Be Excellent To Each Other

I could do, not convinced it would work though. Besides, if it did crash through someone's windows I'm not sure I'd want them to know who I was

Ouch. Unless you say it got stolen I'm not sure your house insurance will cover it. I thought it had GPS and return to home on it. Did you not have time to switch that in?

Yeah, but if I couldn't overcome the wind strength to fly it back to me I'm not sure the return-home function would have done either.

It should easily be capable of 40 mph, faster than a really strong wind. Unless you were flying in a gale it should have been able to fly back upwind. It's incredibly easy to become disorientated with a quadcopter due to the small size and roughly symmetrical shape.

I dunno, then - I've been back to the field I was flying in and it's nowhere to be found, so either it did return home and someone's half-inched it, or it couldn't manage it

Gonna post a few messages on the village Facebook wall etc. to see if anyone has found it, but I'm not holding out hope - difficult to say how far it went before I lost sight of it!

Probably not as far as you think, they get damn small pretty quick. I've had people stood with me when I'm flying my quad FPV and it's invisible to them before I even think I'm that far away.

Unlucky though dude. Hope you get it back somehow. Most people are pretty good like that but I'd keep an eye on ebay just in case.

Yeah, will do. I'm kicking myself, when I saw it start to be taken away, I tried to land it but saw it go behind trees so thought I'd better not in case it was in someone's garden, so tried to bring it back up and get it back towards me, and then the wind just took it further.

Pain in the arse.

I guess I could just go knocking on doors on what looked like the flight path and see if it's landed in anyone's garden/house/car/kennel.

What range do you reckon it would get out to before it lost contact with the TX?

It's really hard to say. The really reliable range on 2.4GHz isn't that far, a km or so, but then some people have got out to several km when testing it. Can you remember what you did with the throttle after you lost sight of it?

Put it down to zero. Which in theory should have landed it somewhere, I guess.

DJI claim it has a range of up to 300 metres, which narrows it down - kind of. I think I'll just have to go knocking on doors and see if anyone saw it, or found it crashed in their garden or anything. Hopefully if someone has, it hasn't damaged any of their property.

On the plus side, if I do find it, the footage on the GoPro camera should be fucking glorious

Aw man, didn't know you had a GoPro on there too. Scan google earth to try to get a good idea of the flight path and then get out looking.

Fingers crossed that you'll find it.

Flight path is mostly homes and gardens, some fields.

Too dark now to even think about trying to find it.

Lesson learned - get a separate GPS chip attached to it so I can at least track it on a map, if I'm going to do this again

Fucking hell, Gaz. Hope you can get it back somehow. Fingers crossed.

How much did it cost Gaz? I've often wondered what happens with flying models that can go astray but I guess this answers it.

Don't tell MrsChap, but copter+GoPro was £800 in total.

That's a lot of cash to lose in less than two minutes.

Not too worried about the cash though, I have enough shit (and cars!) lying around doing nothing that I could sell to get the money back. Or I could stick a claim in on the contents insurance.

Ouch! I really do hope you get it back.. That's gotta sting.

Holy fuck!

Well, ain't that just peachy?

Turns out that even though I thought I was flying in GPS mode with the "return home" feature activated, it actually wasn't because it didn't have enough of a satellite lock or something or other.

Always handy, isn't it? When you buy a £450 device that doesn't come with an instruction booklet. The Quick Start guide I found on the Interweb was a bit confusing for me, and didn't explain anything very well at all. However, I just found some videos on the DJI site that tell me exactly where I went wrong.

Fuck sake.

Ah well, I live in hope that it'll turn up - I'm on the verge of selling my Honda Stepwagon so that'll pay for a replacement if necessary

Can't believe I was idiotic enough to keep the camera on it too, while I wasn't that used to flying it. Annoying, really - the other times I've flied it, it's been ridiculously easy to keep stable, but just had no real space to work with.

This time, I guess because the GPS wasn't on properly, it was all over the shop.

On a more positive note for the thread, my new brushless motor & ESC have given my Sand Viper a right kick up the arse.

Just seen a nice set of road wheels/tyres for £22 too.

They shall be mine.

Oh, am I alright to drop off a tamiya connector tomorrow after work for that adapter, Mark?

Yeah no worries, just make sure it's the right half.

Will do. I've took some pictures too.

Here you go Zardoz. All sponsored by the GT4 owners club apparently.



http://www.nwstages.co.uk/rally_village.html

Ooh, could watch some of the Rally in the Morning then head up to see some RC after lunch.

Depending on how much more work I have to do this weekend...

Shit. It's the day after the beer festival.

I'd rather go to the beer festival on Saturday I reckon.

I'll see what MrsZ thinks of the proposal.

There will be stands where you can buy radio controlled cars and parts I reckon.

I probably wouldn't bring that up during the negotiations, though.

Got the go ahead.

Think the Mrs and brood will be there for the Rally, depending on weather obv.

Cool, weather is set pretty fair right now.

Sorted.

Would be a good event to capture on your Quadrocoper.

The Rally, not the Beer Festival.

Although...

Yeah, the thought had crossed my mind. Not sure if I'd just get told off by someone in a fluorsecent vest, though.

Nah, it'll be reet.

Surprise Wullie!

I've got it back!

It's a bit battle scarred, and one of the motors no longer spins freely, so I think some grit or something ended up getting in to the case when it crashed.

But I've got it back, camera and all! Won't find out until later tonight onc eI've recharged the batteries whether it still flies.

Hopefully it's relatively easy to replace any damaged parts like motors and what-not.

//edit: Also, GT4OC sponsoring an RC event? Small world.

YAY! Did you find it, or was it handed in?

Excellent news!

Should be reet you've probably bent the motor shaft, not generally worth replacing, just buy a whole new motor.

I sent a tweet to my local radio station asking them to mention it on air, and someone at the quarry down the road from me called to say they'd found it.

Went and picked it up and handed him £20 as a reward, and now the radio station want me to do a phone interview tomorrow morning!

I estimate it flew about 1.2 miles before coming down.

Gonna check out the video later.

That's excellent! Smart thinking.

I assume that under the plastic shell and everything, it's simple to replace shit like that?

Yeah, should be dude. If it's a fairly conventional frame under there then it'll be four screws and some bullet connectors.

W00T!

Also: W00T for Gaz.

Oh also, before you do the radio interview I'd try and find out what their angle is going to be. They might start calling it a drone and implying that you were spying on people's houses or some bollocks like that.

Well, hopefully not - I'll steer it more towards me just having some fun in a field, but the wind getting it away from me!

We're generally a pretty laid back bunch in Shropshire, but yeah - hopefully they won't try and twist me into being some sort of militarised pervert or anything.

(they'd just have to look at my Pinterest boards for that )

Have seen the video now. It was up in the air for just over six minutes before crashing very hard into a big pile of grit.

I'll fire off an e-mail to the maker's support team and find out just how serviceable it is.

You should upload the video for our amusement.

I hope it caught the look on your face.

Oh yeah, it's going on YouTube. Unfortunately my face was approximately three quarters of a mile from the impact site, so isn't visible. I'm sure you can draw something suitable though, Z