It seems like wind is our nemesis when it comes to doing AV/AP especially with multicopters. I seem to get lot of questions about this, So lets talk about ways to optimize high wind flying.


Like any other RC flight, the key to wind flying is wing loading, or in case of multicopter, disk loading. for high wind, flying wing works really well for airplane while glider type does poorly. In case of multicopters, we need to get our diskloading up for best wind performance. For this, we need to use smaller prop that is really rigid for best performance. You may also need to go higher voltage to gain back some of the loss in lift. The downside is loss of flight time, but if getting that shot is very important, flight time loss can be acceptable tradeoff.

Now, I get asked about what is the best frame for windy flying. My answer is that Y6 is the best. Stacked coaxial props behaves best for yaw, and has apparent reduced disk area so handles wind and high speed the best. You do want the frame to be rigid. The downside of Y6 is reduced flight time of 10-15%. To me, that is acceptable loss of flight time. For smaller multi, I do think quad is definitely better than hexa .

Of course, if you already have to frame, you can maximize windy performance.
1) Smaller prop (that is rigid) at higher rpm is better than bigger prop. Going from 10" to 9" reduces disk area by 21% and will require higher...Continue Reading

Let me begin by stating that I am not a video editing expert. but I have had to learn and setup a new machine dedicated to video editing and learn all about it over the last 12 month. I want to at least give basic idea on equipment and software it takes to get reasonable results.

Computer requirement::

Lot of people run Mac/iMac and they do work pretty well at a premium in cost. In general, more cpu power you have, better off you are. First of all, i would recommend Intel processor for video editing. Even latest AMD fx-8350 seems to lag behind core i5-3570 in terms of rendering speed and price is similar to i5-3570k. Just know that editing HD video takes lot of computing power. When I started, I used my old laptop with amd A6 fusion chip (quad core) and it has been really too slow. for example, running video stabilization using mercalli averages 5fps. If you want decent performance, I would recommend minimum of intel Core i5 with 16gb of ram. Luckily, video editing really does not need high power graphics card, so build in 4000hd graphics is adequate. But if you do like to decent preview performance, and run CS/6, it is wise to have decent nvidia card. luckily, cheaper card like gt640 seem to give good result with cuda implementation of cs6. . Dual SSD drive in RAID 0 configuration would be nice, but if cost is an issue, I would recommend dual Western Digital RED 1tb hard drive in RAID 0 configuration as minimum. RED series...Continue Reading