Sorry, no flips or rolls yet !

This time I am flying with 350 mAh batteries. They provide roughly 5 mins. of safe flying time. I tested range of my system in this video. It seems to be 50-60 meters.

Walkera Mini CP - FPV flight with a 350 mAh battery (4 min 36 sec)

That is so cool Bravo mon frere.

I have recently installed a cloverleaf antanna to my heli and skewed planar wheel -antenna to the receiver. The heli is a little bit too heavy now (AUW is 53g with a 240 mAh Hyperion) but range of the video signal is better than it used to be. I am trying to shave off a couple of grams by using a lighter ESC next.

Walkera Mini CP - FPV Cloverleaf antenna test (3 min 38 sec)

Double or triple fet Blheli flashed super micro 3.5a esc and a hp05s! Mine is 55.6g right now but that's with 2 esc's, a heavier hp06v2, brushless tail motor and a 14.1g battery. With the lighter hp05s and hyperion 550mah batteries I was getting 9 minute flights with the motor governed to 35% and 4-5 minutes wide open. Even a 7mm tail wouldn't hold for 3d but for just fpv cruising around the stock tail motor should be sufficient and give you longer flight times. I ran it on my 350mah 25c batteries as well and still got respectable flight times. If you're at 53g now with the walkera esc a double fetted supermicro 3.5a esc will shave off about 1.8g. The hp05s will be a .6g gain but the extra power more than makes up for it. Then you can lose some more by getting rid of the main motor plug and direct soldering as much as you can. You Hyperion 240's weigh, what, 8g? Even if you don't want the weight of the 550's (awesome batteries though for when you want to remove the fpv gear for some 3d) the Hyperion 320's are under 10g and should give enough power and provide good flight times.

Your landings have gotten better . Have you noticed any difference in your normal flying from your fpv flying experience? Mess up your orientation or impove it any?

Originally Posted by RawmadeCF

How much was the tx and camera? Smallest FPV application ive seen.

2009 =P

Originally Posted by itsmillertime

Your landings have gotten better . Have you noticed any difference in your normal flying from your fpv flying experience? Mess up your orientation or impove it any?

It is kind of hard to slow down for landing after a couple of minutes of speeding . I used to fly until the battery empties and the heli just drops down but nowadays I try to use the timer so it is easier to land softly .

It took some time to learn to fly with the video goggles but it han't messed the orientation. I fly 3D with the rest of my heli fleet and haven't noticed any kind of positive or negative difference yet. The only major difference is that I don't bother to train new tricks with the simulator because FPV flying with Mini CP is so much more fun!

CrashMeUp: Sorry I didn't notice your question before. Thanks to the wide-eye lens and the cloverleaf antenna, my current camera & transmitter steup is quite heavy - roughly about 8g. The original setup (standard whip antenna and standard lens) was 4,8g the voltage regulator included. At the moment AUW of my setup is 54,3g with a 240 mAh battery.

I bought a new higher gain antenna for the A/V receiver from TrueRC Cananda. It is a funny looking piece of engineering (see the pic). The new antenna has expanded range of the video signal for few meters but IMHO, in this kind of low-range sub-micro scale the difference isn't worth of the investment (75 USD). Besides,it is too easy to fly the heli out of Walkera Devo 7 radio's poor operation range now .

I did my first FPV rolls and loops yesterday. They went reasonably well .

My first FPV rolls and loops (1 min 56 sec)

Sub-micro FPV flight at my friend's summer cottage. (3 min 4 sec)

Originally Posted by Picofly

CrashMeUp: Sorry I didn't notice your question before. Thanks to the wide-eye lens and the cloverleaf antenna, my current camera & transmitter steup is quite heavy - roughly about 8g. The original setup (standard whip antenna and standard lens) was 4,8g the voltage regulator included. At the moment AUW of my setup is 54,3g with a 240 mAh battery.

I bought a new higher gain antenna for the A/V receiver from TrueRC Cananda. It is a funny looking piece of engineering (see the pic). The new antenna has expanded range of the video signal for few meters but IMHO, in this kind of low-range sub-micro scale the difference isn't worth of the investment (75 USD). Besides,it is too easy to fly the heli out of Walkera Devo 7 radio's poor operation range now .

I did my first FPV rolls and loops yesterday. They went reasonably well .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM5HBRQajg8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmfHWCptfHY

That is sooooo freaking cool, watching it fly at you with your back to it is just something you don't see everyday. I can't imagine how neat that must be using the goggles. Nice work!

-Pat

Picofly,

The coax is meant to be held straight with the Rx sideways.

-Hugo

Originally Posted by Hugeone

Picofly,

The coax is meant to be held straight with the Rx sideways.

-Hugo

Oops!

Thank you for the tip! Should it work better that way? Even now it was slightly better than the SPW antenna I used to have before.

It should, placing the coax right near the antenna might caused shift of the radiation pattern.
I haven't tested it that way. A longer coax might make it possible to place it like this, but loss at 5.8 are a concern.

-Hugo

Originally Posted by Hugeone

It should, placing the coax right near the antenna might caused shift of the radiation pattern.
I haven't tested it that way. A longer coax might make it possible to place it like this, but loss at 5.8 are a concern.

-Hugo

Good to know! I will turn the antenna and Rx.

BTW, your antenna is a nice piece of engineering and good workmanship!

Originally Posted by Picofly

CrashMeUp: Sorry I didn't notice your question before. Thanks to the wide-eye lens and the cloverleaf antenna, my current camera & transmitter steup is quite heavy - roughly about 8g. The original setup (standard whip antenna and standard lens) was 4,8g the voltage regulator included. At the moment AUW of my setup is 54,3g with a 240 mAh battery.

I bought a new higher gain antenna for the A/V receiver from TrueRC Cananda. It is a funny looking piece of engineering (see the pic). The new antenna has expanded range of the video signal for few meters but IMHO, in this kind of low-range sub-micro scale the difference isn't worth of the investment (75 USD). Besides,it is too easy to fly the heli out of Walkera Devo 7 radio's poor operation range now .

I did my first FPV rolls and loops yesterday. They went reasonably well .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM5HBRQajg8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmfHWCptfHY

Hi.

Great FPV set up! Love the videos.

You mentioned the Devo 7s poor operating range. I'm about to set up a plane using the Devo 7. Any idea what the range is roughly?

Originally Posted by phoxache

Hi.

Great FPV set up! Love the videos.

You mentioned the Devo 7s poor operating range. I'm about to set up a plane using the Devo 7. Any idea what the range is roughly?

I have seen so many warning examples of Walkera transmitters that personally I wouldn't use any of them with anything bigger than a 120 class heli. Range of my Devo 7 is only 70 meters. Transmission power of the Tx should be 100 mW but even my 5.8Ghz 10 mW A/V transmitter performs better.

A friend of mine used WK2801 PRO with his Gaui X2 heli. There were occasional connection issues so we did a range test with full transmission power. Operation range was less than 80 meters . And excactly same thing happenend with another club member who used WK2801 with his Trex450. Last winter I was flying at the same time with another Devo owner. In theory two 2.4GHz transmitters should not interfere with each other if you don't bind them at the same time but my transmitter was intefrencing my friends heli. I have never seen anything similar happening with better radios (Futaba, Spektrum).

Don't let fancy touch screen and shiny buttons to fool you. Walkera radios are toy grade! And if something happens there is absolutely no customer service available either. Last year I noticed that the other gimball of my Spektrum DX8 tranmitter was breaking down. I sent the TX back to the factory and they repaired and returned it free of charge ten days later. I would not image that happening if your Devo Tx breaks...

I have been following discussions about quality differences between different antenna manufacturers.

It seems that some cloverleaves perform better that the others and ideal operation frequency of the antenna may vary depending on all kind of variables. Until now I have been using only the default frequency on my A/V transmitter (5945 Mhz) but I decided to try if my system performs better on some other frequency.

So I soldered a couple of jumper wires to the transmitter in order to switch the transmission frequency to 5685GHz. It made a significant difference: Range of my system expanded a lot and quality of the signal improved. I made a couple of 'long distance' flights and measured the distance with the Google Earth afterwards. My turning point was roughly 150 m away from the base station - not bad for a 10 mW 5.8Ghz A/V transmitter without a patch antenna . Even then quality of the video was really good but I didn't dare to fly any further because I don't trust my Devo 7 transmitter at all. Usually my heli goes to failsafe beyound 80m but this time I was lucky and the antennas were pointing to right direction.

Quality of the video signal impproved at close range too. There was less faults or interruptions in the video than before. I am extremely happy with the result!