting low I decided to land the plane. I did one low pass down the runway to see what it felt like and it seemed pretty natural. The second time over the runway I intended to land it, and I did.  The plane was all in one piece and the landing, while a little longer than it needed to be, was all in one piece.

A little later in the afternoon I did a second flight. We forgot to start the recording right at the start of the flight, but what was recorded was pretty good!  There is quite a bit of noise. I taped the front of the microphone to try and reduce wind noise, but picked up a whistle somewhere. Also there is electronic interference. I will find a better location to place the microphone for future flights.

Here are the videos, the YouTube links are below in case the embedded player doesn’t work for you.  You can also click on the videos themselves to view them on YouTube and leave or see comments and like/dislike.

Reactor Biplane EP FPV Maiden

Second Reactor Bipe EP FPV Flight

Related Posts

1. Spirit 100 Glider – First FPV Flights – OT’s Discus Launch Glider
2. Reactor Bipe EP, Sky Fly 2, Hangar 9 Twist 60 (With Saito 1.15) (video)
3. Great Planes Spirit 100 Inch Glider With Power Pod

If you follow this blog you may have seen the pictures and videos of my Hangar 9 Twist 60 that I posted. I originally built the Twist with a Saito 1.15 nitromethonal engine and it ran pretty good. When I got into the hobby as a teenager, and up till 3 or 4 years ago I had mostly nitromethanol planes and helicopters. These days most all of my stuff is electric. I like electric and it had become much more reasonable in regards to cost and available hardware. With electric it’s easy to just go out for a quick flight on the smaller stuff, but I’ve never done a mid-size electric plane.

After dealing with the oil slop mess and tuning and having to carry a completely seperate set of tools with me to the field when I take the nitro plane, I decided to convert it over to electric.

REMOVED: Throttle Servo, Fuel Tank, Saito 1.15 4-stroke

ADDED: E-Flite Power 90 Brushless Motor (1800 watts max), Castle Creations ICE 80 HV Electronic Speed Control, 2 * Rhino 4S 14.4 volt 3.7Ah batteries (in series for 28.8 volts), Castle Creations BEC Pro.

The Twist 60 came with the aluminum standoffs for the big brushless motor, as it comes as a nitro/electric kit. I’ve never seen an electric Twist 60 on YouTube or elsewhere, so I wasn’t really what to expect for performance.

I did the conversion on Sunday, tested the motor and batteries on Monday and did the first test flight this Tuesday.  Below are the two videos from the motor test, and the test flight. One of my flying buds shot the video for me on Tuesday, it’s hard to video and fly at the same time

Twist 60 Electric Conversion Motor Test

Twist 60 Electric Conversion First Flight

Related Posts

1. Radio Control Hangar 9 Twist 60 and Work on the Front Sidewalk
2. Reactor Bipe EP, Sky Fly 2, Hangar 9 Twist 60 (With Saito 1.15) (video)
3. Upgraded Mini-Titan RC Helicopter and Eagle Tree Flight Data Recorder Results

I installed the FPV (First Person View) video and electronic gear in the Guan Li Catalina this weekend. It took a bit of time to install all the parts and then some friends and I took a quick test flight on Sunday evening.

Here’s some of the stuff I installed in the Catalina, all the pictures can be seen in larger versions by clicking on the gallery collection at the bottom of the post.

In the Catalina Itself: I used most of the Eagle Tree components inside of the plane. The only thing I left out was the airspeed monitor, thinking GPS would provide enough information. The GPS seemed to do fairly well, but I will try the standalone air speed monitor with pitot tubes and all in the future. It’s kind of a neat looking probe to add to the plane anyways.
Futaba R149 DP 72Mhz R/C PCM Receiver
Eagle Tree eLogger V3
Eagle Tree OSD Pro
Eagle Tree GPS v4
Eagle Tree Barometric Altimeter (more accurate than GPS)
WDR600 Camera
DPCAV 900Mhz/500mw Audio/Video Transmitter

FPV Ground Station: I made a simple lash-up ground station as I’m still waiting for the Eagle Eyes to become available for antenna tracking, and then I will need to build an actual FPV ground station.  In the meantime I attached the 900Mhz video receiver to the back of the patch antenna with Velcro and connected the patch antenna to it. I then made an adapter from the Ultra Deans connector to the proper barrel power connector used for the receiver to attach the battery to the receiver.

Using more Velcro I attached one of my older Outrage XP 3s1p 2200 Li-Poly battery packs to provide the ~12 volts power to the receiver.  The Trimersion video goggles connect to the Audio/Video ports on the 900Mhz video receiver. The video goggles have their own Ni-Mh 8 cell battery pack (9.6 volts) powering a 7805 linear voltage regulator I added to them. Unfortunately the portable video recorder did not arrive until today, so there is no recorded FPV video of the test flight.

DPCAV 8dBi 900Mhz Patch Antenna (It’s actually an l-com unit, but unless you buy in bulk, it’s cheaper from DCPAV)
DPCAV 900Mhz Generic Receiver (This is the one I modded with the new SAW filter)
2200mAh 3s1p 11.1v Li-Poly pack (12.6v fully charged)
Custom Ultra Deans to Barrel Connector adapter
Modified Trimersion video goggles w/7805 linear voltage regulator
Generic 2500mAh 7.6v Ni-Mh battery pack for goggles.

I tested the setup indoors and all was working well, but I needed to test it at the field. My friends Ollie and Bryn went out with me. Bryn shot some ground footage of the Catalina flying, while Ollie wore the Trimersion video headset to make sure that the video stayed clear throughout the flight. I flew the plane, of course It was a extremely gusty day, and we only achieved one flight on the Catalina for just a few minutes before I brought the airplane down. Ollie said that the video in the Trimersion headset looked great throughout most of the slight with only a minor fade-out of the video signal at a couple of points.

More testing will be done before I try FPV myself, and even then it will probably be with an eyes-on pilot and a spare radio attached with a trainer cord for redundancy. If I loose the video or control of the airplane in FPV for some reason the backup pilot can take over control of the aircraft.

Related Posts

1. FPV Plane Test 1 – Radio Controlled Catalina by Guan Li
2. More Required Equipment for FPV Flying Has Arrived
3. What do I need for FPV Flying – A Comprehensive List of My Own Choices

The rest of the plane side FPV equipment arrived in the mail today.  If you click on the picture below you can see each component of the airborne system with labels. Here are some more detailed descriptions of the hardware starting at the top left.

HK = Hobby King.com   DPCAV = Digital Products Company A/V

Half-wave dipole antenna: (DPCAV) (included as part of the TX905-Pro transmitter kit)
900 Mhz low pass filter: (DPCAV) (also included as part of the TX905-Pro transmitter kit)
900Mhz / 500mw Audio/Video Transmitter: (DPCAV) (The TX905-Pro tranmitter)
WDR600 Camera: 550 Line Sony Super HAD II with OSD programing from HobbyWireless.com
Eagle Tree GPS v4: (HK) – Integrated with Eagle Tree OSD + eLogger v3
Airspeed Expander: (HK) – Adds airspeed to Eagle Tree OSD + eLogger (pitot tube not shown) (airspeed function also provided by GPS)
Altimeter Expander: (HK) – Adds altitude to Eagle Tree OSD + eLogger (altitude function also provided by GPS)
eLogger v3: Had already (HK) – eLogger logs flights and provides many monitoring features
OSD Pro: (HK) – Provides an On Screen Display with info from sensors, eLogger and GPS. Overlays video onto the video sent back to earth
Battery: (HK) (DPCAV) - Turnigy 500mAh 11.1v 3s Li-Poly battery pack (2 of these, one shown)

I already had the eLogger v3 from a couple of years ago when I was monitoring the Mini-Titans power system. Since I now have an ICE electronic speed controller(ESC) on the mini-titan, this left the eLogger v3 sitting in a box for a few months.

The Altimeter expander and the Airspeed expander are not absolutely necessary if you have the GPS module. They are nice in that they can run standalone without the OSD, and after a flight they will blink out the maximum values on a single character display. They will be easy to move plane to plane for curiosities sake.

I spent a couple of hours this evening setting up all of the components to test them. The eLogger v3 and OSD-Pro and GPS both needed firmware updates which were easily done with the USB cable that comes with the eLogger v3 and the instructions are clear. The software for Eagle Tree is available from their website. Some of the features of the OSD are setup with on screen programming from the RC transmitter. You attach two spare channels to the Aux 1 and Aux 2 inputs and uses switches on the radio to navigate and enter data. The layout of the OSD display and programmable alarms are set through the Eagle Tree Flight Recorder software through the USB port.

The GPS would not link up inside the house the first time I tried, so I took it outside. Once outside the GPS module found the satellites in less than a minute. I then came back inside and the GPS would be in constant contact with 4-6 satellites while displaying information the OSD display.

I’ve tested all of the components and they seem to work great. I will be working on installing them into the Guan-Li Catalina over the weekend and hopefully I will have everything in place to try a non-FPV video down-link flight first and once that is done I will have a buddy fly with the main control, while flying FPV with a radio set up in trainer mode. This way if I get in trouble he will have constant Line-Of-Sight(LOS) view of the airplane and be able to recover it (hopefully!).

Related Posts

1. What do I need for FPV Flying – A Comprehensive List of My Own Choices
2. Guan Li Catalina First FPV Flight (sorta)
3. Reactor Biplane with FPV Hardware Flys

I’ve been trying to find a plane to use for FPV R/C flying (First Person View) that is not among the ‘standards’ used by many people such as the Multiplex Twinstar or EasyStar.  I have ordered ordered a few planes and I’ll cover them one by one as I get each one flyable and tested. The plane I’m covering today is the Guan Li Catalina. This plane is kind of a weird ‘cheap foam’ reproduction of the Great Planes PBY Catalina balsa model.  For FPV stuff I don’t want to invest in high quality kits and components as the possibility of a crash is fairly high.

Here are the specifications, from the website, for what is included with the kit:

Manufacturer: Guan Li
Name: Catalina RC Seaplane
Wingspan: 1380mm (54.3″)
Length: 880mm (34.6″)
Weight: 780g(27.5 oz)
Motors: 2 x 2410-size 1200KV brushless motors
Speed Controller: 25A Brushless Speed Controller (actually included 2 x 20 Amp Brushless Speed Controllers)
Servos: 3x10g according to the Nitroplane specs. It actually has 4 servos, 1 rudder + 1 elevator + 2 ailerons)
Battery: 11.1V 15C 1500mAh Li-Poly w/Charger (Actually included a 11.1V 20C 1500mAh RFI Li-Poly Battery)
Battery Charger: Guan Li Li-Po Balancing Charger (this one overcharged the battery and caused it to get hot!)
Control System: 4 channel transmitter and receiver (these are short range junk)
Radio Control Range: 1000 feet (300m) (as I said short range junk)
Price: $129.95

The plane is advertised as “100% READY TO FLY!”,  this is incorrect. Further down in the smaller print it says the plane is 90% completed, this is correct.  The plane needs to be assembled, however it’s large modular components and this is not too difficult for most. You can’t just pull this out of the box and fly it, though, as the product page at Nitroplanes promotes on the top.

Assembly of the Guan Li Catalina

General
The plane major components went together without much difficulty. The instructions are very short on detail and quality and I believe this product would benefit with enhanced instructions.  From a construction perspective I would suggest this kit for someone who has experience putting together ARF (Almost Ready to Fly) models as some knowledge is needed that is not imparted in the manual to get the best results and avoid possibly dangerous situations.   I used foam safe CA on the construction instead of the ‘Foam Glue’ contact cement which was included with the kit.

Modifications
A lot of the assembly of the Guan Li Catalina is left up to your imagination. I mounted the motor onto the motor mount sticks and tested them with the speed controllers before gluing the nacelles together. I zip tied the brushless speed controllers and their amply long wires to the motor mount sticks. Once the nacelles are attached you will have a hard time accessing the internals of the engine pods (as seen in the photo below).  Make sure that one motor is set for reverse rotation as there are 2 types of propellers included. One for clockwise rotation, and the other for counter-clockwise rotation. To change the direction of a brushless motor you swap any two of the three motor leads.

I plan on hand launching the Catalina so I did not install the outboard wing floats or the water rudder. The outboard floats are light and flimsy and would probably break off quickly on grass landings. I have seen a video on YouTube where they break off on a rough water landing.

I highly recommend that you use foam safe CA to secure the aileron control horns on to the ailerons. These horns are sloppy in the holes and I suspect you would loose adequate aileron control in just one or two flights, if not sooner.

I did not glue the center wing cover onto the wing.  If you do, make sure to punch holes in the plastic sheet for the wing screws so that you will be able to take the wing off for transportation or repairs.

It is good practice with all models to test fit all the parts before actually applying any glue, you may find that you need to make some minor changes, sand or trim to get the pieces to fit properly; You do not want to find this out AFTER you have put glue on things.

Radio Installation
The radio included with the system is about standard quality for these low cost model kits. The advertised range is 1000 feet / 300 meters. For this type of plane with the size of motors included I feel this radio falls quite short of of being suitable for this model. I removed the stock receiver and replaced it with a Futaba R149DP full range PCM receiver. Control of the aircraft is now done through a Futaba 9CHP Super.

I used the servos included with the kit. They seem adequate and up to the job. The kit advertisement says that it comes with 3 servos. It actually included 4 of them; 2 for the ailerons, one for the elevator and one for the rudder.  The air rudder has very limited range of motion and I feel it’s mostly included to control the attached water rudder more than anything. Actual usefulness of the air rudder in the air is not so good.

I set the control surfaces for high deflection values, and then configured the Futaba radio with 35% exponential on all of the surfaces. These settings worked out well in actual flight. The exponential setting results in smaller movements near the centers of the control sticks, with a higher movement out towards the edges to get full deflection if needed/desperate.

Note on the Brushless Motor Speed Controllers
The speed controllers are both the same type and model number but they had different throttle ranges. When connected through the included Y harness one motor would start well before the other motor, and the speeds of the motors were off by over 1000RPM. I removed the Y harness and connected one speed controller to Channel 3(the default throttle channel) and the other speed controller to Channel 5. Using a programmable mix in the radio I was able to make up for the difference in motor speeds at mid throttle. There is still a greater differences at higher throttles but with more time in the programming menus I will should be able to tune to within 100RPM throughout the throttle range.

NOTE: Someone posted to the comments on the YouTube video I posted that you can reset the speed controllers with a throttle stick sequence, and this will cause them to both track the throttle properly, totally avoiding the whole twin motor mixing scenario above. I wish I had found this information beforehand, but it worked out alright.  You can find the documentation for the included brushless motor speed controllers online, but apparently not in the kit.

Note on Li-Poly Battery Charger
The included battery charger is (no surprise here)  low-quality. It would be nice if it worked properly as it is a balance charger and would keep a first-time Li-Poly pilot from having to also buy a suitable charger. I bought several kits and have two of these chargers. After trying out the first one, I discovered that it did not stop charging the battery at the proper level, instead it overcharged the battery and caused it to get hot. This is a dangerous situation and could have resulted in a fire if it was not being closely watched. I would recommend that you DO NOT use the included charger, and instead buy a charger from a quality manufacturer. I use the ElectryFly Triton chargers (I have a Triton, and a Triton 2 EQ) and they work well and reliably, there are also many other good brands and models out there to choose from.

First and Second Flights

Taking Off
I flew the model for the first time today with the help of my friend Ollie for hand launching and taking the video of the flights. The plane is VERY WELL powered with the two included brushless motors and hand launching the aircraft proved to be no issue at all.  Throttle up and throw it straight.

Flying
Average relaxing flight can be achieved at 1/3rd throttle and the plane flies fairly fast at full throttle.  The plane is very light and due to the wind it did kick around a little bit in the air, but overall it handled surprisingly well. I was half expecting disaster, but it flew two flights reliably and predictably.   Turning from upwind flight into downwind flight it was well behaved. Turning from downwind flight into upwind flight caused the inboard wing to dip quite a bit, but not uncontrollably.  This can be seen in the included video below.

Landing
The wing of this plane has an under-cambered airfoil which can provide extra lift at lower airspeeds. This plane lands at very low speeds, but if you try to push it too slow, the wing will tip stall and fall off to one side. With this lightweight foam I would try to keep the speed up at least a little bit as a wingtip first landing could be disastrous to the Catalina.

Here’s a video of the flight so you can see what it looks like flying and what to expect. I would certainly not recommend flying in too much wind if the Catalina is your first or one of your first planes. It’s not really a good first plane, but I know with the prices it’s hard for some people to resist.

Guan Li Catalina test flight use this link if the embedded player does not work for you (right click it, then select ‘Open in New Tab’ or ‘Open in New Window’)

Summary
I was not expecting this to be a ‘high quality’ kit for US$129.95 and with everything included. However, I did suspect it would be a cheap airplane I could use for FPV projects and have a little fun with.  With some modifications I believe it will be suitable for the purpose. I think if you have some airplane building and flying experience this would be a good kit to play with without a heavy investment. And if you’re looking for a first electric plane after playing with gliders or nitro models, this is certainly fun to fly and mess around with.

The amount of modeling knowledge required to make this plane fly well is somewhere in the intermediate range.

Positives:
Low Price
Everything included (motors, speed controls, servos, props, battery, charger)
Mostly pre-assembled, very easy to finalize the assembly with foam safe CA
Flies relatively well and predictably
Easy hand launches (do not plan to water launch, I wanted a ‘skid landing’ dual motor plane)
Lightweight
Plenty of extra power

Negatives:
The plane is not very durable to ‘adverse flight conditions’ such as bad landings, hard landings, etc. in short it’s fragile.
Included battery charger was defective, visible solder short on the board.
Included transmitter and receiver are very short range 1000 feet(300 meters) and are not suitable for large field flying.
Instructions are not as detailed as they should be
Specs on web site do not match the kit (the included components are better than specified, actually)
Ineffective rudder

This plane was purchased from NitroPlanes.com, you can see the specifications by clicking on the link (opens in new window)

Related Posts

1. Guan Li Catalina First FPV Flight (sorta)
2. I wrecked the Reactor Bipe, Time For a New (used) FPV Plane
3. Analyzing Your Radio Controlled Helicopters Current Consumption

Hi folks, I’m taking a week vacation finally. It should be great to get some away time and recharge the batteries so to speak. I’m planning on painting some of the house, flying some R/C and working on the FPV system some more. With so much time available there should be quite a few blog posts.

I finished the mods to the Trimersion video headset for the FPV and took the pictures, I just need to post them up. I have a couple of planes on the way. I got some good tips for painting the house from a professional painter who is actually professional with the work he does.  There will be some stuff about painting an old house, some stuff about general R/C flying and some FPV stuff so it should be a good week all around!

Unlike some folks, when I take a vacation I hang around the house. I don’t think that planning out and doing complex things during one’s time off is a beneficial thing, for myself, but I know everyone has their own idea of what they find relaxing and everything else. No matter what you do, do something that will build good memories, or alternately just sleep for eternity till you have to go back to work.

The weather for the next few days is supposed to be beautiful out here!

I hope to have some great stuff to share with everyone.  Take care and be well!

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1. Weather Slowing Down New Front Sidewalk
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Hello folks, this is my introduction to my FPV configuration and some general FPV information. As you saw in the last post a nice video showing on-board recorded video, and also FPV video.  I found that particular video after deciding on doing FPV and ordering some equipment, there are many great FPV videos on the net on Vimeo and You Tube.   FPV is First Person View, which means you fly the model aircraft, boat or car as if you were actually inside of it. I have done on-board video before with a helicopter and camera rig. One person flew the helicopter while the other ‘flew’ the camera mechanical undercarriage and shot video but never FPV flying, it should be fun!

NOTE: all links in this post open in new windows or tabs, you will not be lead away from this site.

The systems usually consist of the following components in addition to the normal R/C and power equipment.

• Small video camera on the vehicle
• Video/Audio transmitter on the vehicle (usually 900Mhz, 1.3Ghz, 2.4Ghz or 5.8Ghz)
• A compact On Screen Display (OSD) which merges vehicle information onto the video such as GPS info, battery info, motor, temperature, signal strength, battery consumption, etc.
• Video receiver (sometimes two attached to two different antenna types for better reception)
• Video display (television, video goggles, laptop, etc)

With these basic components above you can build and FPV flying/driving system. More advanced systems include features such as the following.

• Head tracking for video goggles.  The camera on the plane will pan and tilt in response to the movement of your head so you can ‘look around’
• Diversity video switch or diversity receiver for switching between to the receiver which has the strongest signal
• Digital video recorder for recording your flights, could be a purpose built DVR or a laptop with capture device
• GPS system for OSD. The GPS allows the OSD to show location, altitude and speed. Some OSDs allow the GPS to be used for limited autopilot to return the aircraft to home and orbit in local airspace if radio signal to controls are lost and also for setting way-points and displaying them on screen like a satnav for a car, sort of!
• Autopilot systems for planes are available on more advanced systems, but this moves into UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) territory and is not necessarily limited to first person piloting.

As you can see there are many options available. For my personal system I have gone with the following equipment (prices in USD on 3/25/2010)

Main Video Equipment

• WDR-600 video camera from hobbywireless.com $139
• 900Mhz 500mw Video/Audio transmitter from dpcav.com (requires HAM / Amateur Radio license, see note below on HAM license) from DPCAV.COM $139
• 900Mhz A/V Receiver, Dual Output from DPCAV.COM $75
• Trimersion Video Goggles from ‘SafeSeller’ on eBay (to be heavily modified) $100
• Digital Video Recorder (DVR) not decided yet ~$100

Flight Data / On Screen Display (OSD) Equipment

• Eagle Tree OSD-Pro from hobbyking.com $81 ( I already have an Eagle Tree eLogger v3 for my electric aircraft which integrates with the OSD-Pro well, so I went for this OSD there are other OSDs available for various prices)
• Eagle Tree GPS V4 for integrated GPS functions with OSD-Pro from HobbyKing.com $80
• Eagle Tree altitude microsensor V3 from HobbyKing (GPS provides this functionality, but nice for non-GPS setups) $30
• Eagle Tree Airspeed Expander V3 from HobbyKing (GPS provides this functionality, but again, nice for non-GPS setups) $38

Video Transmitter and Flight Data Equipment Batteries

• 2 x Turnigy 500mAh 3s1p Lithium-Ion 11.1v 20C battery packs from DPCAV $13/ea (cheaper at HobbyKing for $8/ea but I was combining shipping from DPCAV. International HobbyKing shipping can be expensive)

Test Aircraft

• 2 x HobbyKing “Skyfun Jet w/Brushlet Motor” this is a knockoff of the small foam Funjet as seen in the video in the previous post but has received good reviews for crashable FPV fun. $64/ea

Additional Flight and Video Receiver Batteries from HobbyKing (for existing heli/biplane and new Skyfun jets)

• 1 x Turnigy 1800mAh 11.1v 3s1p 40C pack $16
• 3 x Turnigy 2200mAh 11.v 3s1p 30C pack $17/ea (1 for video Rx and also planes and helis)
• 1 x Turnigy 2200mAh 14.8 4s1p 30C pack $24

Progress So Far

I have received the video components (camera + accessories, 900Mhz 500mw video/audio transmitter, dual output receiver, Trimersion goggles) from DPCAV, HobbyWireless and the video goggles from ‘SafeSeller’ on eBay. All items arrived very quickly in good condition.

I experimented with the video goggles watching movies on my DVD/Blu-Ray player and also played with them a bit on the PC in BattleField Bad Company 2 (videos contain bad language). The head tracker works like ‘mouselook’ so it worked pretty well with that game, but ultimately the resolution on these affordable goggles is only 640×480 and it is very hard to make out targets you are shooting at.

Tonight I started hacking into the Trimersion goggles for my purposes. I will post a separate blog entry on these goggles and my progress hacking those over this weekend.

There is quite a bit of good information about them on RCGroups.com (create an account and search on ‘Trimersion’). Information such as hacking them for your own radio equipment, stereo (3D) vision, improving the existing built in video/audio Tx/Rx for you FPV purposes, if you wish, and so on. There are many other types of goggles of varying price as well and if you search for ‘FPV video goggles” on Google you will get many results. Another very good resource for FPV Information is FPV-COMMUNITY.COM there are many European posters who work with limited output power but have great solutions, great airplanes and a ton of great FPV videos. Make sure you bookmark the site.

HAM / Amateur Radio License (USA)

There are FCC regulations regarding all of the RF equipment you use. It is particular important to note that some video downlink transmitters will require an Amateur Radio license for use. Video transmitters which offer multiple channels to select from may not be permitted in the US since they can operate outside of the amateur radio bands(frequency ranges). You will find many dealers in the US only sell single channel video transmitters.  Several years ago a dealer was cited by the FCC for selling Unauthorized RF devices.

It is your responsibility to determine if you require a license from the FCC in order to transmit on the frequencies you will be using, at the power levels you will be using. I will also cover more of this in a future post.

There is good news however, the Technician class license should be all you need to use higher power transmitters. To qualify you need to go to a local testing location with a drivers license or equivalent ID and $15 and take the test. I would highly suggest doing some studying on the material first though. The questions involve general knowledge questions, questions about electronics and questions about RF and basic practices. Most people should be able to pass these if they study. You do not need to know morse code.  Once you pass the test your information will be sent to the FCC and your HAM callsign assigned to you, once you’ve got all that done, then you can legitimately use the equipment. $15 bucks to legitimately do higher power FPV is a good deal. This also opens you up to using different bands for your R/C Control radios and use specialized equipment without risking trouble.

While it is quite possible to buy and use the equipment without proper licensing, it is also illegal and threatens the general hobby and continued availability of this equipment to hobbyists. Those who are not able to self-regulate within a hobby risk the government taking over the regulation and making things very difficult for everyone who wants to explore this part of the hobby.

For more information please go to the “Amateur Radio Relay League – the national association for Amateur Radio” web site to find study resources, sites with sample tests and other information you may be seeking.

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Hey folks, I just wanted to share a fun flying video I found while sitting at home with ANOTHER wicked cold in as many months. This video is of a turbine powered Eurofighter model being chased by a FunJet with a FPV (First Person View) video down-link so the pilot can fly it like he’s actually sitting inside the plane. There are cameras on the Eurofighter which provide the HD portion of the video. When the screen switches to the 4:3 lower quality video that is the first person view of the Funjet that is chasing the Eurofighter.

FPV – Funjet Chasing Eurosport from Gaby on Vimeo.

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This is just a quick post about the Heli-Max Novus CP R/C Helicopter I picked up the other day. It’s a pretty great tiny helicopter so I wanted to share it with you folks.

I hope every had a great Christmas and New Years this year and kept plenty warm.  Things were good here and I did a little after the holidays shopping as well.  I picked up the Novus CP from my local hobby shop in Kingston and was admittedly an ‘impulse’ buy.

The kit is sold as Ready-to-Fly’ (RTF) and almost everything you need to fly is included. It comes with a 6 channel 2.4Ghz programmable transmitter, spare parts. The only extra thing you need to get flying is a set of 8 AA batteries for the transmitter. It’s a full collective-pitch helicopter with an idle-up switch on the transmitter.

The battery for the helicopter is included, it’s a single cell Li-Poly 400mAh battery which uses an ‘HMX’ style connector. I’ve not seen this type of connector before but it may be more common with little electric aircraft. The battery seems to take between 20-30 minutes to charge completely and you should charge it right out of the box.

The Novus CP  is tiny, if you look at it compared to my Mini-Titan 450, you can probably grasp how small it really is.  The Mini-Titan in itself is a smaller electric helicopter compared to nitro-methane powered or gasoline powered helicopters that I used to fly.

The setup is pretty clean. There’s a small brushed motor powering the main rotor, the head is controlled by three nano-sized servos in an eCCPM configuration, there are no complex linkages in this little guy.

The tail rotor uses an even smaller motor.  There’s no pitch control on the tail rotor as the motor just changes direction back and forth instead.

The receiver, motor speed control and gyro are built together into one module which sits at the front of the helicopter. When you power up the heli, it centers the gyro so you should do that on a flat surface to ensure the tail rotor operates properly.

There are additional ports for tail rotor output and main motor ESC output if you decide to upgrade it to a brushless system later. Heli-Max does sell a lot of upgrades for this such as brushless motors, and CNC machined head components if you like hop-ups or bling.

The helicopter flies pretty good in it’s stock configuration, you should tighten the blades a little bit or it will ‘orbit’ while you’re hovering and other things. Once you get it a couple of feet off the ground the flight stabilizes as you’re not flying through the rotor wash.

This helicopter is a bit more work to keep in the air than larger size helicopters but it’s not extremely twitchy like some other micro-sized helis I have flown. I would not recommend it as a first helicopter, it seems the smaller these things get, the more work they are to keep in the air.

The radio is also programmable as well, although it requires you to remove a cover, flip a switch and then use the two knobs on it’s face to set new values. Once you have set the new values, you turn the switch back.  This allows you to adjust the throttle and pitch curves, the hover throttle, exponential(affects all controls) and other things you would expect to find in a helicopter radio. I was somewhat surprised by all the features.  Additionally since this is a full CP (Collective-Pitch) helicopter the radio also has an Idle-Up switch which will allow you to do a lot of the inverted tricks and some level of 3D flying as well.

I don’t have a large enough indoor space at home to try any stunts or 3D type maneuvers with, but I will try it in the warehouse at work next week.

For the price this is a very good deal, considering it comes with programmable radio as well.  It also includes a spare set of rotor blades and a spare one-piece tail rotor in the box. The manual is fairly straight forward about repairing the helicopter and changing the settings as well.  There is a manual update on the Heli-Max site, which is in references to tightening the blades before flying.

However fun this is it is considered an older generation of model product, so you should not pay a premium price for it.

There are newer versions of this heli out under the Walkera name, the original manufacturer, that can be had for a fair price with newer features, such as the dual brushless motors and other things included for pretty great prices. If you can get this kit as a reasonable discount I would recommend it.

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