Be Excellent To Each Other

We've all been there...

Haven't needed to slip our mitts into tranny muffs for a while now.

Couple of vids from Good Friday:

Made a cracking clang when my Quadcopter hit the rugby post.

No harm done either.

That near miss from both sides:





and my vid from the same day:

You could get a bus through there.

You definitely could get one between those rugby posts but apparently not a small aeroplane or a hand-sized quadcopter.

Side wind.

That was ace! I bet you didn't think that at the time though...

I'm not as concerned as I used to be when I crash. Surprisingly it's a matter of reinforced tape and superglue and you're away again.

The 250 quad has been amazingly robust so far. Just broken props that cost a few quid for 8 and the odd wire that's needed resoldering.

Saying that there's another sat at home that I crashed that day that I've not even looked at since.

Yeah, shame about that one. At least it was only twenty odd quid.

Yeah, just one of those things. Worth that for the motor, ESC and servos I can use on other stuff if I don't get it flying again.

Gah.

Hmm, gif not working.

Click to see, bloody gifs

Perfect catch and 1st session rolling my quad. Good day today.

Shame our kid had a shit time. Bixler all rebuilt now though.

Just bought a syma x11, as the internet said it was slightly better than the hubsan x4 for beginners, and had the boys practising with it. First born has taken to it very well, but second born is struggling a bit. Will be getting a latrax alias or similar in a few weeks, once we've got the hang of this.

They look the same as the hubsans apart from the props, cheaper though.

If your spending money on a bigger quad down the line, don't you fancy something with an FPV camera? That's where the fun lies.

Yeah ultimately thats the plan, just thought we needed something intermediate

You're a hot shot lawyer, treat yourself

250 racers are the type of quad to get if you just want to have fun flying. DJI Phantoms and that are really good for just being steady flying cameras, but they're super easy to fly, you'll run out of things to shoot video of and then it'll just sit there. 250s though you can just thrash and abuse them usually only breaking a few props.

Here's a clip from Sunday morning, this one I built myself and the parts probably total about £130 not including radio gear and FPV goggles or a screen:

That Zardoz jif is awesome.

Can't believe he wimped out and shut his eyes though.

IT'S SLOWED DOWN. IT WAS A BLINK!

Awesome catch, just like me.

http://m.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/04/killerdrone

Clearly the next step.

Mark - can you recommend for a first "proper" quad some bits to put together for a 250? Or a half way decent ARTF/RTF thing ? I know absolutely feck all about any of it.... which is sort of how this thread started...

It's complicated, I'll try and put something together tomorrow when I'm typing on a proper keyboard. There are some ok ready to fly ones now too, though.

Cool - much appreciated, Mark, thank you.

Actually just have a look at the series of videos on here called low cost racing mini quadcopter build (it's not perfect and there's a lot of stuff I'd do differently but you can at least get an idea of what's involved and whether it all looks like too much hassle):

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCahqHs ... Mmj2D5i1Vw

If you do decide to start ordering stuff just ask if it looks right and I'll have a look, this stuff changes by the week almost.

If you don't fancy building one you could probably do a lot worse than just buying something like one of these (I'd probably recommend just doing this to begin with, there's plenty enough to faff around with even when you do get one ready built and you could really only save pence by getting all these bits separately):

http://www.quadcopters.co.uk/emax-night ... 1965-p.asp

That one seems to have all the right bits on it, 2204 size motors, Naze 32 control board and BLHeli ESCs. That combination should always fly pretty well.

But you're still not done, you'll need radio gear for controlling it, batteries and a charger for them, something to receive and view the transmitted video on and optionally an HD recording camera to put on there if you want decent footage.

This is a good option to expensive goggles:

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/stor ... ouse_.html

You'll also need a video receiver:

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/stor ... ouse_.html

These batteries are pretty decent (you'll want a few of these):

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/stor ... ouse_.html

Charger, something like this:

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/stor ... Plug_.html

Radio gear, cheap:

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/stor ... ouse_.html

Mid:

http://hobby-hangar.co.uk/radio-sets/13 ... 81766.html

And I have one of these, it's a bit more expensive but probably all the radio you'd ever need for anything but a bit OTT for just a racing quad:

http://www.t9hobbysport.com/frsky-taran ... ransmitter

Then there's the recording camera, again there are options here. I use a Mobius on mine as I crash a lot and they're reasonably cheap, although I haven't broken one yet:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mobius-Action ... 259ec59e64

Then there's the Runcam HD2, or Foxeer Legend and finally a GoPro but they're like £300 and I'd be too scared to fly the thing properly if I put my GoPro on it.

I think that's everything. It all adds up really, especially if you just want to fly a racing quad and not loads of other stuff like me and Zardoz do because then you just sort of gather the bits as you go along. So the message to take away there is that it seems expensive just to fly a mini-quad unless you also buy a load of planes and stuff to make the most of your investment in FPV and radio gear so do that too.

Thanks Mark - very kind of you. I'll have a sift through that and see where I get to!

They more you buy the cheaper it becomes.

Crazy but true. Also if you keep an eye out for planes going on sale you can gain even more ££££££.

Was looking at Mini Skyhunters and similar kits to transplant the doner gubbins from my Wingnetic into... but I've decided to give it a third life and ordered new spinner and motor mount. Because I'm kind*.

*Stubborn old cunt.

What have you bought, Kissyfur?

What have you bought, Kissyfur?

Mark and I are expecting twins.

A joyous occasion.

New baby:



Needed something for round the house when the weather's not up to flying outside and this is perfect.

Holy crap your house is tidy!

Good run time, is that with the battery included with it?

Better have my camera delivered today!

It really isn't, I feel like I'm constantly struggling just to keep my head above a steadily rising tide of brightly coloured plastic toddler tat. Although to be fair she probably feels the same about all my RC crap.

Where have you thrown all your wiring nests?

Yeah, I just held the camera on with a laccy band so it can move in a crash and also so I can use it on other stuff. I'll send you some pics later if you want to see exactly what I did.

Dude, trust me. You can see the floor and everything.

Yeah please mate. I'll try it on my mini mustang too.

This thread reminds me I must order some new back tyres for the Cougar as I should be getting it out soon

Yeah, I think you'd need to find another connector from somewhere as well for that. I basically cut the supplied lead and then soldered one end of that to the top of the PCB on the quad where the battery connects then shortened the wire coming from the camera to save as much weight as possible. Also removed the plastic case from the camera/vtx for the same reason. It still only takes off at half throttle, though. Also on that video I ran it right down to the LVC which really won't do the battery much good at all. Need to set a timer for 30 seconds or so before that happens.

Nowt yet - still investigating. And busy building stuff out of wood at the moment.

Just so you know, he'll dissemble for absolutely ages, then buy the absolute opposite of what you recommend.

Of course.