Been building a flying wing ... And I didn't think I had a battery for it ..
Well I dug out a 2s 600mAh battery and thought - why not ? ( Was put away a long time ago )

So after some testing ( servos n stuff ) / setting up ..
I put it on the charger , plugging in the balance wire and pushing the go button the charger kicked up an error ..
Hmmmm .. So no balance charging ...

See the included picture and see if you can't spot a possible problems , besides the lose wires ... ( Clue )



Looking at the balance lead , the black and white wires look to be in the wrong place !
When I removed the wrapper , the wires just popped out lose ( ? whats with that )
So obviously there was a reason I had put this battery away !

I re soldered the wires ... ( for plug location rather than color )
I used one of my small battery monitors / alarms to check if all was good and it was ...

Should balance charge now .. Also allow me to run a battery monitor alarm



Lesson for the day , should most likely have unwrapped this battery when first encountered a problem ..
If there was a lose wire in there ???? Stuff could happen ...

Banggood had these @ a great price , so I thought YES !

Now the Eachine X73 has been a heck of a learning experience ....

1) First Warning = There are no INSTRUCTIONS , none ! So if like me you are noob to programming the onboard flight controller / seek help

2) You really / really / really want good batteries .. ( There is no going cheap here ) The X73 is a power HOG ! I ordered some 4 Syma X5 650mAh batteries ( also for another project = micro flying wing ) , and for some reason I got 12 of them ( ???? ) . Anyhow , I seem to be getting about 90 seconds of flight time and then the X73 falls out of the sky without warning ...

3) The X73 breaks , and breaks much easier than much cheaper micro quads ..

4) The wiring sux's hard , the + wire for the battery connector = I had to super glue it to stop the contact from backing out of the plastic plug every time I inserted a battery .. The lead for the camera is too short , it desperately needs to be 5mm Longer . The camera falls of the quad with the slightest bump and the PCB board does not stay in the plastic camera body ..

5) Programming the X73 is critical ... I run a FrSky module in my 9XR pro , the X73 needs to be armed , and the other thing you need to activate is Angle ..
Without angle active do not attempt to fly indoors ...

In the pictures I have included a few things I changed to make the X73 more indoor friendly .
PID Tuning
RC Rate I changed mine to 0.50
Super Rate Mine...Continue Reading

I love cameras and I love batteries ( batteries are very interesting ) . Now I only had one battery for my Canon 60D and I thought it time to get a back up battery for those times when the battery is low ( it happens ) . So I got on Google and YouTube to see what sort of informative battery reviews were out there ? I was a little disappointed to see so much opinion and speculation delivered so factually ( BS ) . Anyhow after a while I decided that I should just buy a Canon LP-E6 charger and gut it , turning it into a battery cradle for my Hobby Charger dis Charger .

To test my idea I purchased the cheapest LP-E6 battery I could of Ebay . I charged the battery in a genuine Canon charger and after a short rest after completion the resting voltage was 8.22v . At this time I did not know at what voltage the 60D stopped working , so I discharged to 6v . The generic no name battery was advertised as having a capacity of 2200mAh ( cough - cough ) , but I was very interested to see what it could deliver . Discharging at some 200mAh to give the battery every chance to impress , the final result to 6v was some 1329mAh discharged ( A far cry from the advertised 2200mAh ) .

At this point my curiosity got the better of me ! At what voltage does the camera stop working ? I never for a moment thought it would be close to 6v but what was it . I contacted Canon regarding a few questions and was directed to the user manual , which was of little help . So taking the bull by the...Continue Reading

https://goo.gl/G5MrBt

Banggood has a new (?) coupon page , and some serious discounts .
Might be worth keeping an eye on ..

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/show...%28-Monday-%29

Pictures posted :

Uploading the video of the Goodyear final as I post this ...

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/show...%28-Sunday-%29

Pictures and video posted for Sunday ...

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/show...9#post37320200

Link is to post :

Pictures and Video of the F2C Final

I saw this video on youtube :

Micro flying wing 43cm - AUW 46g - Ver.1 (3 min 11 sec)

And it just blew my imagination wide open ..

I have a WL toys V911 control board ( receiver combo ) as a spare part .. I never crashed my V911 badly enough to need it .
So for about 2 years (?) this board has just sat in a draw doing nothing . After watching a few micro flying wing video's I thought

So I pulled out the V911 board , soldered on a battery lead , a antenna wire and a motor ( 7mm from a discarded quad )

v911 mini copter control board (1 min 1 sec)

...Continue Reading

Cheapest Micrometer Money can buy ? (0 min 42 sec)

Quite possibly the cheapest micrometer money can buy !
Metric – 0 to 25mm ( analog )

Operation is a little on the rough side ( not the smoothest in operation ) ..
I did some cleaning and oiling and the micrometer is a lot smoother now .
For the princely sum of $8.76 ( Ozzi bananas ) I just did not know what to expect .
Since I recently acquired a 25mm gauge ( 24.995mm ) , I did a quick check to see how bad the accuracy might be ..
I figure if its going to be out , it will most likely show at the end of the measuring spectrum .. ( The further from 0 the greater the error ? )

My Mitutoyo digital micrometer say’s 24.995 mm and the cheap as a McDona;ds take away order Micrometer say’s ….. 25.005mm ..
That is + 0.01mm @ 25mm against the Mitutoyo …
The Mitutoyo set me back a weeks wages several decades ago , and the Cheap as Maca’s Chinese Micrometer was $8.76 Ozzi … ( $6.62 USD )

The Cheap as chips micrometer was very repeatable ( got the same measurement time and time again )

The only problem is the lack of smoothness ..
The one thing a micrometer has to be besides accurate is smooth ( to get nice repeatable measurements ) ..
And that is where these fail some what ..
If you are an experienced hand at using Micrometers , then it may not be an issue for you ..
But if you are not really adept at picking up on problems with measuring , then this particular sample might be problematic ..

The 0....Continue Reading

https://goo.gl/nNFhD3
Eachine X73 Micro FPV Racing Quadcopter BNF Based Naze32 Flight Controller With Frsky X9D Receiver

Just ordered the Eachine X73 , has a 20% off coupon so could not resist ...

Wanted one since the day I saw it ..

Hopefully won't have to wait too long ..


Ooops !
Should have mentioned , I go it for $38.34 Ozzi Bananas ... ( that's crazy cheap for a FPV )
I have FPV receivers and monitors , so time to FPV .