Flight Over Neighborhood (6 min 40 sec)

Aerobatic Bixler Flight (4 min 21 sec)

Maiden flight! Ok well honestly it was the second flight, I forgot to hit record on the first!

Super Skysurfer Maiden (8 min 49 sec)

Today was a GREAT day, I spent the entire afternoon flying and hanging out with other pilots. I flew an FPV flight with my Bixler (Probably it's last as the FPV gear is going into the SSS), tested my 1.3GHz Crosshair I made which seamed to work amazingly well, maidened my Super Skysurfer and had a great second flight as well!

Maiden went fantastic! Here are 2 pictures taken after the maiden:


Here is a pic of my SSS, 0utsider89's SSS, and my Bixler in the middle!
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8 foot wingspan you can't go wrong! I am decking this baby out to the max with all of the features I have been wanting in an FPV plane. My Bixler was a great intro to FPV but now it's time for more capability.

Here is a picture I took when it first arrived and I mock fitted it together:


BIG! SHE IS HUGE! At any rate one of my main gripes with the Bixler was it's lack of endurance, once it is weighed down with FPV gear and bigger battery it's not going to stay in the air for much more then 30 minutes with good throttle management, and at max maybe 5km range, at least where I live. With the SSS that shouldn't be a problem, I will be running her with 5000mah 4S, which should easily give an hour of flight time.

I also really wanted to do night flying, and after getting comfortable with my Bixler I realized lighting just wasn't going to work on it, but this time I have lighting, and BOY do I have some good lighting!

I decided on using CREE LED's, these things pack a punch. For my headlight I chose 3 3W (700ma) pure white LED's, they have a viewing angle of 120 degrees and put out a LOT of light. You can see it here in this video and pictures:

Testing 9W (2.1A) CREE LED Headlight (1 min 41 sec)

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Got an 808 #16 v2 in yesterday so I did a few timelapse videos, and an FPV flight, overall I am pretty happy with it!

Time Lapse - Finalizing install of RED CREE 1 Watt Navigation LED (1 min 19 sec)

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I am stuck at a pickle! I have some funds and I am torn between either getting a Super Skysurfer or an HK-550 Heli, I don't know which to pick!

On one hand I would love to upgrade my FPV platform, and why not go with a nice big 2.4m (8 feet!) wingspan, good weight capacity, should have a GOOD LONG endurance, and would be SWEET for all of the camera equipment I could put on there hehe.


Super Skysurfer

On the other hand I really want a nice big heli, and the HK-550 (Align Clone), seams like a nice fit. I would go with a nice flybarless high performance setup with good 3D capability, and would probably try FPV with it as well.


HK-550TT Flybarless

I wish I had the money for both!!! Obviously going with the SSS will be much lighter on the cash I need to spend, and I really do want to upgrade my FPV airframe, but at the same time I could FPV the Heli too, it's a hard decision to make!

MatCat's Custom ARDUINO Powered Diversity (2 min 14 sec)

I recently got deeper into electronics both to learn and to build my own devices for a fraction of the cost of retail for a similar device, and the benefit of knowing it is mine and if I do not like an aspect I can change it at will, and one of the first real projects I just completed is a full video diversity system which I would like to share with you how to build it yourself. It is actually quite simple and anyone with OK soldiering skills should be able to put this together. Total parts cost would be somewhere around ~$20 if you have to buy all of the required parts.

At the heart of this project is the Atmega328p IC chip, which basically a full 8 bit computer on a single chip, these chips are quite common and it and it's cousins are in everything from ESC's to OSD's, to even Autopilot systems, and even better yet they are quite cheap, even as cheap as $2 or $3 per chip! It is the brains and does all of the work of the system.

Second is a video switching chip, more specifically the MAX4618 which is actually a dual single pole 4 throw switching chip that is rated for video signals, and these chips can be found for around $1.50.

The LCD Module is an AMC2004A HD44780 compatible module, and can be had for ~$7 here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-2004-204...item519f0bfb1e

The rest of the materials are a handful of resistors, some proto board, 6 RCA connectors, 5 momentary buttons, a few...Continue Reading

Arduino UNO Server Tester (1 min 2 sec)

I have been wanting to expand my understanding of electronics as well as my programming skills to hardware, so I got an Arduino UNO to do so!

One of the first functional things I did with it was to build this simple servo tester. Basically it just let's you center, manually set servo position, and do a full 180 degree sweep. It's nothing special or fancy, but a fun little way to get introduced to this micro controller and see what can be done!

The breadboard just houses a simple 5v regulator to power the servo, and connections between the arduino and the servo.

Some cloud surfing on a nice summer day!

Nice Summer Cloud Surfing (2 min 17 sec)

GeniusCP - Head Mount Cam (5 min 25 sec)

Decided to try doing a head mounted cam to see how it would come out, I think it did well!

Stryker 808 Cam (2 min 26 sec)

Stryker 2nd Flight (2 min 5 sec)

Stryker F-27C Maiden (1 min 25 sec)

Flew beautifully! Only need a little trim and she flew like on rails! Awesome fast, unlimited vertical, and nearly ruined my battery letting it get to 3.2 per cell by the time I landed .

This is a fun plane and I am going to have a LOT of fun with it!

Genius CP Flight (7 min 35 sec)

Bixler Altitude Record - 06/24/2012 (6 min 54 sec)

Made it to 1167 meters, or 3828 feet, my previous record was 823 meters.

I just got a new Aiptek 1080p cam though I am disappointed that it doesn't record static for FPV purposes, however it still is a descent camera! Here is a video I did flying my Genius today at 720p@60fps so I could do some slow motion footage.

Genius CP + Testing Aiptek HD Camcorder (1 min 37 sec)

A fellow FPVer gave me a used stryker airframe, so now I have a new project to work on! I also got a new HD Aiptek to use a ground DVR however it stops recording on static... but I am still going to make use of it .

Well today I managed to push it to 4km ground distance! My last record was 3km, and I had video cut out at that point, so this flight I decided to go out on an angle to make sure my antenna had the best LOS, and managed 4km! I think I could of pushed it to 5km perhaps however my Hornet OSD decided to reset at the 4km mark so I did not want to push it without seeing the numbers, though I was happy to find that even though the OSD reset the home location visually, the FY31AP still recognised the proper home location, so RTH still worked flawlessly. On that note I encourage anyone whom owns the Hornet OSD to contact Feiyutech and bug them to fix the reset bug when using an SD card to log telemetry!

Also today marked the first flight I had where I managed to hold on to a thermal! I didn't stick with it for that long, but I managed to cover 50m climb unpowered in just 3 circles inside of the thermal!

Aircraft Specs:
Airframe: HK Bixler
Video: 700mw 1.280Ghz using bluebeam antenna set (Cloverleaf on aircraft, SPW on ground)
RC: Devo 8 2.4Ghz (Using windsurfer parabolic reflector, approx 7.5db gain)
Power: RCTimer 2200kv w/ 6x4E prop, 2700mah 3S

I reverse engineered the log files from my Hornet OSD so I could convert to KML, I have a first draft available, please try it out and let me know what you think, at this moment it just gives coordinates and altitude, but I am going to make this fully featured. For more details check out my main thread at: http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1664005

You can access the KML converter at: http://letsfpv.com/feiyulog

Woo, I managed a 3km FPV flight today! I was hoping for 3.2km (2 miles), but the video degraded FAST once I got past 3km. I managed to do this with a Devo 8 (100mw) using a windsurfer reflector on the stock Devo omni, using 1.2Ghz video with bluebleam antenna set, and NO FILTERS! I did not get a SINGLE glitch either.

When I turned around I was at roughly 500 meters altitude, and glided all the way back under RTH (FY31AP) and only dropped 120 meters, though I was picking up some week thermals along the way.

I really wish I had a video, my ground recording method is broken so I am awaiting a replacement for that, as well as I eventually plan on getting a good HD cam too.

Now it looks like I need to invest in a 1.2Ghz helical so I can get farther out .