The winds calmed down this evening and I had time to get a quick flight on my modified Slow Stick FPV platform and Hornet ODS.

I'm still waiting on one part to finish my Twin Star I, in the meantime I have been making various modifications to my Slow Stick to increase its cruising speed and wind penetration. The current pusher setup is an improvement handling wise over my last configuration and gives more room to mount various equipment, including my new Hornet OSD.

I'm still waiting on parts to come in for my dedicated FPV plane, but I have a new OSD to play with. There was not much more room to mount the extra equipment, so I built a pylon to mount the wing and motor to and turned my Slow Stick into a pusher.

It looks like the best chance to maiden here will be on Friday, the wind forcast looks bad for the rest of the week.

And yes, I know the prop is facing the wrong direction.

Back in 2006 I was working on a senior research project about UAVs. I bought a Black Widow AV system to to use as my video Rx/Tx but could never get it to work to my satisfaction. The airplane I built was rushed to meet deadlines and I never was able to work all the kinks out of it. It was my first truly scratch built balsa plane so every aspect of this project was new to me. After the presentation of the project, I abandoned the airframe and sold the video Rx/Tx.

Fast forward 7 years and I found a renewed interest in trying my hand at FPV. Prices on equipment has fallen quite a bit, there is now great information all over the internet about the large selection of equipment available to hobbyist. After doing some research, I bought a 800 mW 1.3 GHz Tx/Rx, CCD camera, and a set of IBcrazy antennas. Even though the components I bought were not PNP, I was amazed at how easy it was to get it all working. I had the system working and mounted on a RC truck about 2 hours after opening the box. After playing with it on the ground for a few days I decided to build a simple ground station in preparation for my first flights.

I ordered a cheap 7" display and 66" tripod. I spent an evening with some cardboard, tape, glue and paint and ended up with a nice compact ground station. I mounted the video system on my trusty Slow Stick and headed to the field with a spotter. My first flight blew me away. I had rock solid video feed even out the the spectacular distance of 1/4...Continue Reading