Be Excellent To Each Other

Incidentally there's a firmware update for the GoPro. Updated app as well which allows viewing of footage via wifi, which is nice.

Pro Tip: don't enable the wifi until after you have landed, it operates on 2.4GHz same as the control transmitter and has been known to cause problems.

Mark, do you always sit when you're flying with the goggles on? Does it mess up your balance?

No, not really, it's just a bit more comfy sitting down and I find I can concentrate a bit more fully on flying.

Do you ever fly past yourself to make sure no-one is sneaking up behind you? There's a ghost story in the making!

I often have a look back when I hear footsteps nearby. So far there has always actually been someone there.

Gaz's Phantom flying off into Mark.

God, I haven't bought anything RC related for fucking ages now.

Here you go. Nice little plane from hobby king:

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

Comes with everything, just charge up and fly.

Yesterday, I went to the Flax Mill in Shrewsbury (the world's first iron-framed building) which has been derelict since 1987. They've been campaigning for lottery funding to regenerate the entire building and the surrounding area, to turn it into a leisure/retail complex, and they were approved for funding yesterday.

They've got an ongoing project where the building is documented through the medium of photography, to preserve it's current state and also how it looks during the regeneration.

The group behind the project invited me to take some aerial video of the place, so I figured - why not?



Will be doing more over the coming months/year or two as they rebuild it all.

Ooh, my FPV kit has been dispatched!

Tamiya M03 Mini Cooper kit on its way thanks to eBay. Setting off a flurry of mini purchases for it: receiver, tyre inserts, servo, bearing kit and spray. Really looking forward to building it

Supposed to be fun little RC cars to drive.

Someone's quadcopter got wet so they put it in the oven to dry

Christ, what a moron!

This was from an Ebay listing. Some other idiot paid $160 for the remains.

My FPV kit has arrived!

Do you always have a spotter with you when you go out, Mark?

No, but I'd probably advise it at first. I know that technically I should have a spotter but I only tend to fly in quiet areas and not really high enough to get in the way of any passing aircraft. It's always best to assume that it might just fall out of the sky at any moment and choose your flying sites accordingly.

I was reading up on it all yesterday and there's all sorts of laws surrounding it all that I wasn't aware of. I thought it was just for commercial work that CAA permission was required, etc. but it's not!

But yeah, FPV wise I'll be sticking to nice quiet areas to start off with!

FPV is the only way to fly quadcopters really. Once you get used to them as well as just hovering around they can fly more like planes, carving up the sky. As soon as you feel confident then start flying in manual or rate mode. It's a lot more fun.

Already ordered brushless motor and ESC for the car I haven't built yet that I was going to run with stock motor.

I'm so feeble with my money.

Had a go wtih FPV earlier for the first time, it is pretty good ain't it? Quite a bit of interference when flying near to me, which I understand is something to do with antenna angles and blind spots etc. but the video quality is ace.

It's worth trying all the different channels if interference is bad. Also what sort of antennae are you using? You want some circular ones then the only blind spot other than behind obstacles is usually right over head.

So, surely there are laser zappers / receivers (like in Quasar) you can mount on them so you two can have (and film) a dog-fight, right?

It's not unflyably bad, so I'm not too worried at the moment.

It's the stock antennae, which are just the normal ones you'd typically get on a wi-fi router. I'm going to order some spironet antennae though.

this looks easy.



Its not, is it?

They make a huge difference. It's not always interference from outside sources either, flying near structures causes weird stuff to happen, multipathing or some such, I dunno.

Very much not. It's doable to hover a plane but that stuff is really hard. Unless you are about ten, little kids seem to pick it up incredibly easily.

I'm sure someone must have tried this I reckon it might be hard to aim and very easy to evade. People race them though, just make up a track around and through trees etc, looks pretty fun. Probably involves a lot of crashing and mending things, though.

The guy sitting next to me just saw a video of the quadcopters and "wants one".

I've dug through the thread by I can't find the info on what you've got (and what bits you've plugged onto it).

Gazchap has a DJI Phantom which is a pretty good place to start if you don't fancy building anything. If he wants to spend more money and have to build it as well then a TBS Discovery Pro is one option that will get amazing footage. Otherwise he really needs to do loads of reading on forums and suchlike and then buy a load of bits. Budget between £500-£1000 if he has no RC bits already.

Urgle, the Tamiya TL-01 chassis that's now carrying my awesome Wildcat body around got furked on the holiday after some epic beach playage. The transmission is only getting power to the left wheels.... I need to strip the bastard down and have a serious shufti at the innards.

Even before that the power was still shite compared to the TA-01 I had before. Not sure whether it's the ESC compared to the mechanical SC I had on the old skool set up - it's the same motor and battery so I can't see what else it is. Either way I'm going to get some lipos.

Before we go away again I'm going to get a second car sorted out, probably a sand viper type.

The Sand Viper is a fun 2wd buggy and the DT-02 chassis is pretty closed up so would be fairly good on a beach (not that I'd run mine near salt water) but the best bang for buck buggy I've come across are the Quanum Vandals from Hobby King.

Just fitted an AeroXCraft brushless gimbal to the Phantom - it's witchcraft, I tell thee. How the hell it works I do not know, but it's bloody eerie watching the camera stay perfectly still regardless of the angle that I tip the craft to.

Only downside is that there's now nowhere for me to mount the FPV transmitter so I will likely have to get some sort of mount to go on the back for it - I've got my spironet antennae now, too. Exciting times.

Doing weddings now, Gaz?

Haha. I saw that video the other day and wondered how long it would be before it made it's way here

Off out with my quad. Going to attempt some flips and/or rolls. Apparently this should be no drama but I feel that it could end expensively.

Well that was easy but terrifying. I think on the first one I might not have given it full back stick, it looks really slow. I thought the horizon was never going to come back around and when it did the ground seemed a lot nearer.

Whee!

It's a lot of fun. I need to work on some technique so that I don't lose so much height. I think I need to give it a jab of throttle before the flip so that it is thrown onto an upwards trajectory, back off as it gets upside down then bang the throttle again to catch it as it comes around. Reckon I could flip it much lower to the ground like that. I'm going to crash this thing soon.

Doing it around the branch of a tree would be a fucking good trick. Or the bars on a swing or something if a tree is a bit "crowded".

That's awesome, although I don't think you can do it with mine unless you put it in Manual mode, and I'm not that fuckin' brave

I weighed mine the other day - with my new gimbal and the FPV kit on it, and with battery installed, the total weight of the thing is 1,143g. Maximum takeoff weight according to the manual is 1kg dead-on.

I don't think the FPV kit weighs that much, so I'm reasonably sure that even just with the gimbal and GoPro attached, it's over the MTOW.

Is that going to do any damage?

Not really. It'll shorten the flight times and it might feel a slight bit more sluggish is all. But for a camera ship it's not really a big deal. In fact the extra mass can dampen out some movement.

Cool. I'm tempted by some upgraded motors anyway though, as apparently the stock DJI ones are prone to failure - not a good thing mid-flight.

But then I've started contemplating buying an F550 Flame Wheel frame kit (inc. motors and props etc.) and then transplanting everything (flight controller and what not) from the Phantom over to it.

I didn't realise just how addictive this shit is, nor how much money it bleeds dry

You've not even begun. You have dived right in at the expensive end, though.

Sounds about right

Almost finished my M-03 Mini now, waiting on steel pinion turning up before sticking the brushless motor and electrics in. Really weird chassis compared to everything else I've built, more like a skeleton than a tub I guess... if that makes sense

It's an old kit and I've found some stuff better and some things worse than the modern Tamiyas.

Better:
Number coding on parts bags / instructions
Tyre inserts included in kit

Worse:
Having to cut out window masks and stickers!
Mechanical 3 speed controller!

Here's the finished shell.

Aaaawww sweet, its even got the chrome beading around the windscreen seal!

I do have window seal stickers, but they're not on! Just a trick of the light with the moulding.

First video testing the gimbal. No post-processing, other than filming in 1440p and then cropping to 1080p to crop out the props at the top of the picture. And to add music.

Looks good. Brushless gimbals are evolving fast. That sort of stability would have cost a few grands worth of Zenmuse gimbal not 12 months ago, and a big machine to lift it all too.