A few weeks ago, I built a quadrotor. I had no experience with this sort of thing and I've always sucked at helis, but I built one anyway. They're neat and that's good enough for me. I looked at the E-flite mQX and flew one but for $140, I thought I could do better.

So I went to Hobbyking and found this. I have many 3S 1300 packs and this is the perfect quad for them.

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...45mm_KIT_.html

To finish it, I ordered a set of HK Blue 12A ESCs, Turnigy Park 300 1080 kV motors, Turnigy 8045 / 8045R props, the HK 2.1 quad controller, an ESC programming card, the USB flash unit for the control board and a bag of short receiver leads. Cost before shipping was $138. Take that, E-flite!

One week later, I was building a quad in a hot garage. It only took a couple of hours to build, much faster than building a plane. Unfortunately, I could not get the firmware flash tool to work with Windows 7. The next day on my WinXP machine at work, I flashed the control board with X-copter 4.7 firmware, set it up according to the guy who wrote the firmware and fired it up out behind the shop in a small patch of grass.

It instantly flipped over backwards. After some troubleshooting, I determined that one of the motors was bad. I disassembled the motor and it was a mess inside. Epoxy everywhere, dripping out of the can, pooling in the dome, bubbles... lots of bubbles and some very brittle motor leads. I contacted HobbyKing and the motors were now...Continue Reading

This is my Stormbach 442.

Inspired by the Sbach 342 and based on the FoamEIIX from 3DBatix, this is my idea of something a little different. The "Sbipe" was originally loaded with over 160 super bright LEDs but having flown it before and after, I saw the LEDs strip it of its awesomeness. They didn't add that much weight but it flew like a pig and made it difficult to balance. After only two night flights, they were removed and a lighter power system was installed.

This is what happened next.

Stormbach 442 (6 min 15 sec)

And here is the night flight.

...Continue Reading

Ever since I laid eyes on one, I have not wanted to fly anything else....Continue Reading

Sold 4 planes. Bought one new plane and a DX8. The DX8 got recalled. I won't see it for a few weeks.

New plane! The Sebart Sebach 30E. I bought it from GravesRC in Orlando and it was in my hands two days later. (Yesterday) I started building it last night and I'm down to the two tail servos and the motor. I probably won't get to fly over the long weekend. Maybe next week.

The weather sucked for flying this weekend so I built a new plane instead. This is the first scratch foamy build that I took the time to paint before assembly. It doubled the build time but I think the final result is worth the effort.

It has 2 HXT500s in the tail, an HXT 900 for the ailerons, Super Tiger 20A ESC, Spektrum 6110 receiver, Exceed 370 1380 Kv motor and a Graupner 10x5 prop. It will fly on 2S 1800 or 3S 1300 LiPo packs....Continue Reading

Here are my cars.

Here are my planes.