Tuesday, January 12, 2010

ETOC Freestyle

This is just about the coolest indoor 3D flying I've seen. I still want to get a 48" BAF Yak 54 from DWFoamies.com. Not that it is anything like flying what is below, but it works better for me to fly at the park.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Easy Star Mark ][ (update)

Took it out for a windy/chilly maiden flight today (using the old wings, since the ailerons had been all repaired). CG is still a little too far back for basic flight, even with 3300mAh lipo in, but if flew just fine (actually did some pretty nice soaring). I may see how it does with the two 2650mAh 3S1P's in parallel (yes, that is a 3S2P). Flight times would be pretty long (flew over 25 minutes on the 3300mAh).

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Easy Star Mark ][

Began work on the new FPV airframe (a new grey wing colored Multiplex Easy Star). One thing I really wanted to do, after learning a lot from the first one, was to put the elevator and rudder servos (Hitec HS-81's in this case) embedded in the tail section and to put most of the electronics in the fuselage beneath the wings. This should move the CoG back quite, which was needed for larger 3000+ maH LiPo in addition to the pan/tilt camera pod and to allow a lot more space for in the front hatch and (hopefully) clean up a lot of the massive amounts of wiring with the Eagle Tree Systems OSD Pro, eLogger, GPS, Altimeter, Mic and all the cabling daisy chained from the Rx to the OSD Pro for Return to Home (RtH) operation (sort of like autopilot when you lose radio contact).

Friday, January 8, 2010

New Transmitter!

I have been looking at upgrading my Futaba 7CAP for a while. I had been thinking about a 9ch at least, and I wanted to still be able to do 72MHz, since that seems to carry better than 2.4GHz for distance FPV. Settled on a Futaba 9CAP Super, which makes use of plug in modules for all the transmission frequency function. That means, you buy a module for whatever 72MHz channel you want, or they have a TP-FSM synthesized module that allows you to do any channel (this is what I got). The radio was brand new off EBay, and came with an R149DP 9ch Rx (PCM dual conversion 72MHz). I also bought a cheap $30 combo Tx/Rx module that works with it off Ebay for 2.4GHz too. May just buy a Spektrum 2.4GHz system that works with it too.