Originally Posted by Radio.Active

Try the Radian Pro thread

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1340015

and do a search of that thread for "gps locator" and you'll find several posts where that has been discussed including supplier links.

If you do the same by searching all of RCG you'll probably get to many hits with a lot of noise.

My FAV is " get a amateur radio licence and use http://www.byonics.com/mf " but I'm biased and already had the 2m APRS receiving equipment handy and paid for. But you can also track on your smartphone linking to sites such as http://aprs.fi/#!mt=roadmap&z=11&cal...timerange=3600

Amateur approach is mt favorite (grin).
Tim W4YN

Originally Posted by Radio.Active

Try the Radian Pro thread



My FAV is " get a amateur radio licence and use http://www.byonics.com/mf " but I'm biased and already had the licence, the 2m APRS receiving equipment GPS and TX for APRS e

Anybody know the weight of the Micro-Fox? I perused the sight but couldn't find it.

Cliff

Radio Active...w4yn... Thanks guys, I went over to the Radian Pro thread and did a search like you suggested and found the loc8tor. Thanks again, Capt'n Ron

Finally the right day with the right weather and right wind happened today. Here is the first time slope soaring the Radian. I have done it twice with the RP before. What a blast! You can see at the end it slips down behind a ridge upwind of my location. That wasn't where I planned on landing, so I hit the throttle stick to try and bring it back up. Nothing happened and then I realized my throttle-cut switch was on. I flipped the switch probably just as it was hitting the ground out of sight and ended up breaking the prop.

After a year of flying the Radian and RP, this is the first time I have broken a prop and the first time I have ever hit the ground with it turning. Hmmm...maybe there is a connection. Anyway, I figured it was a good day and had a couple of videos on the card and started hiking down the mountain. When I got about 2/3 of the way down it occurred to me..."Wait a minute, what do I need a prop for?!?!" I could have been still up there having fun in the wind. I never used the prop except to get out of trouble and all that got me was trouble. Oh well, tomorrow's another day.

Radian Floating over Mountain (1 min 44 sec)

Originally Posted by Jovanx

Finally the right day with the right weather and right wind happened today. Here is the first time slope soaring the Radian. I have done it twice with the RP before. What a blast!

Nice Jovanx. Your video is sweet and short, just the way I like them. What was the wind speed?

Originally Posted by kaptondave

Nice Jovanx. Your video is sweet and short, just the way I like them. What was the wind speed?

Thanks. Short is good, and having the plane close to the camera helps. I don't have an anemometer, but would guess about 15 knots. It was enough to have tons of lift, but not enough to be scary.

Whatever is the gliding speed of this plane (no ballast) is probably about what the wind speed was. It was easy to keep in one place, but if I lost any ground, it took some work to get it to go forward again. For the first and last few seconds of the video it is in a lee zone back of the slope.

If I would have had my head screwed on a little straighter, the broken prop wouldn't have fooled me into thinking the day was over. The weather was perfect and warm and the plane could have stayed up for hours.

I suppose that's the case for not putting on the throttle cut while flying. For myself, I lock the throttle when I first turn on the TX, during all ground handling and right after I land to prevent just what you experienced. I've been known to accidentally hit the throttle at the most inopportune times.

Originally Posted by Greywing

I suppose that's the case for not putting on the throttle cut while flying. For myself, I lock the throttle when I first turn on the TX, during all ground handling and right after I land to prevent just what you experienced. I've been known to accidentally hit the throttle at the most inopportune times.

Normally, I do exactly what you do, and I love the extra safety the throttle cut switch provides. I don't know if it was the altitude or the excitement of finally hitting the perfect day, but when I launched the plane, the throttle was disabled but I didn't know it. All the time I was flying (3 flights) I was under the illusion that the throttle was good to go if I got into any trouble. Then on the 3rd flight I got into some trouble and hit the throttle stick and nothing happened. It was only then that I realized the switch was still flipped. If I had only left well enough alone and let it land by itself, there would have been no problem.

I learned a couple of lessons yesterday. One is to not let it get too far behind you where there is no slope lift. The other is not to get caught again thinking the throttle is available when it is not. I'm sure that all the purists who believe the prop is a crutch would get a good laugh out of this.

I love that crutch!!!

Originally Posted by cliffkot

Anybody know the weight of the Micro-Fox? I perused the sight but couldn't find it.

Cliff

I had all that info and more on my SkyDrive but recently deleted it. I gave my stripped down MF to a high school that does Near Space stuff with high altitude balloons. I will be ordering another one and stripping it too.

What I mean by that is I minimize weight just as we do for anything going on the HAB by removing the header for the GPS and the antenna SMA connector on the PCB. The GPS 4 wires are soldered in permanently. A thin 19.5'' wire is soldered in for the antenna ( resonates around 144.390 MHZ ), the GPS is dremelled out of its case to get rid of the magnet and case ( you can buy the bare GPS separately ) but I use the GPS4 because it works above 60k feet. Finally the input voltage is quite wide so I run it off 2 cells of the main LiPo by tapping into 2 pins on the balance plug and get 7.4V. The PCB is then put in 1" clear shrink wrap. When mounted with velcro on top of the wing saddle along with the GPS on a 5" cable near the CG it has no effect of the Radian performance with the antenna dangling.

There is firmwire that you can flash on the MF that changes it from a foxhunt radio to a regular APRS. It is also frequency agile so you don't need to use 144.390, pick a quiet simplex spot in the digital end of the spectrum and beacon as often as you want to. Some unused packet BBS frequency is perfect. The 144.390 is used throughout NA and you don't want to beacon much more frequencly than once every 20 seconds or you will annoy the locals. I'm lucky as there isn't must APRS here, a couple of excellect digipeaters and several internet gateways so when I do 10 or 15 minute stretches beaconing every 20 seconds, nobody notices and it gets onto APRS.FI.

When I beacon off other than 144.390 I capture the packets using UIVIEW32 and if I loose the plane I will have the last coordinate to put in the Garman and start the walk 'o shame. If you have an APRS RX like the THD7 etc you don't need a PC ( I use a netbook ) and most smartphones have GPS to tell you were you are walking. Easy Peezy Lemon Squeezy.

Only thing on topic is that it is used on a Radian

ps... when configuring the MMF, the GPS cannot be attached. The GPS is disconnected at the plug on its PCB which is another reason it can't be in a case. Or, leave the GPS header on the MF PCB

Jov: you said: ' I learned a couple of lessons yesterday. One is to not let it get too far behind you where there is no slope lift. The other is not to get caught again thinking the throttle is available when it is not'

thank you very much, Jov, for talking about your experience. it takes lots of courage to speak about your own mistakes, and if we are wise enough, it is of great value to hear what others have to say when they do wrong. it may mean that we won't do that too.

there is a proverb that says:

'smart is he who learns from his mistakes;
wise is he who learns from others' mistakes'.

and this is 1 of the great things of this rcgroups, when we meet some1 that brings something that we all can learn without us having to do it ourselves.

Originally Posted by phil alvirez

Jov: you said: ' I learned a couple of lessons yesterday. One is to not let it get too far behind you where there is no slope lift. The other is not to get caught again thinking the throttle is available when it is not'

thank you very much, Jov, for talking about your experience. it takes lots of courage to speak about your own mistakes, and if we are wise enough, it is of great value to hear what others have to say when they do wrong. it may mean that we won't do that too.

there is a proverb that says:

'smart is he who learns from his mistakes;
wise is he who learns from others' mistakes'.

and this is 1 of the great things of this rcgroups, when we meet some1 that brings something that we all can learn without us having to do it ourselves.

I concur... and propose a 3rd law of sloping.... "never turn into the slope" i.e. always keep the nose upwind. Don't ask me how I know

Parkzone Radian Prairie Slope Soaring (2 min 25 sec)

HK Wing Cam on Hat
808 #16 on Radian

'I concur... and propose a 3rd law of sloping.... "never turn into the slope" i.e. always keep the nose upwind. Don't ask me how I know'

not only when sloping. when gliding or soaring, whatever you are doing, don't do the full turn; do lazy eights, always facing the wind, so the plane doesn't sink.
unless you are into a strong thermal...

Phil, that's really not true. In most thermals circling is best. Unless the plane has eyes, it doesn't know if it is going upwind or downwind, only that it is moving through the air. If it's moving through the air at a steady speed, as in a circle, it won't rise or sink depending on which direction it's pointed in. Think of sitting in a balloon flying a glider around yourself. The problem is that when you are on the ground, you are moving relative to the air that the glider is in. It's like driving past a merry go round.

In sloping the hill causes the air to be doing different things behind it and in front of it. There are also situations where the air on one side of the circle is doing different things than the other side, as when your circle is not centered on the thermal.

Besides the lack of lift, at many slope soaring sites, particularly ones where the edge of the hill is sharp, the air behind the crest of the hill is all stirred up, at least down low. This is usually called rotor. You can get this just downwind of a line of trees as well.

Check out this gorgeous photo that Paul Naton put on line:
http://glidefast.typepad.com/.a/6a00...32c9833970b-pi
This would be fantastic slope soaring if you had the penthouse suite. However, landings would be tough. You'd have to catch it right at the edge, where there's a whole lot of lift to descend through, or land on the beach. If you tried to land on the roof, you'd get below that nice smooth curve and you'd find the air all stirred up.

Originally Posted by phil alvirez

'I concur... and propose a 3rd law of sloping.... "never turn into the slope" i.e. always keep the nose upwind. Don't ask me how I know'

not only when sloping. when gliding or soaring, whatever you are doing, don't do the full turn; do lazy eights, always facing the wind, so the plane doesn't sink.
unless you are into a strong thermal...

This is getting dangerously close to being a downwind turn discussion. Turning downwind, (or into the slope) is ok as long as you know you are doing it and you know there is enough room to take care of the inevitable lateral displacement. The sinking of the plane is an illusion caused by the pilot trying to maintain ground speed. Here is another video I took yesterday that includes a couple of downwind turns (into the slope) and a downwind loop.

Radian Slope Soaring 2 (2 min 50 sec)

Many people, including myself, have had problems with downwind turns. Having said that, I believe it is only an illusion, and the problem is caused by the pilot trying to slow the plane during the downwind leg.