Ordered a long ez 46 from raidentech. The plan is to transplant the power system from the rv8.

After getting back into rc in 2007, I'd gone through five planes and five helicopters and sold them all in working order. This was not to be for the rv8. It threw a prop during a spin recovery. Too high for a normal upwind landing, but probably too low for a 360, I turned downwind to put it in the tall weeds. Things were looking good right up until a previously unseen PVC post jumped up and hit my plane, impacting the right wing at the root. The airframe is a goner but the electronics can be salvaged.

Put a few more packs through the rv8. Grass takeoffs were a non-event, even without flaps. Tried some slow flight, power off and power on stalls, and attempts at spin entries. Did some mild aerobatics just to keep the rust off. Tried an accelerated stall to the left and it snapped to the right, which was weird.

It flew fine with 4s 4000 and 4s 5000. Still need to calibrate the flight times and do some landings on pavement and some touch & gos.

Finally had a proper maiden of the rv8 with 4s 5000 and 10 (!) oz of ballast in the nose. The turnigy g25 710kv had plenty of power for scale/sport flying. If I had to do it over, I'd probably go for a 6s setup. Taxiing in the grass was a breeze. Half flap takeoffs were easy and full flap low passes were gorgeous. Soft field landings were a non-event.

Almost done, just need to put the servos in the wings and loctite everything.

4s 4000
turnigy g25 710kv
turnigy dlux 40A esc
apc-e 13x6.5

There's a random loose part rattling around inside one of the elevator halves. Bad QA. Not crazy about the elevator pushrods, either; they bind a bit in the guides. I would have preferred one mini servo on each side driving each elevator half. The pull-pull cabling on the rudder is nice, though.

Sold off both of my fpv planes in June. Having a spotter was sensible, but the buddy box requirement was a deal breaker.

Sold my last remaining helicopter in July. She flew great, but 12s was too much of a hassle to preflight.

My son was born a couple of weeks ago, so I imagine there will be a little less time for rc and fullscale pursuits for a little while.

Ordered a Hangar 9 RV-8 as a scale flyer. Thinking about picking up a DLG as well. A stretched 500-size heli might also be nice, maybe an Atom 5.5.

I let a friend watch through the goggles while I flew LOS.

rq7a shadow (7 min 51 sec)

Inspired by the real thing. Made out of coroplast, foamboard, and gorilla tape.

rq-7 shadow maiden (2 min 11 sec)

After four years, I sold my trusty 450 frankenbeater last night. The Logo will be sticking around for a little while longer.

My Solo 1500 took a week-long dirtnap due to FPV pilot error, but I got it back and have it mostly patched up. With any luck, it'll fly again this weekend.

Repairing the Solo 1500 gave me the itch to scratchbuild. I drew some inspiration from these:

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=792173
http://diydrones.com/photo/705844:Ph...6?context=user
http://fpvpilot.com/PVCTwinBoom.aspx
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1542201
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAI_RQ-7_Shadow

I'm thinking of using some 3.5" square PVC as a fuselage and a fake cctv dome as a camera turret. I can probably source the tailbooms and tail feathers locally. Might get wings from http://www.flyingfoam.com/.

The first couple of weekends of 2012 have been rather warm. Maidened the BeastX Logo. It flew better after I switched to smaller tail blades and fiddled with the link geometry and pitch ranges. Fixed tracking and idleups as well.

In other news, the globalhawk showed up, and the bridgesky solo 1500 should be showing up shortly, so I can start building my FPV rig.

Not much on the rc front in 2011 for me due to getting my PPL ASEL. 2012 will be a fun foray into FPV and UAV stuff. Looking for an excuse to play with Kalman filters.

Finally got around to assembling the vbar head for the Logo last night. Installed it and the beastx today and did a quick test hop. Also fiddled with the collective and cyclic ranges on the 450.

The weather looks to be unseasonably warm tomorrow, so I'm thinking I'll fly both of them.

The beastx 450 remaiden Just Worked. Going from flybarred to flybarless sorta felt like going from a rate gyro to heading hold. Inverted was effortless. Got another 30s of flight time out of the deal, too.

Opened up the Logo a bit today too. Flew like a dream after I dropped the gain a bit. I'm always amazed by how quiet it is.

Sold a bunch of stuff to fund new swash servos for the Logo. Need to sell a bunch more stuff to fund a flybarless head for it, and then I'll need another beastx.

Removed the gy520 and hs65mgs yesterday and dropped in the beastx and hs5065mgs today. Setup was pretty straightforward and a test hop looked good. Looking forward to a proper outdoor flight.

I sold my 500ESP to fund a hotliner, but it's proving difficult to find one in the configuration I want. In the meantime, I'm converting the 450 to flybarless:

* beastx
* 3 HS-5065MGs for the swash
* R6203SBE sbus receiver
* align fbl head bits

If this goes well, the Logo might get similar treatment.

The 61mm tails on the 450 got chewed up somehow; guess I need to revert to the 59mm ones.

Finally flew the Logo this morning. Gyro gain can probably come down a bit now that the tails are a bigger, but otherwise, it was good. No boom rotation, no loose belt. A bit chilly, there was still some frost on the field.

I took about a year off of rc to get my PPL. My checkride was last week, so I did a bit of rc flying over the weekend for the first time in a while.

Flew the 450 and 500 a bit. 450's tail blades got dinged up somehow. Couldn't fly the Logo as the ESC wouldn't arm (as it turns out, because it wasn't plugged in to the rx... duh). Looking forward to a do-over.

Moved this past spring, so the rc workshop got a bit of an upgrade.

Tempted to change from a 12s 3000 setup to a 10s 3600 setup. Weight and watt-hours would stay about the same. All other things equal, with the simplifying assumption of linearity, lowering the voltage should raise the pwm output from 60% to ~72% at 1900 rpm.

This would have the fringe benefit of allowing me to charge both 5s packs concurrently on the cellpro.

The Logo's running 623mm blades these days, and now has 96mm tails instead of 84mm.

Put kbdd paddles and tails on the trex 450 and 500. New tails should get a bit more bite on the 450. Hopefully the paddles will speed up the cyclic on the 500.

two warmup flights on my trusty 4s 350mm frankenbeater 450. it flew well, as always.

re-remaidened the logo 500se. switched out the mod 1.0 gearing for mod 0.7 and added kbdd paddles. reverted to stock mikado dampers from trex 600 dampers. everything seemed groovy, except for a slightly loose belt slapping around inside the boom. collective seemed smoother after i swapped in the sleeved washout.

put two packs through my trex 500esp as well. tail was wagging a bit with the quark, so dropped the gain some.

contemplating a radian pro and/or a foamie cessna 182.