New Ultra Micro P-51

Just got a Parkzone Ultra Micro P-51 that weighs all of 1.22 oz flying weight. It comes with a cheapo 4ch Spektrum DSMX radio. Seems very agile. Can't wait to fly it, but I think it needs REALLY calm days...grin. Some video of it...

New Ultra Micro E-Flight Sbach 342

Got an E-flight UMX Sbach 342 that flies on 2S 180mAh micro lipo and is all of 1.95oz total flying weight. It has a combo ESC and Spektrum DSMX Rx with 4ch control. Micro linear servos...pretty cool. Too windy to fly yet. Some video here...

SBach 342 30e

Picked up this 1323mm wingspan SBach 342 from Hobby King this weekend. I'm loving how my Duramax Corsair and Mustang is showing in the air (once I got the engine thrust aligned for better tracking in the air with the 2 blade props). And this SBach 342 is one of my favorite flyers right now on Real Flight 6 flight sim. Now this 53" wingspan version will only be about 50% of the size of the featured plane there (so call it 17% scale), and likely be about 4.5 lbs AUW (compared to close to 27 lbs for that 35% scale with almost 9' wingspan gasser), but cost is about 1/5th to fly this versus that on...plus, how do you ever fly it when you have to bring it to work with you in a trailer?

Will put a 620kV Turnigy 4240 in it, probably running around 800W on ~3300mAh 4S lipo's (maybe 2650mAh ones too for short light flights), drawing around 55A. Initial guess is a 14x8 or 13x10 prop. Again, 150w for sport/acro planes per lb, is a rough rule of thumb. Go with 175-200W/lb for extreme 3D player. If it gets over 5lbs AUW, I'm going to be a bit under powered...

Happy New Year!!!!

Just picked up a couple 1100mm Durafly F4U Corsair and P51D Mustang from Hobby King. They have full retracts, 4ch controls and LED lighting and come very highly praised...

I also took today to work on my broken tricopter and repair most all of it, as well as to fix my DW Foamies Yak 54 that needed a lot of gluing (stupid landings tear the gear out every time). And, I reglued my Park Zone T28 that took a harsh hit at the bottom of a loop that needed to finish out about -2ft AGL. Grin.

So...I guess I'm ready to go flying. Yay!

Tricopter FPV

Got my eagle eyes system mostly back up and working, including a new addition, the guardian stabilization module, which should fix a lot of my questionable RTH functions. But in the mean time, I wanted to begin getting just basic video FPV only working with my tricopter. Finally seem to have a pretty good setup working with the copter, and it seems pretty stable. I've been practicing on the simulator with heli's and quadcopters too, so maybe that is helping, but it seems a lot more predictable.
I tried to get my Fatshark 2.4GHz video with a 40mW VTx working on the copter, but it wasn't good enough to even go much over 60 feet without losing signal. Might be because I strapped it right on close to an ESC on one of the arms, but there are a LOT of ESC's...I also was trying to run 2.4GHz spread spectrum radio control at the same time, as I really dislike the 72MHz for servo jitter and interferance, and this 2.4GHz stuff is bullet proof. Anyway, it didn't hurt the control running them both on 2.4GHz, but I can't believe the VTx (which isn't on a rotating freq) was helped having to compete. 72MHz didn't help it much though, and I've just got in a 500mW VTx along with some matched cloverleaf antenna's from Tim at Ready Made RC...so we'll try that out and see if it helps... Lots to do!

First flight on Tri/Quad Y4 copter

Got it all finished up yesterday, in spite of minor board problems with my Hobby King v2. LED lights are really cool at night on it. I've gone through more props than I care to count right now. Been playing with different sizes, and I need to re-engineer my back motor mounts, because they are a bit flimsy and it has become obvious that running these motors with anything less than 10x4.7 is point less. The motors don't make any more thrust after about 60% throttle, and that is what is responsible for my rear swaying uncontrolled (like the gyro isn't responding...it is, the motors just aren't). alt

Start of new tri-copter

Just got the first part of the center plate cut out and drilled from 0.060" Aluminum stock. Not sure that is going to be great for radio reception or FPV, but I'll get something better later. Going to try to make this a V-tail Y4 copter, I think...at least first. That skips the need for a rear servo for yaw. Similar to this basic config, anyway. MultiWii copter V-tail does better control, but that isn't airframe specific.

Tricopter work

Just ordered a bunch of parts to build a tricopter to begin to put FPV on it. This field has come a LONG way in just a couple months, and hopefully, I can get some time on this and begin to get back into my FPV stuff with this as well as on the longer range EZ*. Will keep you updated. For now, thanks to Toby, my new next door neighbor, who needed some help with his build and just required a simple wire swap, we tried out a quick flight.

Long time away

Figured I'd post an update here. I've been busy with being a parent and work. Got new goggles still haven't even tried out (fatsharks). I've got the latest FW updated on the ET OSD Pro and am working on getting the GoPro HD into a new EZ* airframe...hard to get motivated...

Fat Sharks!

Got my Fat Shark wireless 2.4GHz goggles in from the Memorial Day sale from Range Video. Excited to try them out, but I have been very distracted with work and weekends at the cabin, so haven't had time to rebuild my EZ* fuse or even try these out with any setup. I also go the GoPro HD camera in and need to figure out how to put it in the EZ*. I'm very tempted to just try to work it into the system as my primary camera too using the USB power hack...