OT - RC Airplanes

Well i went to hobbytown and upgraded the motor to a p51 mustang motor. WOW it made it way quicker. Its a little windy today but i had to try it. I got two batteries with the plane and so i was out flying it and just put the 2nd battery in when it lost power and dropped. When i got to the plane the left rudder engages the goes back straight by itself. I got the controller off and every 10 sec the left rudder engages. Im calling the manufact now. Pretty weird, i hope i can get the bugs worked out of it soon. Starting to get tired of ot being broke more than fix
 
I finally repaired my skywalker today and installed an ArduIMU to stabilize it. The ArduIMU interfaces with the Dragon OSD to give you an artificial horizon and lets you adjust the amount of stabilization in flight. At first I had it turned way to high and it didn't want to turn but it was easily fixed by going into the menu and turning it down. After that, it flew beautifully. I didn't have and OH CRAP!!! moment the whole flight.:D Well, actually I had one moment. My wife said,"Oh, that's a real airplane next to your airplane!" I yanked the goggles off and looked up and it was a passenger jet probably about 20 times higher than me. :) She said she didn't mean close to my airplane, it was just above me when she looked at it. I flew for 25 min. and still had a lot of battery left but it was starting to get dark. I am planning on taking it out to Smyrna tomorrow and seeing how it does.
 
Greg, its definitely a downside to have to repair things a lot. Its especially true when you're a n00b (and I still consider myself one). For example, last time I flew my big plane, I crashed it. The time before that, I lost it for a few days (and this thing has a 6ft wingspan... its not like its small!). I consider them all growing pains. At the same time, I can now get multiple flights on my Sukhoi and never crash. Now its time to work on my approaches. :D

Mike, I can't imagine how much that freaked you out when you're wife said that... :lol: That's funny. Let us know how it goes today at Smyrna! I think I'm going to work a bit on my Twinstar sometime today.

Brandon
 
I had a great day flying today. I put in a couple of FPV flights with my Skywalker. The second one I ended up flying behind myself pretty high and Troy went to turn my antennas around and when he moved it I lost video completely! I flipped it to return to home and it brought it back overhead and we finally spotted it but it was so high it looked like a speck up there. Turns out a plug came unplugged and we got it fixed. The plane is so light that it was barely loosing altitude with the motor off. I ended up flying it for 40 min. before I landed and still had some battery left!

I let Troy fly my quadcopter FPV and he liked it so much he is going to get one. He was flying it all over the place and it was his first flight.

We are planning to fly sometime next week but are thinking of maybe trying to find a more interesting place to fly. The scenery around there is pretty boring. Anyone have any recommendations?
 
Nice, Mike!

Glad to hear it was a successful day of flying. I'm also not surprised to hear Troy is going to put a quadcopter together. :)

I personally think you guys should come to our office building and fly FPV from there! I even know where the roof access hatch is now that I flew my Sukhoi up there... :lol: Seriously though, Zach and I were talking the other day about how awesome it would be to fly FPV from there. There's pretty much no one there on Saturdays. :)

Brandon
 
Lol, I probably am not ready for flying from buildings yet. I hope to go flying some tomorrow, hopefully it won't be too hot. Last weekend before I lost video I got an amazing view of the sun shining through a cloud but I had forgotten to push record on the GoPro. :(
 
Be careful flying this heli.:lol2:

HeliWarning.jpg
 
Check out this flight from yesterday. There was a low cloud that was just hanging over me so I figured I'd try to fly through it. I got into it and was flying blind with only my instruments to guide me. I got a lot higher than I intended to so I came back down before getting out the top. Definitely the highest I have been. My GoPro got so covered in moisture I couldn't see very well. By the time I came back out of it the cloud had gotten much darker and right after I came back in it started thundering. The cloud moved a little farther south and developed into a storm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjPE_mun2EY
 
Cool video there Mike!

Haven't had much time to fly at all lately. Hopefully I get out in the next few weeks. I don't really feel like driving over to Columbia so next time I'm out will probably be Smyrna.
 
Long time no see Zach. Let me know when you are going out again.

Brandon, that was the Skywalker, not the quad. I don't trust the quad near that much yet. It is flying well now but it doesn't have the glide ability if something happens, it just falls like a rock. Oh, btw, I got the R/C cars running again if you want to see them sometime. I might go flying tomorrow or I might go to the track. I might even do both or neither, I haven't decided yet. :)
 
Yea, I haven't been around much. I intend to get out again - sometime soon. I'll let you know when I have a chance to get out.

I am seriously considering selling the gas planes I have or at least a few engines and converting them over to electric. I hate to do that, but I don't care for messing around in the heat trying to start them. Laziness has gotten the better of me, I guess.
 
I hear ya. Nothing ruins your day more than fighting with a cantankerous engine in 90 degree plus heat. On a related note, I was trying to get the 8ight T truck started the other day. It hasn't been run much so the engine is pretty hard to turn over and I killed the battery in my starter box. I took out the dead gel cell and put in a couple of NIMH car packs. I cranked on the thing for probably 30 min. and couldn't figure it out. I finally took the air filter off and saw it was blowing fuel out the carb. I hooked up the batteries backwards and was cranking the engine in reverse! I switched them and it started up the first try after that.
 
Got 3 nice flights in with my Twinstar today. :)

With 10 minutes flights, the resting voltage of my batt packs is still at about 11.9, which is only about 50%! That's pretty crazy. The packs are only 2200mAh, and I should be able to fit a 5000mAh in there. :)

Brandon
 
Forgot to mention, yesterday I flew it for the first time after re-mounting my motors. The CG had shifted quite a bit and it was tail heavy, so it just kept ballooning on me. Ended up flying straight into a tree. :lol: No damage at all, though. But it was quite stuck. Fortunately it was a small tree, so I backed my truck up to it, Julie got a broom from her office (which was where the tree was) and away I went... poking, prodding, and shaking until we got it down. It was quite wedged... heh.

Brandon
 
Cool. Are you using the stock brushed motors? I bet you could really get some more flight time and more power with brushless.

I'm heading out to Smyrna tomorrow. Hopefully I will get some good FPV flights in.
 
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