Video of my T-Rex Nav / Landing / Strobe Lights /LiPo kit!

[Xwing Pilot]

Nice lights!

Just wanted to further compliment Thanh and his kits. I installed a Version 1 kit on my little Blade CX. Looks AWESOME and functions very well.

Thanh is terrific to do business with!

[PilotSmith]

I got the lights mainly just for looks not thinking I'd get much use out of the LiPo warning feature on the light kit. But I really like the light LiPo alarm feature now. Once I notice that the lights have stopped flashing I know my LVC on my ESC will kick in within about a minute so it gives me a warning when I mess up on the timer or decide to stretch the flight out a little longer. When the lights stop flashing I know I better bring her near to get ready to land. Nice backup warning.

[DEEP6PAK]

Looking forward to recieving my light kit, Tranh is hooking me up with custom color lights, and the V2 kit including the audible alarm. I will be installing it on my 450 SE with a Fusuno Airwolf Fuselage.

[tukkus]

Originally Posted by DEEP6PAK

Looking forward to recieving my light kit, Tranh is hooking me up with custom color lights, and the V2 kit including the audible alarm. I will be installing it on my 450 SE with a Fusuno Airwolf Fuselage.

what will it cost?

[VKGT]

That's awesome, I like the concept

[DEEP6PAK]

57 bucks, thats for the landing light, plus one white strobe, two red strobes, a solid red and green, plus one solid red for a cockpit light, and the low volt buzzer. Includes priority shipping and he's giving me custom wire lengths on each bulb!

From what I've seen on his website, and in here, these are pretty cool! I can't wait to see my new fuselage hovering, blinking, etc...

Now I just need to learn how to fly it, I'm a total newb with one flight resulting in broken landing gear! Today will be better!

[PilotSmith]

Lights are cool! If you don't already have one, get a flight simulator and practice on that until you don't crash with it. Will save you a lot of $$$ in parts. There are some free ones that are ok to learn basic stuff. I use ClearView which cost $30 and has nice graphics. Nice deal on the custom lights. Thahn is great to work with. Good luck!

[DEEP6PAK]

Thanks for the advice, I bought a Blade Cp at X-mas, then after 200 bucks in repair parts, mostly blades, I stgarted getting jealous of my friends 450 se. He also has a nice simulator which I have spent some time on. So I figured I would rather spend money on something nice instead of the blade. If it gets above freezing here today I am going to give it another shot with the Trex. New bump resistant gear! :-)

[DEEP6PAK]

By the way, I like your installation. I pride myself on a clean job and what you did is real nice! I was concerned on how to get the tail wires back there and what you did looks fine! I don't plan on flying with my fuselage for some time to come. I just got in on the fusuno airwolf which was in stock at microheli for all of about 3 hrs. Should be arriving this week.

[PilotSmith]

Thanks. I just took the lights off as I had to take apart the heli to clean out a bunch of sand that got in it. I'm planning to wrap thin black electrical tape on more of the wiring when I put them back in. The tape protects the thin wires and makes it look like a wiring harness.

I had the same experience with my Blade CP. Between constantly buying new rotor blades and tail motors for it it was draining my hobby budget dry. Many flights now with my T-Rex and not a single set of rotor blades have been destroyed.

[DEEP6PAK]

good to hear it, I destroyed my first set this morning in a blaze of glory! along with my elevator servo gears, my horizontal fin on the boom, a set of landing gear... I think that was it. Had a few good hovers though. Any recomendations on throttle curve vs pitch? It seems to be sluggish in throttle response, I was thinking that I should change the esc setting to eliminate the soft start. What to you think.

[PilotSmith]

Sorry to hear about your crash. Check out all of Finless' videos on setting up your curves, etc. His videos have much better info than I could provide.

Has your light kit arrived? I just finished rewiring everything in my heli. I posted a video of it hovering in the garage here:

https://www.helifreak.com/viewtopic.php?p=259909#259909

This time around I used very thin black shrink tubing to go over all the light's wires that I previously had left bare. I hid the receiver and most of the wires in the canopy instead of having it all in the body under the gear. Looks cleaner now. Instead of running the tail light wire all the way along the boom I have it running down one of the boom supports. Was hard to get it neat running past the servos mounts the way I had it before. I also used a mini Deans connector to attach the LiPo light electronics to the battery lead so I can easily disconnect it if need be.

[DEEP6PAK]

Spent some hrs this weekend watching finless vids, and "fine tuning" my head. got done and had my first clean hover yet! Since then I have had several succesful flights with only a broken tail blade. Just now I had my best hover yet just a few feet in front of me for a few minutes. The flight was so good, I was able to make some adjustments to my swash to where it almost hovered itself.

I just missed a call from Thahn while I was flying, he was confirming my address, so I guess I will be getting it this week.

[DEEP6PAK]

I noticed your heli seems to hang a bit askew when its in the air, and I was noticing the same thing with mine... Any idea how one would correct for that?

[PilotSmith]

Having the heli well tuned makes a big difference.

I could not hover very well in the garage as I was so close to the car and the garage cabinets that I was too jittery on the sticks. But you'll find that the Trex is easy to hover smoothly.

The camera was a bit angled which I think exagerated the lean but that is normal. My Blade CP hovered at an angle too. The heli leans as some cyclic has to be put in to compensate for the tail rotor thrust pushing the heli sideways.

[busted blade]

i like the lights. however,"nose in" my result in the "deer in the headlights" effect

[PilotSmith]

Hehe, they are pretty darn bright LEDs! I have to remember not to stare down when I am putting the canopy on to avoid getting blinded by them. I had them off for a few days and really missed them. I like the warning I get that the LVC is about to engage when the lights stop flashing. Also makes it easier to stay oriented when the sun is starting to go down.

[sgrim80]

Originally Posted by PilotSmith

A few months back I was looking for a LiPo monitor for my BCP as it did not have any LVC on the ESC. I found a neat LiPo monitor that was also a light kit. Basically when voltage starts to get low the strobe lights go solid. I didn't really need a LiPo monitor for the T-Rex as the ESC does the job. But I liked the idea of having lights on the T-Rex with a landing light I could turn on and off. Plus the LiPo monitor could not hurt either to give me an early warning that voltage is starting to get low. The red and green nav lights are always on. The light on the tail, top of canopy, and belly strobe. The landing light I control with the gyro mode switch on the radio. (I'm sharing the channel with the gyro as I only have a 6 ch radio so I can't dedicate a channel to the light switch.) Just finished installing it and shot this short video of it sitting on the piano to show the lights. (4MB): www.smithland.com/RC/Lights.wmv
I'll shoot some flying video later.

What did you have to do to share the channel? I too have a dx7 and a ar6100 receiver so I would have to share the gyro sensing channel. I believe it is the gear channel. I know only one of the wires is used...do I just hook up the lipo alarm to the two spots in the gyro plug that arent being used?

[PilotSmith]

My brain is fading. I don't remember. What I probably did was use a Y cable on the gyro channel. (Lipo alarm and gyro shared the one port on the receiver with a Y cable.) Now I am using the DX7 with the AR7000 so I use the gear channel for the light. With my old radio I think when I turned off heading hold mode the landing light would turn off and it was on while I was in HH mode which was most of the time.

[Ben Hedrick]

Originally Posted by PilotSmith

Well, the wind kicked up so I didn't fly much but got a little bit of video as the wife and kids freaked out that I would crash because it was windy. I also had tinkered with my gyro settings in the radio and had too much gain so the tail was wagging a lot. Here is the video (8mb). Time to adjust the gyro now...

www.smithland.com/RC/lights2.wmv

That girl talking in the back ground cracks me up...