Connecting the dots...

[DoubleCH]

Looks like I might be actually in the minority with Youtube not playing 60fps smoothly base on feedback I gathered. I fiddled with my setup and now can play 60fps even the 1080p60's smoothly most of the time with Youtube now.

Not with 300X but here's a new video piro-flipping my stretched Proto. With 720p60 and not as much cam-curse, I can finally illustrate my tip to make the tail swinging up/down more dramatically. Initially, my strategy to swing tail up vertical was to wait until tail swings to about 90 degrees before tail-in and then use lots/sudden cyclic to catch timing to swing tail up the highest by the time it gets tail in for the dramatic effect. That's too sudden and requires good cyclic power/response required.

To get it smoother and less critical to cyclic power/response, I now do it like two 45-degree flips instead of one 90-degree flip. Instead of letting heli spin around 1 revolution totally flat. I "pre-flip" it about 45 degrees away from me, wait for 90-before-tail-in and flip another 45 degrees to make the dramatic swing-up, and then followed by leveling it off. This way I'm flipping about 45 degrees at a time so no critical cyclic power/response needed. In extreme case I smooth the 2-flip process into a continuous stir but keeping in mine the 45-90. When smooth enough I can even do that at 2000rpm HS with my stretched Protos with 470mm blades (that's like 2800rpm HS with 300X). At that HS I don't have much room for error and cyclic input has to be smooth.

The other merit about "pre-flipping" is that the pre-flip tilts the heli 45 degrees away from you pushing it away. This will cancel out with the rest of the flip where heli will be tilting towards you, which means the heli will be more likely staying at one spot without much random-direction drift. When in action, you'll hear like...

faaff... woooaaahh... ... faaff... woooaaahh...

instead of just...

faaff... ... faaff... ... faaff..

I meant to illustrate the "pre-flip" every flip in the video but cam-curse always screws up my plan. If you listen closely you will hear that "faaff-woooaaahh" a few times but not every time I flip.

My Stretched Protos Tamed-down FBL settings for TGY-S306Gs (4 min 2 sec)

[DoubleCH]

How about piro-flipping in 4K UHD!

My Stretched Protos Testing 4k UHD Recording Again (4 min 22 sec)

[DoubleCH]

Time to bump my own thread with more vids.

Still haven't flown my 300X for 2.5 months now because I stole the batteries for my FPV250 quad. OTOH, I'm getting more confident in piro flips with my stretched Protos not 10-mistake high, though my legs still shake every time I do piro flips.

Finally managed to tweak my 7-yr old PC to use full hardware-acceleration to play 60fps Youtube videos fine most of the time. When I want to play back a Youtube 60fps clip really really smooth not even 1 frame glitch then I use "svptube" to download the clip. This is THE ONLY downloader that I know of (I tried a lot) works with 60fps Youtube clips because those particular clips are only available in Youtube's "DASH" playback technology where stream data are sent out in chunks.

Here are some piro flip vids in 60fps.

Piro Flips Are Best Watched in 60fps (2 min 54 sec)

My Stretched Protos Testing Mobius Lens A Again (4 min 48 sec)

[Nelsonisms]

Very nice as always. I'm surprised you don't do an on-board PIP thing with all those cameras you have. That might be interesting to watch during some piro flips.

[DoubleCH]

Thanks. I've actually tried recording piro flips onboard before but it wasn't pleasant to watch. You'll puke watching it. Plus because of the extreme panning speed, cmos-sensor based camera will show smeared image like in warp speed or something.

[Nelsonisms]

Speaking of camera stuff, I just ordered one of these for my QAV400 and Hero 4 this week. I'm looking forward to trying it out this weekend. I've been having a real blast with FPV lately and want to start trying to get some good video. Maybe even of some of the guys at the field flying helis. I also like trying tail planks.

[DoubleCH]

Looking good! I go the other way. With my 250 quad I want to keep things simple. Just balance the rotors as best as I can and strap the Mobius as tight as possible to the frame. Not as "always-level" as a good gimbal but I get as much details as Mobius can get with or without gimbal. More natural look when flying acro... And proximity flying... For chase view I just manipulate stick combo to lock on target while manipulating the quad. In all cases, absolutely ZERO jello and I'm very satisfied with the results.

[Nelsonisms]

Originally Posted by DoubleCH

Looking good! I go the other way. With my 250 quad I want to keep things simple. Just balance the rotors as best as I can and strap the Mobius as tight as possible to the frame. Not as "always-level" as a good gimbal but I get as much details as Mobius can get with or without gimbal. More natural look when flying acro... And proximity flying... For chase view I just manipulate stick combo to lock on target while manipulating the quad. In all cases, absolutely ZERO jello and I'm very satisfied with the results.

That's kind of what I like about this setup. I'll be able to switch between it being mounted on a gimbal or hard mounted. This one is specifically made for my quad so you can install and remove it quickly. So far all of my videos have been with the camera hard mounted and I like that perspective too with the natural pitch and roll, especially when flying low through trees and such. It really makes you feel like you're in the cockpit. Of course my FPV camera itself is mounted directly on the frame. But when I'm trying to get wide sweeping panoramic shots I'd like it to be smoother. I never get jello, but eliminating the pitch and roll of the model is what I'm after. Anyways I just thought I'd share since it seems like you're into this sort of thing too. I never thought I'd enjoy it so much.

[DoubleCH]

I made an SSG (super simple gimbal) to use in my 250 quad before. It's super light (like 10g or something) with 3g servos controlled by the flight controller built-in gimbal functionality. It worked good for leveling the image while I'm moving around but those cheap 3g servos are no match for the smoothness of brushless gimbal motors. I ended up dumping that idea and just go simple with hard mount which especially fits the theme for a quad this small.

[DoubleCH]

It was cold but sunny so I thought it would be a good day to do PIP recording showing my stick movements doing piro-flips. I've flown in much colder temperature with less issue than today because of the wind and the wind-chill factor. It's especially bad when the wind is blowing towards me from the front. That means my eyes got teared up and the heli kept blown towards me. This is especially bad with piro-flips because every flip to throw the disc away from me the wind would push the heli up and towards me. I had to cut the flight and day short but here it is the video. I'm hoping to do a better one in the future.

My Stretched Protos Showing Stick Movements (2 min 40 sec)

[thruster]

That's cool seeing the stick movements!

[DoubleCH]

Weather was better today so I re-did the vids with better flying.

Human Slow-mo piro flips

Piro Flip Stick Movements Human Slow-Mo (3 min 52 sec)

Stronger pack (too bad cams stopped mysteriously missing the hard flying parts so I had to restart)

Piro Flip Stick Movements with My Strong Pack (3 min 38 sec)

[stevebaker]

Thanks for the ideas CH - up 'till now I've only been practising stationery piro flips. Separately I've mastered upright piro circuits but haven't mastered inverted piro circuits (just haven't spent enough time on them).
The penny has now just dropped. I need to get the inverted piro circuits down and then start flipping between upright and inverted as you demonstrated early on in this thread. Now that I have recently fitted a rescue facility on my Mini Protos (Spirit FBL), I'll be pushing that heli harder instead of only pushing the Trex 150 - which is far from ideal to learn piro flips on.

[stevebaker]

Having started to work on linking piro flips into continuous piro travel, I soon realised that I have mainly practised left rudder, anti-clockwise upright piro circuits, but unfortunately without giving it too much thought, I've been previously learning inverted piro circuits with right rudder, maintaining my favoured anti-clockwise circuits.

I'm now working on left rudder inverted piro circuits so that I can transition and keep the piros continuous.

I've also picked up on your tip earlier in this thread to punch in a little more collective to give more hang time, which is proving very useful esp. going inverted to upright. Previously I had been rushing inverted to upright a bit and it never felt as comfortable - just a simple extra bump of the collective and it suddenly feels easier and less rushed

[DoubleCH]

I was hoping my upcoming update would be a cilp with my 300X but I kind of feel bad that it's still in hibernation. The main goal of this clip was to test the new Mobius auto WB/exposure lock feature but I figured I should record my latest piro flips with up'ped piro rate (from reduced piro rate early on). I used to fly 100% D/R on rudder with vbar's piro rate set to 120. However, during early on piro flip practice I found that setup was a bit fast so I set a D/R switch position to run 92%.

I'm now back on 100% D/R on the rudder. On one hand, it takes sharper focus and to anticipate drift in order to vary plan on stick movement to correct. OTOH, because flips and piros happen so fast it's easier to keep the heli in one spot while flipping. Similar idea when you do stationary flips and rolls. The slower the flip the easier it is to drift and/or change altitude. With faster piro rate, I don't have to bump as much collective to maintain altitude while piro-flipping. Make sure to watch this in 60fps.

My Stretched Protos Testing Mobius WB/Exposure Lock Feature (6 min 23 sec)

[Nelsonisms]

Is that a brand new feature they just released on the Mobius? It's been a while since I watched the threads, but I did notice some really slow exposure change response on mine last weekend flying late in the day. I've had the Mobius for a while, but I've really only started using it in the last few weeks on my little 250 quad. I may have to look into this and see if I can get some better videos in the process.

[DoubleCH]

Yes, brand new feature (that I requested way back in the 808 #16v2 days ) but you have to manually update firmware to get it. I'm glad they managed to make it happen. Love the locking auto exposure/WB feature. I made some clips for the quad also but only managed to post 1 for now on Youtube (will post on the quad section here). Sun is out again so time to fly more...

EDIT: Hang on to updating firmware for now if you shoot wide modes because there's a bug that make duplicate frame every 42th if you shoot wide mode. 720p60 mode is not affected though so I guess I won't be editing and posting the 1080p clips.

[DoubleCH]

Took my 300X out of hibernation today. More details about it in my flight log thread.
https://www.helifreak.com/showpost.p...&postcount=557

In short loving it loving it loving it. Tried to take some good piro-flip footage but cam-curse keep on striking. Because of the smaller size (than my Protos) I used long zoom lens for my Mobius (6mm vs stock lens A about 3.6) and every good flight I took I didn't get the heli in frame. On my 5th flight I was so focused on making sure heli was in frame I was flying it with reservation and I didn't realize it until I saw the footage. Oh well.

My Blade 300X Flight #2133 Out of Hibernation (3 min 36 sec)