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If you really want to get into aerial video on the cheap you can always strap a small key chain camera onto a regular RC plane. Like this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqbtKNa7Q5M The price point on FPV stuff is getting close to the point that I might buy a setup but it is still limited in range unless you violate most countries unlicensed power limit. If you guys are looking to get into R/C on the cheap you can get just about everything at http://www.hobbyking.com I would probably have far fewer planes if that site didn't exist.
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Feb 6, 2011 03:51
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Those cheap helicopters do not use gyros for flight stabilization. The gyro on most helicopter is only used to keep the tail from drifting side to side. Most helicopters that are relatively stable use flybars to keep the helicopter upright which is why they are so limited in speed. The 3.5 channel helicopters are as cheap as they are because they do not actually contain servos for control they simply use transistor based speed controllers to vary the speed of the two main rotors and the .5 channel is the vertically mounted tail rotor to give the small amount of forward speed they can achieve. After you have flown even a basic 4 channel helicopter you will see what you have been missing when you don't have cyclic control. The Sliders you guys are referring to are called trim controls. They provide a slight offset of the main controls so you do not have to constantly hold a certain control input to maintain level flight or a hover. The trim will drift over time because the motors never spin at exactly the same RPM so you will need to retrim periodically.
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Feb 8, 2011 04:50
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evilmonkeh posted:I've been designing my own radio + autopilot with accelerometer + gyroscope for the last few months, and the hardware is nearly ready to build. Hobbyking has a $15 Quadcopter frame which looks pretty good for testing so I've ordered one. Those quadcopter frames sold out incredibly fast. Manny how much do you think your complete tricopter is going to cost? They look like a great platform for photography.
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Feb 10, 2011 02:47
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Well if it is that cheap might just add one to my collection. I could probably design a frame and just get it laser cut to save money over a prefabbed one. Does it end up being cheaper to do the DIY controller and the chopped up HK gyro's instead of the complete pre-made controller?
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Feb 11, 2011 01:31
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I did a bit of work on a large glider I have been putting together this winter. http://helno.ca/?p=27 3.2m wingspan 
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Feb 14, 2011 01:44
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Manny posted:Looks good, are you going to have trouble sawing the nose off and fabricating a motor mount? I guess you'll also need to have the correct thrustline set up. My Dad had a similar problem, and he got someone else to do it - they made up a carbon-fiber disc, which was epoxied into the nose. Also, nice pool table! Sawing the nose shouldn't be to hard just need a bit of down and right trust to keep it from getting to out of whack. I am getting a plywood motor mount laser cut to fit but I have decided to spend the time to design a battery and servo tray that notches into the motor mount to stiffen up the whole front end of the plane. The pool table is a piece of poo poo that came with the house.
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Feb 14, 2011 23:39
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I also buy tons of stuff from hobbyking Never had a lipo fail in anyway and I still use the first one that I bought from them with no real loss of power. Only thing I had fail was a 60 amp speed controller that I was pushing about 80 amps through during bursts.
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Mar 12, 2011 18:51
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Blade MSR is a good one to step up to. The MCX is easier but an MSR should be manageable if you don't make a mess of your Syma. VVV I bet those little batteries come off that mCP hotter than hell after a few minutes of 3d flying. helno fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Mar 23, 2011 |
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Mar 23, 2011 01:41
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I have one of those cheap keychain cameras as well. I velcroed it to my indoor plane last friday. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybhRzNOGcDo
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Apr 10, 2011 23:15
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DeNofa posted:I know I'm taking a risk here, which thankfully is a fairly inexpensive risk Those differential thrust airplanes are pretty tough to fly well so don't be discouraged by it. Getting into R/C takes a bit of capital investment what with radio and battery charging gear but if you stick to the lightweight foamy end of the R/C spectrum it is a pretty cheap hobby once you get going. I am about to drop the hammer on a CNC router for making foam aircraft and balsa wing ribs. It does feel a bit odd paying nearly $1500 to get a tool to make $5 airplanes. http://www.phlatboyz.com/Phlatprinter-3-Kit_p_9.html
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Apr 15, 2011 00:38
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The local HF has the replacement wing sets on clearance for $3, so if I have fun this weekend I'll be sure to pick up a few. Worst case scenario: I pull a "what do you mean I can't return it, I just bought it!" Best case scenario: I love it, return it, and buy the one you suggested 
Thanks again for the advice, I'll be sure to keep an eye on this thread and hopefully be able to contribute more-so in the future.
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The left hand stick controls rotor pitch/throttle. Most helis have mixing between the throttle and pitch and in some modes the throttle is kept high and the stick controls the pitch so if the stick is centered pitch is neutral, if you move it up the pitch increases and if you move it down pitch goes negative.
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Apr 15, 2011 14:53
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There is a whole class of planes dedicated to combat. They don't bother with pussy sonic modules they just try to knock each other out of the sky.
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Apr 28, 2011 22:49
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Schottingham posted:Anyway on the less destructive side, I've got a bunch of ideas for autopilot systems using GPS, gyros, accelerometers and such. I'm thinking functions like automatically holding altitude/heading, flying between waypoints, circling a location, maybe surveying an area for girls with a downward-pointed camera. What would be especially cool is to combine all that stuff with an FPV on-screen display for pretty much a full instrument readout. I figure this has been done already, but like half the fun for me is designing and building it on my own. Before you run with this idea you might want to look into some of the off the shelf solutions that already have mature code and hardware. http://diydrones.com is home to the ardupilot which seems to be a very good all around solution. There are tons of autpilot hardware makers out there but alot of them are quite pricey and not much better than the ardupilot.
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Apr 30, 2011 02:12
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If you really want to just activate a switch via a reciever channel use one of these. http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=8833 Here is a great description of how the PPM used to drive servos works. http://www.brookshiresoftware.com/rd_how_servos_work.htm
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May 13, 2011 20:17
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http://vimeo.com/22280110 I just got my KKmulticopter board today and this video makes me glad I ordered it. I am still waiting on my phlatprinter so I have a few weeks to design the frame.
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May 18, 2011 02:33
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The KK board is a combined mixer/stabilizer. Before these boards people would use a bunch of Vtail mixers and gyros but that is a pain to setup. These boards also have handy features like arming the ESC's which can be difficult without one. I flew my Grifter glider the other day. 3.2m wingspan so it is the biggest model that I have ever flown. Very graceful in the air but it flys way faster than it looks.
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May 24, 2011 11:14
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I am waiting on a CNC router to arrive so I thought I would brush up on my Sketchup skills. It's going to be a plywood tricopter frame using aluminum spacers as pivots for the two folding arms. KKblackboard for a fligth controller and hobbyking motors and speed controllers.
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Jun 24, 2011 22:06
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The Mimo thing wont be of much use unless you have a whole slew of guys buy into it at your field and that is really unlikely to happen. A good quality video/telemetry system would be nice but use 5.8 ghz so you avoid the 2.4 ghz band used for control.
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Aug 4, 2011 22:13
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helno posted:I am waiting on a CNC router to arrive so I thought I would brush up on my Sketchup skills. Remember this? It now exists.
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Aug 16, 2011 02:18
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Getting a good radio right away is always a good idea and a DX6I is pretty cheap. The only limit I have run into with mine is I am always out of model memory and have to decide which planes to keep ready to go. I make my own as well but I have never been good at cutting out kits so I bought a CNC router to do that part for me. Designing planes in sktechup is so easy. I made up some new parts for my Tricopter frame and shot a short video of it the other day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AXlnqLi430
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Sep 14, 2011 02:19
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CrazyLittle posted:So here's a quadcopter I built, with an onboard camera. Looks like it flys pretty well. The KK boards are as stable as your tuning makes it. This is an onboard video from my tricopter. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjkAb27z2YA I really need to get some better motors. I am using the shittiest motors from hobbyking and the right front motor has lost sync on me a couple of times with the expected results.
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Oct 3, 2011 02:58
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CrazyLittle posted:Brushless motors can go out of sync with the ESC. This is what I was refering to. Most brushless ESC's rely on back EMF from the motor itself to determine when to fire. If for some reason this signal is not interpretted correctly you lose sync and the motor generally comes to a screeching halt. You can restart the motor by throttling down and back up again. One of my motors has now done this twice and it does it on sudden application of power. Because of the way the gyros work in a multirotor if a motor stalls the machine falls towards the failed motor which causes the gyro to want to rapidly increase the throttle to that motor. If you try to power down the motors the machine falls out of th sky. You can see where the problem is.
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Oct 4, 2011 22:32
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ease posted:Ok so when the motor screams and stops, it's out of synch? I've had this happen a few times on both planes I have. Friend told me it was the BEC cutoff, and I just thought that sounded good. That funny electrical sounding squeal is a loss of ESC sync. As has been said it has nothing to do with the low voltage cutoff or receiver battery elimintator circuit.
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Oct 5, 2011 22:30
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The quadcopter FPV guy at our club uses some sort of 400 mhz thing which requires him to have an amatuer radio lisence. It is very erie seeing that thing fly off at high speed towards the horizon.
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Oct 13, 2011 22:49
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I decided to make a small DLG from plans I downloaded a while back. The design is called the MiMi and is a 1m span with a solid balsa wing. I didn't think I was up to carving a solid wing that big so I did the natural thing and drew the wing in 3d in google sketchup and had my cnc router do it for me. Here is the partial fuse and the centre section of the wing. The tips are still on the machine being cut.
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Oct 21, 2011 16:51
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http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=840763&pp=50 That is the build thread. The guy will gladly send you the plans. I would really like a full 2m span DLG but they are so expensive. Maybe i'll mill out a mold someday but I cant justify the $500+ price for a kit.
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Oct 21, 2011 18:16
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Multiroters are far better suited for FPV than conventional helicopters. But as has already been asked can you currently fly helicopters or airplanes?
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Dec 4, 2011 00:43
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Nerobro posted:I'm not buying it. Electrical complexity > Mechanical complexity If you add stabilisation to a CP helicopter you now have all the added electrical complexity without gettting rid of any of the mechanical complexity. Also multi rotors do not have any sort of coupling between axis which single rotors have in droves. As has been said before as you add more motors you actually increase reliability because you are getting away from single points of failure. I have seen multiple CP helis crash due to failed control linkages. Vibration really isnt an issue with modern mounting systems. No power wasted in gear reduction drives or tail rotor drives. Seems pretty clear cut to me. You can get a KK board clone from Hobbyking for $20 and build a multicopter with that board for less than $200.
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Dec 6, 2011 00:28
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My MiMi DLG is still sitting on the side of my work bench 95% complete. I kind of lost the urge to complete it once the weather turned to poo poo and the indoor season started.
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Dec 8, 2011 00:20
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Vitamin J posted:Indoor season?! I live in Canada on the shoreline of lake Huron. The winds are incredibly strong in the winter once the ice builds up. So we made arrangments to get a gym for 2 hours a week and flying foamys.
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Dec 8, 2011 03:48
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I have a hotliner and an F3B glider for the windy days but flying in the winter is a pain in the rear end.
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Dec 8, 2011 13:11
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Here is a bit of video from our clubs indoor flying session last night. Nothing to exciting but the season has just begun. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNfKRI3Z0_U&feature=g-upl&context=G1701bAUAAAAAAAAAA  We managed to avoid any mid air collisions till the very end and somehow ended up with three planes stuck together. Stripped my rudder servo and took a few chunks out of the fuse but nothing that cant be fixed with a hot glue gun. 
helno fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Dec 10, 2011 |
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Dec 10, 2011 17:33
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ease posted:Thank pink profile cub is awesome. Is that yours? It is. It's a Profile Bellanca Scout designed in google sketchup. I increased the wing and control surface area to make it more suitable for indoor flying. If anyone wants the sketchup file let me know.
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Dec 10, 2011 21:54
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Its not really a traditional plan because it is meant for a CNC router but if you want to make one send an email to myusername at rocketmail.com I started work on a small OV10 bronco yesterday. Hopefully I have enough depron to actually make it.
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Dec 11, 2011 17:00
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Sypher posted:5-10 minutes of flight. Is this pretty standard for RC helis? Is there a way to upgrade for longer flight times? That is about standard. If you want longer flight times get a fixed wing platform. If you add a bigger battery in a small helicopter you increase wieght and then need more power to lift the bigger battery.
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Dec 28, 2011 06:36
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You were probably ok with just having the wings held in by friction. Unless the wings are really really loose there is ussually no need to strap them in. Its nice to see a beginer who actualy follows advice and gets a trainer to start with. Enjoy flying it. I just got back from supervising eight 12-17 year olds flying vapours embers and MCXs in a gym. They all had fun and only one plane was in need of repairs by the end of the night.
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Jan 12, 2012 03:45
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You could install a shorter control horn on the elevator to increase travel. From watching your video perhaps it is because your servos arm is not centered when the elevator is neutral. That causes the control to move more in one direction than the other. Other than that I would check to be sure your radio does not have dual rates set to low rate if the servo doesnt appear to be moving as much as it should.
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Jan 16, 2012 03:51
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Dual rates are typically a lever switch on the upper part of the transmitter. Look for switches marked D/R. I have one of these little guys and it has litterally 1/8" of total elevator travel in high rates. I fly it in low rates because on high rates if you yank back on the stick it will try to fly up its own rear end in a top hat. http://www.stevensaero.com/StevensAero-Adrenaline-Rush-Mini-Pylon-Racer-Kit-p-16631.html I have a second kit and I think the second is going to be a twin.
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Jan 17, 2012 00:26
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hayden. posted:elevator was reversed (is there an easy way to fix this? The servo is glued in place). Your radio will have either a programming option to reverse the channel or a switch. Take a look in yur radio's manual and it should be pretty straight forward to reverse it. The Adrenaline rush didnt cost all that much. $20 for the kit $9 motor http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__9069__Turnigy_1230_Brushless_Inrunner_Motor_4500kv.html $8 ESC http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/%5F%5F4318%5F%5FTURNIGY%5FPlush%5F6A%5F8bec%5F6g%5FSpeed%5FController.html $7 for two servos http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=663 Add your own micro receiver 3x3 gws prop you are good to go.
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Jan 18, 2012 02:54
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Your plane is probably not even coming close to a 10C draw (10C works out to a 6 minute flight) but it is pretty hard to find packs that are less than 20C rated these days. One thing you might want to think about if you want your batteries to last a long time is how deep you discharge them. If you fly until your motor cuts out it means yo have hit your ESC's low voltage cutout. Flying to LVC means that you are taking every drop of energy that pack has. Lipo batteries don't like to be charged to much or discharged to much. Any time spent over discharged or overcharged reduces the life of the pack. If you draw to much current or always overdischarge yor batteries they will gett puffy and not perform as well. You said you flew for about 20 minutes on a pack till the battery was dead. if that is the case you might want to set a timer on your radio to beep at you after say 17 minutes so that you never get to that motor cut off point. Your battery will last much longer if you do this instead of flying to LVC.
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Jan 20, 2012 22:42
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