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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Thu Jul 10, 2014 16:10 
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If you had permission I reckon you could to the flight legally. Fireworks displays already take place a good distance from the spectators, the only doubt I would possibly have is what could potentially happen if one of the big mortars or rockets were knocked off course after it hit the quadcopter.


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Thu Jul 10, 2014 16:14 
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Yeah, that's the issue I'd have with it (quite apart from the potential of having my expensive toy destroyed by a rocket blast :P)


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Thu Jul 10, 2014 23:12 
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Yeah, but think of the Youtube views!

Mark you should just put your Gopro gear straight onto a £25 Aldi rocket. That would be decent.

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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Thu Jul 10, 2014 23:14 
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Good planes again tonight. Damn sure our kid will soon crumble now he's had the taste.

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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Mon Jul 14, 2014 20:55 
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No planes tonight.

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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Mon Jul 14, 2014 22:19 
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Bit blustery, tomorrow looks pretty good.


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Mon Jul 14, 2014 22:40 
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Batteries charged. Inner fuselage undercarriage slot reinforced.

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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Tue Jul 15, 2014 5:01 
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Kinda Funny Lookin'

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Zardoz wrote:
Inner fuselage undercarriage slot reinforced.


Ooo, get her 8)

...sounds saucy

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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Wed Jul 23, 2014 13:27 
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Had a few lunchtime flights with my discus launch glider, amazing fun. Some really good thermals kicking about though I still suck at reading the air and staying in them. I'd forgotten it had a tiny altimeter on board:

Attachment:
image001.png


So I managed to actually hook a thermal three times out of the fifteen launches and the best one carried it to nearly double the launch height. :nerd:


You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Mon Jul 28, 2014 10:54 
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I can see my house from here.


http://youtu.be/_DrlLOQ7ZUg

Gorgeous flight before work early this morning.


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Mon Jul 28, 2014 11:03 
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Awesome :)

I went to Abergele beach yesterday and took my Phantom for a bit of aerial videoing, but annoyingly my GoPro steadfastly refused to turn on - a problem common to the GoPro Hero 3's that was supposedly solved with the last firmware update :(


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Mon Jul 28, 2014 11:05 
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You pulled the battery and put it back in? That's what I always need to do. If that doesn't work then it's probably decided to turn the wifi on by itself at some point and flatten the battery. They're great cameras let down by some pretty shonky firmware.


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Mon Jul 28, 2014 11:22 
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Yeah, pulled the battery a few times. Didn't know about the wi-fi problem though, that's annoying. Will have to plug it in to the wall charger and see if that sorts it.

Annoyingly, even with no battery in but with the camera being powered by the Phantom's gimbal, it still wouldn't power on.


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Tue Sep 30, 2014 15:25 
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Load of bits arrived to start building me one of these micro quads:

Image

Super quick and strong little things that you can fly around like this if you're any good:



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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Mon Oct 06, 2014 8:24 
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All done. Not much to look at and I've only had it hovering in the back garden so far but I reckon it'll go like fuck.



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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Mon Oct 06, 2014 9:29 
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Any cameras on that? ;)


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Mon Oct 06, 2014 9:31 
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Yeah, it's specifically for FPV so it has one on there for that and then the Mobius action camera on top for recording.


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Mon Oct 06, 2014 11:58 
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Sweet as, I can't wait to see some super speed footage from that thing :)


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Wed Oct 08, 2014 10:50 
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First quick flight in the wind and the rain yesterday:



It's flyable but I'm getting lots of high frequency oscillations in pitch and roll. I could probably tune these out given enough time but I've got a new flight controller (Naze32 Acro) to try so that's all installed and configured and just waiting for the opportunity to test.


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Tue Oct 14, 2014 22:33 
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Tuning the PID feedback settings on the mini quad continues but in the meantime an absolute bargain camera gimbal footage turned up that I took apart and adapted to fit the front of my bigger quad:

Image



Huge improvement to the footage it shoots and I no longer have to fuck around stabilising it in software to get a decent result.


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Tue Oct 14, 2014 23:33 
SupaMod
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Have you got an un-fucked-about-with one from the old setup for comparison?

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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Wed Oct 15, 2014 6:29 
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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Thu Oct 16, 2014 15:38 
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Crashed my mini-quad earlier, only its third flight too :'(



All my own fault, I just lost orientation through the goggles, gave it wrong stick to try to recover then decided it was definitely going in so cut the power, then caught a glimpse of the ground and tried to punch it and power out of it but it was too late.

Damage wasn't too bad though, considering it went in from a good height. Snapped three of the props and wrecked one motor but the parts for these little things are so cheap that it's only a fiver or so to fix.


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2014 14:44 
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Unpossible!

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Mark! Gaz!

Do this!

http://i.imgur.com/vq49ecB.jpg


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Fri Nov 07, 2014 11:03 
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Another day another quadcopter crash. :'( (not on film though sadly, apparently if you are violent enough with a GoPro it won't write the last few seconds back to the SD card).

I'd just got my main quadcopter working perfectly, gimbal all tuned pretty well and had this nice flight at sunset:



Seconds after the end of that it all fell silent and I had to watch helplessly through the goggles as sky filled the view and it hit the sand and pebbles hard, quadcopters don't glide at all. I trudged down the beach to find it. When I got there the poor thing was laid on it's back, all four props smashed, bits of its guts lying around, the battery folded in half but still connected and the camera gimbal sans camera twitching pitifully, I felt strangely sad for it for a moment.

All told though it could have been a lot worse, had it gone in the salt water it would have been pretty much a total loss. The GoPro is fine, as are all the other main components really, the frame is ok too apart from some bent arms, even the gimbal seems functional, it'll all mend. But I'm just not sure what caused it. I'm going with possible RF interference from the tower but my radio gear is getting on a bit and much better, more resilient systems are available these days.

This, though, is why you are a dickhead if you go flying these things over crowds or busy areas.


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Fri Nov 07, 2014 11:23 
SupaMod
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Should it not default to a hover mode if it loses signal?

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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Fri Nov 07, 2014 12:03 
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Yeah, or even fly back and land where they took off from. I have one like that sat on the bench but not in this quad. Most of those autopilot equipped ones don't have the very good manual flying characteristics I'm after, they just aren't as fun to fly, you sort of nudge them around the sky rather than actually flying them.


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Thu Nov 20, 2014 10:27 
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Drone Boning may be about porn, but they visit some really beautiful locations:

NSFW http://www.droneboning.com/ NSFW

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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Thu Nov 20, 2014 21:55 
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Hibernating Druid

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They didn't bone a single drone! Not like Mark.

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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Sat Nov 29, 2014 21:06 
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I'm really bumming this little 250 quad. Stepped up the prop pitch done some more tuning angled the camera upwards and it's feeling pretty perfect. Just need to make zardoz build one now for some racing action.



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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Sat Nov 29, 2014 21:08 
SupaMod
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Cor, look at it go. Any idea how fast it is?

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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Sat Nov 29, 2014 22:41 
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No idea really, probably not a huge number of mph but it feels really fast and the feeling of speed multiplies the lower you go.

I think this is probably the most fun RC thing I've ever had. Most crashes only bust a fifty pence prop or two or really big crashes might break one of the seven pound motors.


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Sat Nov 29, 2014 23:50 
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Hibernating Druid

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You should buy me one for Christmas.

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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Wed Dec 03, 2014 14:25 
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Too much fun this little thing:



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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Wed Dec 03, 2014 15:27 
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Cool.

That's one thing that I do miss about my Phantom, the gimbal means that you don't really get the "speed demon" effect with the camera view rolling around all the time.

I've got a little Hubsan X4 with the FPV camera on it, I need to work out if I can record the video from that somehow - I seem to remember talk of it having an SD card built in to it but I can't see one.


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Wed Dec 03, 2014 15:32 
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Just put another camera on your Phantom, or better yet build a 250 quad, they're dirt cheap.


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Wed Dec 03, 2014 15:36 
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Look at this cunt go:



Pretty sure I couldn't ever fly like that even with enough spare time.


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Wed Dec 03, 2014 16:24 
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How much for everything then including video gear?

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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Wed Dec 03, 2014 16:44 
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This is more or less what I've got apart from the FPV gear:

frame £23.39:

http://www.banggood.com/H250-ZMR250-250 ... 33185.html

motors (x4 two cw two ccw) £24

http://www.banggood.com/ZMR-1804-2400KV ... 23424.html

esc (x4) £22

http://www.banggood.com/Emax-Simonk-Ser ... 18126.html

flight controller £16

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

cheap fpv set £64

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

I have goggles though rather than that screen in a box but those are meant to work really, really well. Also I do have a spare set of goggles so you'd just need a VTx and a camera to get started. I haven't listed the Mobius camera that I'm using for recording there either because it's not really essential, though it is pretty fun to watch flights back. They're about £40.

There's a few other bits like batteries and props and a control receiver but they're cheap and disposable.

Also once you've got the FPV gear you'd be able to drop it into one of your planes as well.


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Wed Dec 03, 2014 17:07 
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About £150 then... That'll be my next project I guess.
Need to sell more t-shirts.

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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Wed Dec 03, 2014 17:29 
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Do you need to hook up all the gubbins to a pc to configure it all?

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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Wed Dec 03, 2014 17:42 
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It uses this cross-platform tool:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... figk?hl=en

You just need to install some drivers but there's Mac ones.


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 16:45 
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I finally got around to mending my main quadcopter and fitted the fancy flight controller with all the autopilot stuff, so if I lose signal it should fly itself home.

The results of the first test flight proved that something about my setup was sub-optimal:



It's a US-made flight controller and it turns out that Americans do motor numbering schemes for quadcopters just about as sensibly as they do short date formats.

With repairs made (again) and the motors connected to the right inputs I had another quick go and tested out the Return To Home feature at lunchtime today:



Also shows pretty nicely just how much work that brushless gimbal is doing.


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 17:07 
SupaMod
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How do you tell it where "home" is? Is it the last place it was powered down for a certain amount of time?

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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 17:10 
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It's wherever you power it up or else you can go into the menus and reset it to the current location.


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 17:12 
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If it's anything like mine, it records the "home" position using GPS co-ordinates as soon as it has a GPS fix.

Some then have a button on the controller that tells it to record a new home position using the current GPS location.

The new DJI one uses the position of the controller as the home location, so it will always return back to the operator.


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 17:27 
SupaMod
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GazChap wrote:
The new DJI one uses the position of the controller as the home location, so it will always return back to the operator.

Hide the controller in your friend's car for a jape.

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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 21:55 
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GazChap wrote:
If it's anything like mine, it records the "home" position using GPS co-ordinates as soon as it has a GPS fix.

Some then have a button on the controller that tells it to record a new home position using the current GPS location.

The new DJI one uses the position of the controller as the home location, so it will always return back to the operator.

Didn't your first quad get its direction for home off E.T.?

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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 10:45 
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Zardoz wrote:
GazChap wrote:
If it's anything like mine, it records the "home" position using GPS co-ordinates as soon as it has a GPS fix.

Some then have a button on the controller that tells it to record a new home position using the current GPS location.

The new DJI one uses the position of the controller as the home location, so it will always return back to the operator.

Didn't your first quad get its direction for home off E.T.?

:DD

(in all seriousness, no - it transpired that it didn't get a home location at all because dickweed here didn't read the instructions properly)


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 Post subject: Re: Radio controlled aeroplanes, and that... and now cars!
PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 11:21 
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I wonder if it got a fix as it was flying and then fucked off in the direction of the Gulf Of Guinea? It certainly seemed to be going somewhere.


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