Be Excellent To Each Other

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.

Shame there's no sound, when I flew it into the room she was shouting "It's a fairy!" then "*squeal* the fairy's chasing me!", ha ha.

I'm just a terrible father, I never meant to crash into her head, though.

"The fairly is tangled in my hair! ARRRRGH!"

/can never watch Peter Pan again

Ace

Result. Now to figure out how to make her hate Frozen.

Lock her in a freezer and tell her Elsa did it.

A video from the glorious weekend. Bad start to the session by crashing my Vampire (sorry, no video, fixed up now) and having to ditch my Bixler in a school playing field after a disorientated panic . Got my eye in though after that and chased a van! Went a bit faster through goal posts! Squeezed through a Quad race gate! Landed right at my feet!



What have you got, Kissyfur?

Super-AIDS.

Yeah good morning that, I've not had chance to do anything with the video yet but it's basically just things smashing into that airgate. That last crash with the quad was pretty mental, it sheared two blades off but because it was in airmode even though I was at zero throttle it tried to stop the spin induced by hitting the gate which is why it immediately went full power and zinged off towards the other flyers there.

It's the element of danger that everyone loves though.

Also, they put the air gate up so it would totally have been their fault.

Pretty pleased with the unplanned range test it's only got one of those cheapy orange hobbyking receivers in.

Should probably get some insurance really, I doubt he'd have been too chuffed if it had dented his silly Audi lorry thing.

Yeah, you were probably about 500 metres away there.

We should ask the college if we can launch from up on the tower.

We ought to go and fly out to the new mystery island that's appeared out of the sea.

I'm sure that's no-where near as exciting as it is in my head, but HOLY SHIT YEAH YOU SHOULD!

Yeah it's pretty crazy, it's like 500ft high and the top is shrouded by an impenetrable mist. A few have tried to go there but nobody came back, some garbled radio messages, crazed mutterings about giant lizards then just nothing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-la ... e-36249557

Tinkers 2017.

My colleague ditched his drone in the river Trent at the weekend. Ridiculously he dived in after it! The Trent is pretty vicious sometimes and you're warned not to go in.

Did he get it back? I'd imagine it'd be fucked anyway.

Yeah, amazingly he found it. Now it's drying out.