Be Excellent To Each Other

Spent last night building a DT-02 out off the two non runners I have. But had the same main broken part on both! Managed to glue it back together for now while a spare comes from Japan (worryingly little spares available locally). Had it cogging on 3S but running fine on 2S battery so leaving it at that.

Well my car came on Monday.

Truth be told I did not realise that a RC car could possibly ever be this complicated. It took me five hours just to build the front end. I don't regret it though. Even the steering joints and so on are all ball raced and then held in with carbon fibre pieces



That's where I was at before yesterday, when I started the build of the gearbox, clutch and diff. The diff is a bit of a sod....

Not far to go now. Just have to glue on the tyres, fit and track them and then paint the body

Good work. And because you built it you'll have problem mending it when it breaks.

Went out with Zardoz at lunchtime and followed his plane with my quad as he appeared to try and crash it into some goal posts:

Awesome

Is Zardoz operating the elevator with a head wand?

Good fun at lunchtime

Got the new FULL METAL JACKET landing gear on my Skyraider afterwards, so that's ready to crash again now.

No.

I use that to control your mother.

That's awesome. Looks like you have the nice weather too

I hope you fly her with a little more finesse, lead paws.

Finesse is for fannies.

Also, shut it 'brushed boy', you scrubber.

Exactly.

Some of us don't need artificial aids to go faster and longer, old man.

Guys are ESCS supposed to be noisy? This thing beeps and whines like a pig.

The two or three I've had are, yes.

I see thanks.

Nothing to worry about then

Beeps are for 'armed' 'I'm not armed' and programming stuff.

Whines and other noise are from the fan. All of mine are noisy but you don't really hear them at all when they're crashing



New props arrived for my Corsair so I'll soon be airborne again. For a bit.

It doesn't have a fan..

I can live with it, given that it'll be away from me. One thing I don't like though is that there's sometimes a delay between going forward and going backwards.

That's to prevent you from stripping the gears.

Ahhhhh. I see!

Bah, takes away spins though lol.

Gave my TT-02 Capri a run tonight. Very nice indeed Needs a little adjustment to the steering turnbuckles (didn't have spanner with me) and a check to see if anything worked loose.

Looks sweet !

I was hoping to paint the body of mine today but I realised that you can't just spray flip paint on without a black base coat. So I need to order some black spray first. Harumph.

Don't you spray the flip paint first then back it up with black? You spray the inside of the shell rather than the outside.

Just fixed my little RC boat too by stripping out the safety circuit

Usually I would but the shell is not clear. It's kinda milky so if I paint the inside it'll be flat.

Is it milky due to the outside protective film?

I don't think it has film on it no. It's kinda like a satin finish.

TBH I've not really looked at it closely yet. I can't paint it here because we have no garden so I went over to mum's today and the moment we left the pissing rain came. So it's still not painted

Mum gave me a load of newspapers so I'll do it in the kitchen. There was no point getting it ready because the airfield I'm planning on running it at is a good few miles away so Mrs JC is going to stop in and see her whilst I'm racing the car and Mrs JC senior has been away.

So hopefully I can race it Monday or Tuesday next week... If you look at the pic I posted you can see the milky finish. I'm going to have a look at it now to see if it has any film on it

Blimey well I'll be darned it does indeed have film on it (or did, now I've got to mask it lol)

It's a good thing you told me that or I'd have spray painted the film lmao.

Don't, I feel like a complete pillock.

Maybe that rain was actually good.....

Downloaded this last night:

http://fpv-freerider.itch.io/fpv-freerider

It's a simulator for flying mini quads FPV. It's superb and will no doubt save me a small fortune in broken props. The control scheme of these little things is just so satisfying to master. I reckon there's bound to be some sort of console game based around this before long.

Got the body and wing painted. Couple of small runs (you can't actually see the flip going on it's almost transparent) but nothing a couple of well placed stickers won't hide.

I still have to apply all of the decals I want, so will get some pics when it's all finished

The kids and I took the Carnage up onto the Common this afternoon, got some excellent jumps in. On the downside, had to clean dog shit out of the inside this time. I know #notalldogowners blah blah blah, but fuck's sake, there are enough bad ones that, frankly, fuck the lot of you.

That sucks. Only really run my cars on car parks or very short grass, still no guarantee you won't hit a turd though.

Giving some serious thought to going in for my BNUC-S exams.

The number of offers of work I'm getting for aerial video is quite staggering (some of them even know about The Incident ) and it's annoying having to turn them down because I'm not licensed.

What's "quite staggering"? One a week? One a day? More?

Averaged out probably about one a week, yep. I suppose not a huge amount, but I guess I just didn't think it'd be that popular.

I'd consider "one" to be a pretty huge amount, to be honest.

Especially given your inability to keep the bloody things under control.

Do it though Gaz, it sounds like something you might enjoy.

I've done some quick sums on the situation as it is right now. I've also had loads of offers of work (even done some in return for the odd pint of beer) but once you work out the cost of the exams, even then the need to still get a separate permission from the CAA for many jobs, factoring in lost days due to weather etc. then the day rates to make it even vaguely worthwhile soon start to creep up to the point where a lot of potential customers would disappear. And I wonder how many of those that are left would probably want more quality than a Phantom and a GoPro is going to provide. So then you are into the realms of more specialised kit which although it has come down in price drastically still is a lot more expensive and involved than a basic setup. It does seem like it might be fun but, I know a few people who have set up as professional outfits and I certainly don't get the impression that they are having to turn down work.

Yeah, that's primarily what's stopped me from getting it done before.

I've had quite a few news agencies approach me though (having seen the flood footage I did) who would presumably be prepared to pay appropriate sums. That said, you're right - if I was going to have to charge a decent sum, then they'd probably just go to one of the "specialist" outfits that have the hexacopters etc.

It'd only be a "hobby" line of work, so I wouldn't be expecting to make huge sums of money out of it or anything. The annual reassessment is only £75 from the place I was looking at (EuroUSC) which is better than I thought.

I think we'll eventually see some more sensible legislation that might make it more viable as a paid hobby. No idea when, though.

Interesting - I think the opposite. I think the regulations are going to get even tighter than they already are, and essentially strangle the entire concept of aerial video unless you're able to afford the right equipment and licensing.

I attribute this to the rise in UAVs being marketed as toys when (as I discovered) they're anything but.

They need regulations which can be effectively policed. Having them so restrictive that people will just fly outside the rules doesn't really help anyone. All the noises from various meetings with the CAA seem to indicate that they want to nurture rather than destroy a new industry. Also if anything they have already become more permissive in some respects, the exemptions for FPV increased in terns of height and weight, they are also looking to allow the use of return to home type failsafes for multirotors.

Hurrah. So today after waiting patiently for nearly two weeks I finally got to run the car.

Instead of Ford airfield (all concrete runways) I decided that it would be better to go to a local beach that has a big grass car park. I gambled on it being rather empty today, and we went at 2pm to make sure there would be a minimal amount of people around. And it was fun. And, it was also a really good thing that I ran it on grass first because the speed of it caught me a bit by surprise and I rolled it three times and flipped it very dramatically once. Had I been running on concrete I would probably be looking at a rather expensive repair bill but instead got away with a coating of dust and some dried grass. The batteries didn't last terribly long. I would say about ten minutes each but during that time the car never once stood still it was always flying around. I found a nice wavy piece of ground too and managed to get some air time haha.

All in all it was bloody good fun and the car absolutely flies, even over quite long grass. Before I take it to the airfield I am going to buy a spare set of wheels and some track tyres more suited to concrete. The knobblies would get torn to shreds.



There is some minor damage to the aerial holder but as I said had it been on concrete the damage would have been really bad. Oh yeah, and I'm really impressed with the range on these new controls and receivers. Back in the day if you went too far you'd start losing control but the range on this thing is fantastic !

Yay! Glad you got it running. Don't get hung up on body shell damage, they're a consumable

Yeah the lack of bumpers scared the crap out of me at first but then I realised I really do need to run this with plenty of space.. It's fiercely quick too, it manages to get from one end of a car park to the other in nothing but a few seconds.

Great fun ! I'm thinking drift car next.. I went so hard on the corners that one of the tyres came unstuck haha.