sex appeal

[Tomstoy2]

This is about as complicated as it gets. I loose track all the time. Too many wires now to trace, that's why I ended up shorting out my current sensor. I'm now stuck until I get the replacement.
Besides all the wires, due to the fact that Immerison pin outs are different than the Boscam fpv system I run and despite my triple checking, I still missed one.
I've since corrected the problem and again triple checked again.

This pretty much completes the acft but not the project. I'm in the planning stage now for my ground station.
I've made out my list of components, which comes out to another $1k. It will include a head tracker so the antenna will follow the Hexa with high gain antenna's.
It will include, besides the tracker, a 12 inch monitor and my old AIO goggles to keep others entertained as the Hexa leaves visual range.

I'm intending to do another thread later this year on the evolution of my conversion to multi rotors!
As I said before, for me this is the epitome of every desire I had as a child when I first entered into this insane hobby!

"The darkest of the dark arts, indeed"!

[sutty]

Speaking of desires in rotary flight, the only thing I ever wanted to achieve was to be able to fly my helicopter pretty much like a fixed wing. You know the sort of thing, circuits, loops, rolls, standard sort of aerobatic flight, hopefully followed by a successful landing. Since that was mostly achieved within a year of starting out, my goals changed, and seeing what other people were able to achieve, at the fly ins, made we want to be able to do more.

Right now I have gone a little further than my original goal, but it seems to be getting much harder to progress, and everything new that I try to add to my routines seems to take hundreds of flights to achieve. My upright piro flight is getting pretty good now, and my inverted piro flight is progressing nicely, not good yet, but getting better, but that has taken me nearly the whole flying season to achieve. I could progress faster if I used the sim, but that just doesn't give me a sufficient sense of achievement to even consider it anymore.

I had a good three weeks off for Christmas, and got a lot of flights in, but I haven't flown now for over a week dues to the weather, and I am already already wondering if my flying will have suffered. I feel like the only way to go forward now is to put more effort into flying than I actually want to. It's like when I was on a fitness binge, going back a few years. If I didn't do my 10K on the rower, at least 3 times a week, I thought I was letting myself down, and indeed I would actually feel slightly down if I didn't do it, even when there was good reason for me not to have done it.

Over Christmas I flew in all sorts of weather conditions, but now I'm just fed up with going out in the wind, and the cold, and sometimes even the drizzle, just to get flights in, so that I don't feel bad about wasting an opportunity. I seem to be in danger of it becoming a chore.

Hopefully I'll cheer up about it when the weather picks up a little. I hope so. Maybe I'm just suffering from a little SAD.

Cheers

Sutty

[Tomstoy2]

Out here in the bowels of the west we have a saying for the malady you suffer from, cabin fervor! I start suffering from it about October 15th! There is no known cure, though a good bottle of tequila will see you thru the roughest stretches.
Like right now, just got done with a shitty night at work, ( at least 12 hours went quick ), I have no beer, ( or tequila ), and it's an effin' -12 F outside! So glad I have a new battery in the car!!!
But, you all know how I hate winter. Set up the guest room, Jerry, I can't take too much more of this!

[jperkosk]

Guestroom is ready in the new digs, Tom, whenever you're ready. Look for American Airlines DEN-DFW-SLP, although the weather here has been unusually crappy this winter so you may want to hold off till the next cabin fever season, I mean we get British winter here once every 10 years down here, otherwise winters are nice.

Speaking of the new digs, last night the wind has calmed down so I got a quick dusk time video, started the flight right after the sun set behind the mountains. Please observe how quick it gets dark at my lattitude, the flight begins in relatively bright twilight, the hexa goes out with the sun about 300m and then returns towards the sun to land in almost complete darkness. Pretty cool, actually:

20140105 005FPV F550 (7 min 55 sec)

[Tomstoy2]

Excellent vid!!!
Our sunsets happen in a slightly different way. The sun hangs on the top of the mountains for what seems like forever as it dips behind them creating some of the most spectacular sunsets you can ever imagine, the sky lit up with a rainbow of colors, the foreground of the mountains slowly changing from green to blue. I live for our sunsets.

Someday soon, my friend, expect it. Would love to come visit!

[Luke Warmwater]

Over here at the moment, the sky goes from a light grey at mid-day, to a medium grey by about 2.30pm and then dark grey to black between 3pm and 4pm.....

That is of course, if you can see the sky. At the moment, if you look at anything other than the ground, you get blinded by a golf-ball size raindrop!

[sutty]

Yes, we are certainly getting our fair share of rain. Thank god it isn't snow. We would be several metres deep in it by now. Just wait until that arctic blast comes our way from across the pond! I believe it's heading over.

Loved the video by the way Jerry. Very bold to take it up whilst the conditions were changing so fast.

Cheers

Sutty

[jperkosk]

The arctic blast that froze Tom's butt off made it partially here: this morning we had 0°C, with 8°C predicted for the afternoon. No worries, it was only Monday and Tuesday, tomorrow back to normal 6°C in the early morning and 21°C in the afternoon

Nothing bold about this flight, Andy, I turned the LEDs on, at 300m the hexa looks like a glowing UFO in the dark . There were only 2 moments of confusion:

• I couldn't figure out on FPV screen where exactly home was in the dark, all houses looked similar. This means I'll need this OSD home arrow and maybe a strobe flashlight (have one) on the ground as well for night flying.
• LoS is easy at night, LEDs are very visible except when the hexa turns 90°. When I did that, it just disappeared from the darkening sky, a bit spooky . I guess I'll need side navigation lights as well, not just front-back.

[Tomstoy2]

Jerry, this is a link to the spotlights I have mounted in the front of my Hexa, on the landing gear. I find them extremely valuable day or night, all light conditions.

http://www.rcdude.com/servlet/the-96...t-Ultra/Detail

Personally, I think side lights would be more confusing to me than helpful. The SuperBrite led's I picked up there's no chance to loose differentiation even extremely fat away.


Some serious progress expected to happen tonight, finally.
I have yet to figure out why I can't get my osd out of the calibration screen. No amount of posts on the forums helped, other than I am not the only one.

I sent out 2 service requests to both Immerisonrc and TeamBlackSheep, where I bought it from.
Both responded straight off, was happy about that.

Immerisonrc's response, " Scroll to the end of the list and you will see exit. ". This tells me two things, they did not really read what I explained and they did not look at the picture I supplied!!!

TBS's reply was to apologize and send me out a new unit!!

So, it shows up today.

Got to order me a couple replacement motors. I'm questioning the feel of one of them, despite that I have not witnessed any difference in temp and I measure often.

So, getting ever closer to the maiden of this winter's project. No hurry on my part. Goose season will last awhile still. Sounded like a battlefield out there this morning.

[Tomstoy2]

Just sent a reply back to Immerisonrc. Had to think about it for awhile. I didn't want to go off half cocked at them, so this is what is sent;

There are only 4 selections when scrolling.


calibrate voltage gains
calibrate offset
calibrate current gains
write defaults


Pressing the menu button scrolls down thru this list then back again to the top.
There is no other selection to choose from.
There is no exit on the screen.
Below the 4 selections is only,
1 13 rev2 2,


Please explain further?


Thank you.



I'll be interested in what they have to say.

In the mean time, I have the new osd installed and it works just fine.

[Tomstoy2]

Motor transplant is complete! Replaced 2 motors with the new version 2 Tiger Motors mt2216-11 900kv. What is different between v1 and v2 is huge!
First off v1 motors have a 3mm shaft, v2 has a 4mm.
Bearings are now huge.
Bearing boss size is more than adequate, nice to see.

I still have 2 of the original v1 motors and 2 other v1's that I replaced. They are still fine, even after 200+ flights. Pretty damn pleased about that.

I have 2 more v2 motors coming. The plan is to upgrade all the motors, the old ones demoted to spares.
To finish off the drive system upgrade I intend to get a full set of the new Tiger Motors carbon fiber props. At $40 a pair these things don't come cheap. The improvement in performance however does justify the further blood letting of my wallet. An expected 1-3 minutes of flight time increase can be realistically expected.

However, when I get up tonight it's then time to go thru the final system checks, mount the props and then I'll be ready to do a maiden!

Truth is I've bitten into one hell of a project. This only would have taken me half way thru the project, but now with the addition of the plane to the plan I'm now back to a third.

Though the cost to finish off the plane is relatively cheap, ( now ), the big part of the project is fast coming up, the ground station. At least the plane will keep me busy while I sell my soul for funds.

The ground station, above all else, is something that I will need to live with so the need to do it right once is imperative.
It's going to have to be big enough to hold a variety of antenna's, fully automated tracking, diversity receiver, power supply and assorted electronics.
I plan on starting out on 5.8ghz, but may move to 1.2ghz later on.
I've been kicking around a few ideas and am starting to focus in on what I want.
To do this right I figure a target budget of $1500. Think Servo City.

The good news, goose season's last day is February 16th! I should be ready to do some range testing by then, I figure.

[sutty]

Originally Posted by Tomstoy2

The good news, goose season's last day is February 16th!

Damned good news for the geese, I should think.

Cheers

Sutty

[Tomstoy2]

Gentleman, the props are all back on the Hexa!

All I need now is a window of good weather.


Damn good timing, too. The Penguin will show up in 2 days. My poor ol' work bench, ( aka, coffee table ), is totally buried. Got to get that ready!

[Tomstoy2]

Maidene'd the Hexa just now!!!

All appears to be in proper working condition,,, mostly.

UHF control was rock solid! Not one lingering bit of doubt about it.

The new camera is fantastic, though I do need to tweak the focus a tad better. Flying into the sun didn't wash it out, color and contrast was much better than my Seawolf camera.

OSD, what can I say but,,, I LIKE it!!! It's so nice being able to see the telemetry while flying.

I do have one confirmed issue and one item still to confirm that I forgot about.

The issue, now when I select flight mode on my flight controller it positions my gimbal 90* up, level or 90* down.
It's got to be my transmitter mapping. Will check it after I get the tx off the charger.

The thing I have to confirm, just can't remember if I saw the home direction arrow?
All else appears to be working.
Altitude seems to be right on the money! Damned if I'll go under the thing with a tape measure to find out for sure.
Distance also looked to be right on, also.
Seeing the video signal strength is a real plus, let me tell you. Before, when flying one can only wait until the video starts to glitch. The only real indicator that range is being compromised. Now there is a rssi meter plus a signal percentage meter. With these you can predict when it will start reaching the distance battier.

Now, I didn't do anything spectacular, just a little cruise around the back yard, but it did leave me with full confidence in it's ability.
I have the battery's on the charger now. I'll verify the mah consumption is correct.

Now I need some batterys!

[Tomstoy2]

Now for the second box construction.
This one will mount on a tripod. Basically, it houses the antenna tracker electronics.

[Heli Yea!]

Which part of the space shuttle is this now?

[Tomstoy2]

This is the piece that tracks the antenna's to the aircraft.

On the top gear will mount a 90* bracket. On it will mount 2 different 5.8ghz antenna's on a flat plate.
Both antenna's plug into the box on the top shelf.
Inside that box the signals from both antenna's become measured and the strongest signal is then automatically selected for output.

The output signal goes to 2 different components.

One is the small board mounted on the outside of the box, on the back.
This board decodes the audio right channel signal from the aircraft. Inside this audio signal is encoded the telemetry data, specifically the gps data from the aircraft.
From this gps data this board then moves the servo's into position thus aligning the high-gain antenna, ( high gain antenna's have a narrow beam width ), in alignment with the aircraft's position in the sky.
The other antenna is a omni style, used for close range.

The other output plugs into the input side of the yellow box I made.


This tripod mounted box I'm making now is oversized for future expansion.
The plan is to later go to 1.3ghz video signal. The quality will be less than 5.8ghz but 5.8ghz offers hardly any penetration. 1.3ghz will penetrate a hill to some extent.

[Heli Yea!]

Damn that's sweet! so then what's the approx range?

[Tomstoy2]

Range is dependent on many conditions, both atmospheric and hardware.

With the antenna's I intend to run range should be around 10+ miles.

[Heli Yea!]

Wholy 10+ MILES!!!! I thought you were going to tell me something along the lines of 2 miles 2.5 maybe 3 but 10+!!!! I was just looking at the brand new white Devo 10, that I plan on buying in the nearish future, the range on that is 2 km and I thought that was far.