You can see the Labor Day RC Heli Video by clicking the link to the left (or embedded below!)  More below the.. fold(?)

My helicopter is the Ace RC Mini-Titan 450 with the white canopy and LED lighting on it.  It’s got a Scorpion 2221-8 brushless motor on a stock Mini-Titan frame. (The only upgrades are the motor/ESC,  metal head block, mixing arms and the carbon fiber blades).  I’m running an Airtronics SD-10G radio with the 8 channel Rx, LT2100 gyro, Castle Creations 50ICE and HG-65mg servos for cyclic/pitch on the head and a Futaba 9257 for the tail.  Most of my packs are Turnigy 2200′s.  I have 1 Outrage battery pack left, and it still outputs a lot of power but is puffed like crazy and doesn’t balance well.

Ollies heli is a T-Rex 450 with carbon fiber side frames, an aluminum upper with a custom OT Model Fab upper bearing support for the motor.  He’s running a flybarless setup with the Skookum SK-720 flybarless module which is pretty awesome.  He’s running a Scorpion 2221-6 with a Hyperion ESC.  He’s reported the tail kicking out a few times, but I’m sure he’ll get it sorted it and overall the response is awesome.  He’s running a JR 8103 with a Spektrum 2.4Ghz module on it as well, and some INOtech metal gear servos for the cyclic/pitch. His machine is a freaking monster for a 450 and it’s gotta be seen to be believed.

Both helis are running the same carbon fiber rotor blades which are less than $20 a pair.  Ollie is running around 3200 RPM on the rotor and I’m running about 2500 on the rotor according to our heli-nut friends from HeliFlightCenter who are local and a couple of good guys.

The plane you see occasionally is Ollie’s ‘Tiny’ and older model which he flies with great skill and seems to enjoy quite a bit pushing it to it’s limits. I don’t know the exact specs but it runs a tiny brushless motor (pinky sized thickness) on a geared prop, it gets long flights and looks great!

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!

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.

Hard Link to Li-Poly Fire

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.

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.

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

I’ve done a few flights with the equipment and recording the video on the ground, but I have not flown it in actual FPV yet. The first flight was earlier last week, and while things worked pretty good, there was a problem with Motor/ESC interfering with the video camera or video trasmitter signal. I had been using one battery for everything in the plane. A couple of days later I started using a separate 500mah 11.1 volt battery for the camera and video Tx and everythin cleaned up quite well.

On the second flight (the one shown in the video below) I forgot to wait for the Eagle Tree V4 GPS to lock-in enough satellites. It seems like it has a little difficulty doing this near the camera and Tx so I will probably move the GPS unit back to the tail feathers. After the nose-over landing the GPS locks in enough satellites to provide usable information.

Most of the FPV Equipment is crammed in under the canopy of the Reactor Bipe along with the barometric altimeter. The battery stuck to the side of the plane powers the camera and the video transmitter only.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pPQhHJvcJo and the URL if the embedded player doesn’t work for you.

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

Here’s some of the stuff I installed, 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

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 need to build an actual ground station.  In the meantime I attached the 900Mhz receiver to the back of the patch antenna with Velcro and connected the antenna to it. I then made an adapter from Ultra Deans to the proper barrel power connector used for 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 goggles connect to the A/V ports on the receiver and have their own Ni-Mh 8 cell battery pack (9.6 volts) powering a 7805 linear voltage regulator I added to them. Unfortunately the ground recorder did not arrive until today, so there is no 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 plane flying, while Ollie wore the headset to make sure that the video stayed clear throughout the flight. I flew the plane of course. It was a very very gusty day, and we only achieved one flight for just a few minutes before I brought the plane down. Ollie said that the video looked great throughout most of the slight with only a minor fade-out 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. If I loose it in FPV for some reason the backup pilot can take over the plane.

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!).

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

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 is left up to your imagine. 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 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.  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.

I plan on hand launching this plane 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 short time.

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 or trimming 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 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 on 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 brushless motors and hand launching was no issue at all.

Flying
Average relaxing flight can be achieved at 1/3rd throttle and the plane flies fairly fast at full throttle.  The plane is light and due to the wind it did kick around a little bit, 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, it 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.

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

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:
Central wing pylon does not seem very strong at all. Definetly use the wing support struts.
Included battery charger was defective, visible solder short on the board.
Motor controllers do not have the same throttle range, requiring a computer radio to balance power output of the motors
Included transmitter and receiver are very short range 1000 feet(300 meters) and are not suitable for large field flying.
Foam material is thin in spots and is very easy to ‘bruise’
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)

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!

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.

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 trasmitter.

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 helis 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.

I’m glad I went, we got a couple of flights in each in about an hour and a half’s time.  The field was deserted as is to be expected in the cold weather. There are very few ‘hardcore’ all weather fliers out there.  In past years I’ve flown in the middle of snow-storms with my friends. We took turn shooting video of each other flying. Ollie took his Cypher 3D 450 sized helicopter and I took my GP Reactor Bipe EP and my Mini-Titan 450 sized helicopter.

Ollie had these blue rubber gloves that he said helped keep your hands a bit warmer, while still allowing you to fly.  It was around 28F out, so I decided to give them a try.  They do work somewhat better than bare skin, so if you see ‘smurf hands’ in the videos, that’s the deal there.

The Mini-Titan needs some more work, so I just packed it up rather than risking fate, but flew the GP Reactor Bipe a couple of times.

For people who can’t use the built in player you can see the videos of me Here and Ollie Here and for the rest you can view the videos below.

Then we froze and went home, the end!

The flights on the GP Reactor Biplane were excellent, it has always flown really well since we built it (Bryn helped put it together) and aside from one minor mistake of mine on the first flight it’s been pretty reliable. I will note that grass is a bit tough on the landing gear and it’s possible you will rip the wheels off if the grass isn’t short, etc.  Below is a video of the Reactor. This flight was pretty boring overall, I did explore a bit more into low speed low altitude flight and other things later in the day and may add some more video of that.

We also took Bryn’s Sky Fly 2 up a couple of times, the stock charger was junk and hadn’t actually charged the batteries one bit. I charged them up on my Triton 2 and they worked alright, they may just need a little conditioning before they charge right on the included charger.  On the first flight we attached a tiny camera to the leading edge of the wing and recorder the flight, and Bryn recorded part of the flight from the ground, so there’s a nice Picture in Picture effect.  The elevator and rudder controls on the Sky Fly 2 are a bit weak by default because they are tuned down for beginners, but once it’s in the air it flies alright.   Here’s the video from the micro-cam and the HD camcorder on the ground. Check it out! That’s one of my flying buddies throwing the plane.

We also had a visit from a possibly ill groundhog.  Probably rabies or distemper or something. It just ran in circles continuously and was not afraid for it’s life from humans, etc.  So here’s the video of that.   Fortunately it did not seem like it wanted to eat my planes, so that was good.

The Twist 60 was misbehaving, with this design the tail feathers are just bolted onto the tail of the airplane, sort of like they do it with the large scale aircraft.  After a couple flights of porpoising it started to get pretty annoying but I thought maybe it was just controls or the center of gravity (CG) set improperly. On the third flight the plane stuffed into the tall unmowed grass twice before it even got off the ground, and then the engine wouldn’t start. I decided to call it quits for that plane for the day as a ‘sign’.  Which is good.  As I was disassembling the Twist 60 I discovered that the horizontal stabilizer was actually loose in it’s saddle which was causing the elevator to move up and down as it shifted.  If I had flown it again it’s quite possible the horizontal stabilizer would have flown off of the plane, or at least cause a major control problem leading to a crash.  I have since epoxied the tail feathers onto the plane as I don’t need to remove them anytime in the forseable future.  Hopefully this next weekend will be good so I can try this routine again.

I do however have plenty of time to work on the front sidewalk and build a radio controlled airplane, go figure!  The plane is a good break from the rc helicopter.  I’ve been getting that back into flying shape too, but for some reason I have a lot of flutter on the rotor at high RPMs. I need to diagnose that this week sometime and figure out what is going on there.  The setup is the same as it was before, the only difference is the blades and a different radio.

Hobby Shops
First at the top of the list is the Twist 60. I went to Barn Speed Hobbies in Lee, Massachusetts which is about an hour each way.  I went for a mini-heli pitch gauge, but ended up buying a Hanagar 9 Twist 60 and a Saito 1.15 4-stroke nitro engine.  I also bought some high-torque servos which they said were pretty good for the price, and which turned out to be total junk.

Not much I can say about that but I’m doing a bit more mail order for the time being. I don’t mind dealing with local hobby shops, like J&J Hobbies in Kingston, Jan is pretty nice and good to me. What I don’t like is being told servo is decent by someone and having it turn out to be a big pile of junk TO THE EXTREME.  I guess if I had an iPhone I could have looked those things up, but it’s not worth the $100 or more a month for that thing.  I think it’s a great device, but the service rates are stupid pricey just to look like a hipster. I do have an iPod touch which I don’t bring out in public and show everyone, it just plays my music and runs a few necessary applications.

Servos
I bought the Twist 60 last week and after the bum servos  ( TowerPro MG995 ) which 3 out of 5 were defective I went and ordered some Hitec MG 5625MGs for a few bucks more a piece.  The torque wasn’t as high, but I knew they would have a better percentage of good to bad! While I’ve had good luck with the Hitec servos, maybe out of the last 10 I’ve ordered I had one defective.  I pulled apart the case on the defect and rebuilt it and it worked fin.   The TowerPro MG995′s were grindy and nasty with bad centering and weird operations.   I kept the TowerPros, I hear the amp board is good so I’m going to mod a bunch of S148′s over to digital just to be weird.

Twist 60 Plane
The Twist 60 went together pretty easy.  The tail feathers bolt on, and the rudder and elevator servos mount in the tail of the aircraft.  Best to have a couple 18″ and 9-12″ servo extensions for this model. The fuel tank was kind of lame because the hole in the firewall was cut bigger than the neck of the tank.  A little bit of silicone around the neck of the fuel tanks seals the gap and keeps fuel from spraying back along the tank and into your landing gear block/electronics section.

It’s a shame this plane has been discontinued but there are some hardcore people making short kits and that kind of thing if you look hard enough (hint: twistaholics on google)

It comes with the hardware to run as a nitro-methonal or electric aircraft.  As I planned to run it at nitro I did a couple of small modifications to it.  The biggest was that I sanded down the firewall and sidewalls of the engine compartment and coated them with 30 minute epoxy to seal it against fuel, I also painted the inside of the fuel tank compartment with epoxy in case any leaks develop.  Secondly I went through the fuse and epoxied critical joints in the fuse with a light coat of 30 minute epoxy to strengthen it a bit.  This required cutting the covering of the bottom lightening hole behind the canopy but I feel it was worthwhile from things I had read elsewhere.

Electronics
Radio: For the electronics I used an Aitronics SD-10G 2.4Ghz radio, I’ll have to write another post on this radio, it’s pretty awesome.  I used the 10 channel receiver.  It runs in FH3 modulation mode which causes some problems with analog servos so that’s why I used the Hitec 5625MG servos in all locations, including the throttle.

Regulator: For the power supply plane side I used a Outrage 2s/7.4v/2200mAh LiPo battery powering a Fromeco Arizona regulator.  The Arizona regulator is a helicopter regulator, but that just means it has 2 lower voltage outputs for the gyro in a heli.  I didn’t use those outputs in the setup.

Servos: As I mentioned I used the Hitec 5625MG servos.  They work well and seem sturdy and strong enough for this application.

Engine
When I bought the plane I bought a Saito 1.15 4-stroker along with it. This is my first 4-stroke nitro engine and it was not as difficult to setup as some people seem to make it out to be.  The documentation is very straight forward, and this engine didn’t seem to have any quirks or weird things leftover from production.  I ran about 1/3rd of a gallon through the engine on a test bench before sticking it on the plane.

I bought Byron 4-stroke fuel.  It’s 15% nitro and 16% oil. Saito recommends 20% oil so I bought some oil additive, also Byron brand and remixed the fuel up to 20%.  The Byron fuel has about 3% castor in it.  The original Saito manual says to run ‘mostly synthetic’ fuel, while the American sources say to run 100% synthetic.  I prefer to run a little castor in my mix, and I believe the original manufacturer knows what they are talking about.  Not everyone is a super-pro engine tuner who never has an accident.  Additionally, fuel system problems can cause lean conditions, and have a bit of castor in there makes me feel a LITTLE safer.  It may require more maintenance in the long run, but these engines are so simple that it’s not a problem to tear one down and clean it up!

First Flight

I took the first flight on this aircraft on Sunday the 15th(2009). The plane flew pretty great. I was expecting it to be a disaster but all I need was some down trim and it was great.  As you can see from the video it really wanted to go up!  Some of that was me of course, some of it the trim.  Together it made for a great first takeoff and that Saito yanked it right up into the sky with no problem at all.

I just puttered and played around a bit, adjusting trims and other things. I wanted to get a first flight in casually just to make sure everything was working as desired. Future flights will involve a lot more crazy as this plane is going to be great!  A friend shot some video of the flight as you can see here (if you can’t, the link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eLHxliTmDA )

The Sidewalk
Not nearly enough work has been done on the sidewalk.  I spent a weekend a while back building new front steps.  The new regulations/building codes require a different setup on the steps which means I needed to get them in place to really know where to put the sidewalk.  The steps have gone pretty good and just need some ballisters put on the sides and paint to be done.  I’ll psot some pictures up once I get the ballisters on and paint them to match the front porch.

Here is the most recent picture of the walk aka the kiddie pool during a recent rainstorm.  It’s important to remember to add proper drainage to your digging areas, or this happens.  There is a drain trench that leads to the roadside cliff edge, but it’s not deep enough.  If it were not for this drain trench, the excavation area would have been filled to the top.  This weekend I hope to get more material removed, it’s quite a piece of work for me because my body deteriorates quickly with heavy labor due to the rheumatoid arthritis, however I know we’ll get it done eventually, and most importantly before winter. The stairs will be getting removed and the sidewalk concrete will extend to the edge of the deck, then new steps will be built and secured to the concrete pad to make everything nice and solid.  The steps are in not-so great condition, though still strong but I think new steps will look great.

New sidewalk excavation

REACTOR BIPLANE

Aside from ditch digging we built a model biplane over the weekend and got some airtime on it.  The biplane is a Electrifly (Great Planes) ‘Reactor Bipe’.  It’s an electric biplane with a 38″ or so wingspan. I probably would have been better off buying some repair parts for the heli and a new radio but this looked really neat and hopefully it’ll help me blend in with the plane guys more at the R/C field.  The electric motor is a .15 equivilant size, theoretically, though I somewhat doubt it, it still does a pretty good job.

Electrifly Reactor Biplane

The Reactor Bipe was originally built with the suggest Futaba 3114 servos, but these tended to strip really easy and it got frustrating running out of servos.  I purchased some new gearsets for the servos, but they will be used in some other, lighter project because they just really don’t hold up in this application.  I replaced the servos with the Hitech HS-65MGs I was using in the Mini-Titan helicopter and things improved GREATLY, these servos really have the needed strength for the large control surfaces and are pretty fast as well.

The Reactor built pretty quickly, you do have to be careful about a few points. I noticed after assembly that using the pre-cut hinge slots that one ailerone was a bit lower than the one on the opposing wing.  Double check the position of the hinge slots and everything else if you are concerned.  Additionally where they recommend to use 30 minute epoxy, I’d definetly go that route.  The manual for the tail includes and update sheet to use CA to adhear the horizontal stab, rather than epoxy.  I suspect this is because epoxy could drip and cause the elevator tie rod thing to become bound.  Even with CA this is possible, be careful when applying the CA glue to the horizontal stab.  Additionally when gluing the control rods to the clevises, make sure the thin CA doesn’t drip into the joint.  It will adhere them solidly, and while you think that you escaped disaster because the arm and surface still moves, you’ll quickly discover that this is only because the clevis is slowly twisting itself apart, instead of actually rotating in the control horn.

The manual comes with recommended control throws for low rates, high rates, and 3d.  If you use the recommended control arm holes and low rates, you’ll find that the control is very grainy/low-resultion.  You have to turn the travel/ATV down so far, that you are only using a very small portion of the bandwidth for each channel, and you can actually see each step in the control surfaces.  This is bad because you loose a lot of precision.  I would recommend using the outer holes in the control horns on the control surfaces, and the inner holes on the servo control arms if you just want to start out easy.

I’ve put in 4 flights in the last two nights, all of them were great although the plane is pretty ‘touchy’ on the controls.  I will probably work in some exponential to make the middle of the controls softer, as I feel this would be okay for a plane (I don’t like expo on helis).

Electrifly Reactor Biplane Side View

Reactor Bipe Airborne

COPPER VAPOR LASER

Another side project which has been absorbing my time is the Copper Vapor Laser project. I’ve been building a tube furnace for this laser since the bore of the laser, where the copper vapor and helium (or neon) is energized by the electricity needs to be heated up to 800 degrees F for a copper chloride/bromide type solution.  While the tube furnace I am building is overkill as I actually wish to build a version of this laser using elemental copper.  The disadvantage of using elemental copper is that it requires extremely high temepratures, in the range of 1500 degrees celcuius (almost 2800 degrees Fahrenheit).  Because of this I have been lovingly crafting the furnace out of high temeperature ceramic fibers (Inswool), ceramic boards (Insboard) and a variety of refractory mortars.  For the bromide/chloride lasers, heat will be provided by a nichrome heater element(s) with no problem.  In order to reach operating temperature for the elemental copper vapor laser, I will probably use one or two propane torches inside of the cavity.

The bore for the CuCl/CuBr laser is a quartz tube, the bore for the elemental copper (Cu) laser will be a high temperature alumina ceramic bore.

The advantage of an elemental copper laser is that you do not require a double pulse power supply.  With a Cu Chloride or Bromide laser, you have to hit it once with a disassociation pulse, and a second time with the lasing pulse.  With elemental copper you don’t need to disassociate the copper from a bromide or chloride solution, so one step is saved there, at the cost of extreme temperatures.

Copper Vapor Lasers have been used in some of Pink Floyd’s shows, they produce powerful golden yellow and soothing green laser lines (beams).  Additionally CVL lasers have been used for the purpose of enriching uranium.  While I am a scientist at heart and love to explore all sorts of different realms, I don’t think that enriching uranium would be a recommended pastime, so I probably won’t explore that part of science!

Here are some pictures of the tube furnace in progress.  I’ve gotten much further, but don’t have pictures at this time. I will update my laser site later. This is the furnace for the CuCl/CuBr version of the laser.  For the elemental copper version of the laser, this will probably end up encased in an additional external Inswool blanket wrap to bring up the insulation value and retain more heat inside the core.

The new setup uses metal mixing arms, green paddles, a Scorpion HK-2221-8 brushless motor, Castle Creations Phoenix-45 and a 13 tooth pinion.  The current draw looks pretty reasonable, on the high power climb outs you can see a large spike up to as high as 44 amps.

This helicopter climbs like crazy with this setup, very very fast!  The current is about 10 amps below the peak of the batteries capabilities though so I’m glad it stopped there.  Going too much further would probably result in LiPo (Lithium-Polymer) puffing!  The batteries are rated at 25C discharge and the pack is 2200mAh or 2.2 Amp hours.  with the 25C rating this is 25 * 2.2 which turns out to be 55 amps.

Anyways, check out the results from the flight data recorder in the gallery below.  The voltage is the green line and the numbers on the right, and the current is the purple line and the numbers on the left(in amps).

As always, if you have any questions please use the contact links on this website, they’re fairly visible.  As for the photos click on the photo and use the left/right arrows on the bottom right of the image to navigate through the slides. AND as always, thank you for your support, it makes this site possible!