I had not flown RC helicopters for something like over three years now. The pandemic and Getting a couple of major surgeries kind of put everything on the back burner too. But also it was like suddenly everyone lost interest in RC helicopters too. It used to be on Saturday or Sunday morning the helicopter folks would swarm out club field to fly their copters. But suddenly everyone stopped doing it. It seems that FPV quadcopters became all the rage.

Anyhow I decided that I ought to fly some of them just to make sure that I still could fly them. Many of my copters are obsolete and out of production now. So crashing them means that they are done for with little prospect of getting parts for them. So just in case I bought a Blade Nano S3 to warm up with. I was able to fly it fine, a little rusty but it was coming back to me. That led to me breaking out a Blade MSR X helicopter that I bought a few years ago. I was able to fly it OK too. That then got my confidence up to break out my Blade 230S that I had gotten several years ago too. It flew great and was much more stable as the day had worn on and it was getting too windy for the little nano copters.

I am trying to decide if I want to get out my Guai X3 copters or not now. One is setup for 3S batteries and a Guai flybarless controller. The other X3 is setup for 6s batteries and a Ikon flybarless controller. I do have some parts I had acquired early on so it isn't too bad for the X3 choppers. I don't know if parts are...Continue Reading

I recently finished up some tests with the BetaFTP HX115 LR 1S drone three inch quadcopter. I had bought this quad some time ago but I only got around to experimenting with it this last week or so. It is a 3 inch quad with a freestyle look to it and it uses a ELRS receiver. It uses a special design AIO board with a F405 controller, 12 amp ESC, and a integrated SPI ELRS receiver. It already comes with the VTX table installed in the firmware too. So you do not need to go hunting for the VTX table data to load into it. They also had it setup with a really nice TPU battery holder too. I used one of the BetaFTP LiteRadio SE controllers with it.

the little quad flies really well. No problems with flying it at all, in Angle, Horizon or all out Aerobatic mode. But it isn't intended for aerobatics though. They intended it for slow super easy on the throttle long duration flying on one Lipo battery cell. The range was good with the VTX and Receiver. I didn't have any range issues.

Now with the recommended 1S450 battery I could just barely get a little over three minutes flight time. It might do better on a more calm less windy day than when I flew it. We had 8 to 15 mph winds when I flew it. But they did advertise it with flight times of three to four minutes though and I could duplicate that. If you fly it hard then flight times are much much less of course.

Well then that led to me trying some 850mah 1S batteries and that easily boosted the flight times to 4 minutes...Continue Reading

I had been out flying some of my quadcopters the past few days. I kinda liked going out when it was windy to fly the quads too. Most everyone waits for better days so I wind up mostly having the flying field all to myself. One of the percs of being retired.

Anyway I was flying my DJI Air equipped quads as when it gets hot in the summer, they usually don't work anymore as the air unit module overheats. But so far no problems at all. Last summer I had tried flying the little Transtec Beetle and after a few flights it suddenly had no video range. At the time I was thinking that it was overheating as the morning got hotter and hotter. But with little guy literally has everything crammed inside very tightly. It wasn't until a couple weeks ago I discovered that one of the VTX antennas had come off. So I redid the antennas in a effort to ensure that doesn't happen again. But so far the little guy has worked out really well.

The bigger quad is a 5 inch freestyle version based on Joshua Bardwell's F7 v1 flight controller board. It uses the POPO propeller mounting system as well. No screws or nuts holding on the props. You can pop them on or off as needed. It flys like a dream and like it is on rails. No complaints at all. Although when I was first setting it up it was downright scary as the air unit module gets too hot to touch during the update phase. But it managed to survive and I set the power output to something a lot less in power. I had bought a couple of little USB 2 inch...Continue Reading

I needed to upgrade a couple of Express LRS transmitter JR modules. The current ExpressLRS Configurator only supports 3.x.x versions now. So it forces you to upgrade whether you wanted to or not when setting up a new receiver. But if you are already setup for a older version you don’t need to worry unless you have to use the ELRS Configurator for some reason.

Anyway it took me several hours of frustrating effort to figure out how to get it to update and flash the transmitter modules. I was only going to update one but when it wasn’t working I tried a different one too.

First off the wonderful WI-FI method only resulted in errors during flashing with something about “ not enough memory or space”. After trying it a number of times I was about to give up when I decided to try the USB ports and update or flash it that way. Well thank goodness that worked like a treat. It flashed or updated the TX modules nicely.

Now it is a bit tricky. For the BetaFTP micro TX module I needed to turn on the 1and 2 switches and turn off the 3and 4 switches on the dip switches on the module. Then plug in the USB cable to the PC. The USB port powers the module without needing it plugged into your TX. From there I could build, compile and flash the module no problem. When successfully finished fon’t fir get the set the DIP switches back to normal again.

When I upgraded the firmware on my HappyModel Tx module I found that I needed to open up the unit to access the USB connector. Once...Continue Reading

While rummaging around in my parts boxes, I cam across a couple of the Pyrodrone Hyperlite UL5 frames I had bought a couple of years ago. I also came across some 2004 1700kv Brotherhobby motors I had gotten too. I dug out a new little tiny almost weightless Caddx Ant FPV camera as well. Then i found my old NIB Emax mini-magnum F4 combo stack. well one thing led to another and viola! The lightest weight 5 inch quadcopter that I have ever built. I am amazed that i could shave off that much weight to get a 250 gram quad with a 6S550 battery ready to fly even. Plus if i use a 6S650 battery the weight is 277 grams all up too. I can't wait to go test it out.

I used my Radiomaster TX16s transmitter with a BetaFTP Micro TX ELRS module plugged in. One trivia note is that you need a 10mm extra long USB C cable connector if you want to update flash via the USB port. Fortunately WiFi works quite well though. The receiver is a tiny Radiomaster EP2 version too. The tiny receiver also upgrades nicely via WiFi too.

This older early version Emax FC is a little too old for my new laptop computer as I can't flash the FC with it. the laptop doesn't recognize the FC pass through serial port connection. if I try Zagzig it wants to downgrade the serial port which is probably a bad idea. So i didn't do that. But you can connect and configure the FC via Betaflight though. I am thinking about what I can do about that. Maybe i can download the hex file and then use my old laptop with a older...Continue Reading

I decided to build up my second RDQ source 2 v0.1 frame instead of saving it for spare parts. I managed to outdo myself and my new record is a 5 inch quad that weighs 409 grams ready to fly with battery. I rummaged through my parts boxes for parts to use for this build. I used my Speedybee v2 F7 stack and 4 in 1 ESC. The VTX is a BetaFTP Mo2. The receiver is a tiny Happy Model EP2 Express LRS receiver. The fpv camera used is a RunCam Racer Nano 3 1.8mm Camera - MCK FPV Edition. The motors are Lumineir Chief racing 2207 2050kv motors. I did put in a Matek Systems beeper module too. The battery I used for it is a 4S850 Lipo pack, but a 1000mah pack only adds about 40 to 50 grams more weight though. i dio have the option of going with a 6S lip pack in the future too. No changes just swap out the 4s for a 6S pack.

The Runcam camera also has a OSD function too, and it was on. But I couldn't find my board to turn off the OSD functions so I ordered one which will show up in a few days. besides my old board is several years old and may not be compatible anyway. I am not sure about setting up the camera to be accessable from the FC though. They are somewhat vague on doing that when I researched it. So I will wait for the board to arrive turned it off.

Anyway, I could probably leave off the turtle mode top mast but it wouldn't save much more weight though. I could probably go with the BetaFTP 2003 motors and save some more grams though. Then use titanium or aluminum screws and...Continue Reading

I finally had success at scratch building 5 inch quad that weighs less than 500 grams. It was kind of thrilling in a sense too. My first attempt at doing it wound up weighing more than 500 grams. It is a good flyer even it is weight over 500g. But the cheap thrill of succeeding in breaking the 500 gram barrier felt good.

i used a RaceDayQuads RDQ source 2 frame. I mounted a set of Emax 2207 Eco II series 1700kv motors on it. I used the latest and greatest SpeedyBee V3 F7 flight controller along with the SpeedyBee 4 in 1 ESC. The VTX is a BetaFTP MO2. The Camera is a Caddix analog video camera. All up ready to fly it weighed in at 449 grams with a 6s650 lipo pack too. whatwas really cool is that without the props it weighs in at 500 grams on the nose with a 6s1500 battery pack. So I could go with a 1000 or even a 1300 battery pack maybe and still be under 500 grams.

i think that the RDQ carbon fiber frame is hollow inside as it weighs very little. The Emax ECO II 2207 motors also weigh less as well at 58.97 grams or 2.08 oz.The frame design has the shortest arms that are practical but still let the 5 inch props barely clear the frame, etc. it fits the 30.5x20.5 and 20x20 boards.

What isn't a success is that the new BetaFlight versions have the OSD functionality turned off and I haven't been able to get it to work. Thus no OSD. i think that no matter what i do Betaflight turns off the OSD chip. Video pass through works, the VTX is recognized as ready with a Yes. The...Continue Reading

I took out some other RC quads to fly today. One is a Full Speed Leader 120 setup with a FlySky receiver. I used my FlySky Nirvana Transmitter with it. The Leader 120 is a older design and the OSD is quite limited on it. I bought it maybe three years ago or so. Anyway it works OK, I didn't have any problems with it. Some of the OSD features don't work which can be annoying. I think that they still sell the little quad but I assume that by now that they have a better VTX on it that more fully supports OSD.

I think that the FlySky Nirvana transmitter is actually nice to use. It fits my large hands really well. The way you grip it gives it a lot of ergonomics in how you use it. There are two legs under it that serve as a finger grip for the forefingers. Now this is a thumbs only joystick transmitter. If you use two fingers on the sticks then it won't work for you. The unfortunate circumstances led to it not being very popular. First they released it with Alpha software that you needed to upgrade right away. But the software didn't support the touch screen much at all. Later in the beta release software they had better support for the touch screen but not for everything yet. A couple of years ago I almost bricked my transmitter when I upgraded it, but one of the European software developers helped me and gave me a way to upgrade it that worked. So that made me leery of trying to upgrade more so far. So I don't know if they have released a software version that more fully supports the touch screen etc.

For today I just flew the Leader 120 and the little Emax Nano Hawk X. The Nano Hawk is great fun to fly too. So I wound up running a bunch of batteries through it. I did a couple of boring videos to see if the record option worked on my FPV goggles. But everyone pretty much knows what those look like so I did not think it was worth posting them. Others do a much better job of it.

I went out on July 6 to mostly tinker with my FPV goggles. After I had cateract surgery over a year ago, it seemed like I couldn't use anything but box goggles. But just a couple of days ago I discovered that maybe how I was adjusting the lenses was my problem. All of a sudden I could focus and see one image instead of two overlapping double images. This happened with my DJI HD digital FPV goggles. So I tried my Fatshark, ORQA and Skyzone FPV goggles out and they work OK for me now too.

I found that only my Rapid Fire video receiver would fit the ORQA FPV goggles. The other receivers didn't fit, although the TBS FPV receiver came close. But you couldn't fit a cover on the TBS receiver though. So I moved my RapidFire receiver to the ORQA and put my Foxeer receiver on the FatShark HDO goggles. Although the Foxeer receiver works well, it doesn't quite seem to have the same signal sensitivity that the RapidFire receiver has. I would get some weak spots or noise glitches with the Foxeer unit that didn't happen with the RapidFire unit. The RapidFire unit was more like how noise free or glitch free the DJI goggles are. But the Foxeer unit is almost as good as the RapidFire unit and it costs about half as much too. I haven't tried out the TBS FPV receiver yet though other than trying it out at home on the inside.

The pictures here are:

The first one is my BetaFTP X Knight 5 incher. This is a just barely under 250 gram 5 inch racing quadcopter. It uses a six cell Lipo. I think...Continue Reading

I had not posted anything for a couple of years now. I was somewhat distracted though during this time period. The pandemic, having a stroke during catherization tests, then open heart surgery for a double bypass. That was on top of trying to get surgery to bypass or repair the abdominal aortal aneurysm repair that was done years ago (it was a large stent that became blocked). So I am working on getting this last surgery done to be fixed up again.

Anyway I have been out flying some. I try to be careful as with the artery to the legs blocked there isn't much blood getting to the legs. So walking any distances is a problem. At present I am good for maybe 1/8 to 1/4 mile before I have to stop and wait for the legs to catch up. So I tend to stay closer to where the ramada is at our club flying field so that I don't have to walk far if a plane or quad goes down for some reason.

My DJI FPV setup is a old Transtec Beetle 2 inch quadcopter. Anyway it weighs in at a little over 215 grams with battery. I had got this one before the pandemic about 3 years ago. It is probably the smallest quad made for a DJI digital HD FPV system.
I have a cute little Emax NanoHawk X quad setup with a BetaFTP series II transmitter for a FrSky D8 receiver.
The biggest one is a BetaFTP Insta 360 quad with the Insta360 One R camera setup. It is designed to take 360 degree videos and pictures without the quad appear in the videos. No props, no nothing. It is pretty amazing in that it really works too.
...Continue Reading

I got back into flying FPV mutticopters again for a while.
Technology has advanced a lot since I last built up some quads. Now they have integrated stacks with the 4 in 1 ESCs, Flight Controllers, Video TX and super tiny RC receivers. My old quads only have maybe 32 video channels and no race band channels. Now they can have up to 48 channels on the video transmitters plus some VTXs have a custom band where you can program it for your favorite channels. Then they have OSD now and you can change VTX channels from your RC transmitter. With some flight controllers you can even edit your PIDS remotely too. What is really neat is being able to configure or program the ESCs via the flight controller too. That is great for reversing a motor or two without having to mess with the motor wires.

I used a Emax mini Magnum 2 stack with a 4 in 1 ESC, Flight Controller, and VTX. The motors are Emax ECO 2306 1700kv, and Emax AVAN 5x2.8x3 props. It is setup for six cell Lipos.

I just got done building up this Pyrodrone FL3X 5 inch quad. It is about as small as you can go with a 5 inch quad and not have the propellers hit the frame or components on it.






...Continue Reading

Wow it has been like 4 years since I posted a blog entry. I thought I would add a new blog entry as I had not done one in quite a while now. I still fly airplanes and helicopters though. I have been gravitating more and more towards electric powered airplanes though. Plus going larger in size too.

I retired the Aeroworks profile Extra plane. I pulled my gear out of it and left it at the flying field for someone else to enjoy. it flew OK, but I just didn't like how it flew for me. It always seemed to just lumber through the rolls slowly, albeit nicely though.

The Hangar 9 Frenzy 100 flew much more like how I like them to fly. I first flew it with a OS FS91 four stroke engine. But it was a little under powered. I didn't want to buy a Saito 1.25 engine which is what it was made for though. I later converted it to electric using a Turnigy C6374-200kv motor. Using a 6 cell 5000 mah Lipo pack worked nicely with it as well as using a 20-6 prop on it. Alas the fuselage isn't quite large enough for a 8 cell Lipo pack. But it flies really well with the 6 cell pack. So I like it. I am leery of the single nylon 1/4x32 bolt used to hold the wing on. i replace the wing bolt from time to time just in case. I ought to put in a aluminum bolt instead.

I actually used the same C6374 Motor in a Giant Stick too. But I can run 8 cells with it. To get the speed up I had to use a 18x12 propeller. The C6374-200kv motor just doesn't rev up very high and the prop clearance has a 18 inch as...Continue Reading

I have built lots of planes over the years. But I still find that the little micro size wood models are super fun to build. Here are some of the planes I built from Radical RC kits.

In this case a Micro-stick version 1 and a Micro-stick version 2 models. Then there is the wicked little Micro-Bipe. Next is the small Mini-Intern trainer plane too....Continue Reading

I thought I would post some pictures of various carrying cases that I use with my RC models. It might be useful to some people too. I have gotten questions about them from time to time as well.

The first type of a carry case that I use is the ubiquitous four handgun carrying case. Years ago you could get them at Walmart even. But over time the sources have become fewer. Several manufacturers have made the cases. The Plano brand cases tend to be about 1 inch or so larger in size than the MTM made cases. Some hobby shops even carried the cases as well as some arts and crafts stores too. You might have to buy them online nowadays, I am not sure. But the cases have three layers of foam padding, that you can cut to size as needed. I used a box cutter knife with a long blade to make the cutouts as needed.

Then Harbor Freight Tools is selling two types of aluminum tool cases. One type just has the padded dividers in it and the second type has foam pads and padded dividers. the cases are longer and more wide but not as deep as the handgun cases. The center foam pad is precut into 1 inch foam sections that you can simply pull out to fit the items being placed into it.

Next for my Lipo battery chargers, I used the Pelican brand cases. The cases can be purchased with and without foam pads inside. The Pelican cases are high quality but cost more of course. I used two cases that ProgressiveRC sells for their Lipo chargers and I also bought one of the shelves that Progressive...Continue Reading

I had bought this Eachine Quad Racer 250 last November for my birthday present. But it wasn't until my Christmas vacation time that I got around to getting it going.

I used a CC3D flight controller and setup a Lemon RC DMSX satellite receiver for it. I mounted the satellite receiver unit on top of the quad behind the VTX antenna. That was a bit tricky to get to work, but it did start to work OK for me.

But when I took it to the flying field, the satellite receiver seemed to quit working. At home it works just fine binding to the TX, but at the field it would not bind or link up to the TX. So I am not sure if there is a problem or not with something. Now at the club flying field we do have a WiFi setup and maybe that was interfering, I don't know yet. Or maybe it was the cold weather, as it was quite chilly that day too. Thus it might have something that is temperature sensitive. So anyway I get back at home it bound to the TX and worked great again. Thus a puzzler of a sorts there to work out.

Anyway everything went together just fine. I didn't run into any difficulties with it. I did use a RC helicopter digital leveler to ensure it was level for the accelerometer calibration. But setting up the TX and the CC3D flight controller wasn't all that difficult though.

The VTX was interesting. There may be a translation error with how they stated it worked in the manual. To change channels, you perform a long press of the red button. Each time you press the button, it switches to another channel. But the manual seems to imply that it does a autoscan for you. I did get it to work just fine with my Headplay FPV goggle set.

Emax had sent me a set of the new 2205 2300kv racing motors to try out. Emax makes pretty good products. I have been using some of their stuff already. I have a Gaui X43 Rc helicopter with their mini-servos in it. A while back I got one of their 280 Nighthawk quad racers and it turned out to be really excellent.

The new Emax 2205 motors are quite well made and in use have worked great too. At present I have only been using 3 cell Lipo packs with the motors, but later I may go with a 4 cell pack and see how they perform then.

I built a new quad up for the motors to try out. I had a Mystery 250 quad carbon fiber racer frame kit already. It is a clone of copy of another brand that seems to have been copied by many others too, The frame parts fit well and it was no problem getting it assembled. I needed to Dremel out the motor mount holes a little as the frame arms were setup for a smaller motor.

I went through my parts and stuff and found some 30 amp Afro ESCs, so I used them. The 30 amp ESCs weigh the same as the 20 amp Afro ESCs anyway. But since they are a little large in size, I wound up mounting the ESCs on the bottom of the frame.

I used a power distribution board and mounted the Afro32 (Naze32) flight controller board above it. I used the 12v output line to feed power to the Eachine FPV camera and video transmitter. I can set the VTX frequency to one to match my Headplay FPV goggle headset.

After getting the flight controller configured and setup. I...Continue Reading

Here are some pics from when I was at our club flying field last Sunday. I was out testing some FPV gear as well. Plus trying out the two quads too. But I did get in some nice flying though. The best part was I didn't crash anything either. Knock on wood. Always a great day when you get to go home with everything in one piece and no repairs needed.

Our club flying field is the 114th RC Aero Squadron located near Lake Grapevine in Texas. It has arguably the best grass flying field in the entire region, maybe multistate for that matter. http://114thrc.org/

I recently bought a Emax Nighthawk Pro RTF quad. I have been quite happy with it so far. It really was a put in the battery and go flying with it. I didn't have to do anything for setting it up or configuring it.

The main thing I liked about it was that the flight controller and ESC's are all integrated into the main circuit board on the bottom of the frame. That tends to make for a very clean setup with the quadcopter and I think it will improve its reliability too.

My first maiden flights with the quad was without the wedges installed so that the motors are tilted forward. I wanted to see what it did before I got more involved. I also didn't try setting up or using the FPV capability yet either.

The first flights were sort of a anti-climax as the little quad did not exhibit any nasty traits. It simply worked very nicely for me. No problems encountered. I flew it around and did some circuits with it. It does go pretty fast. I can't tell how fast, but much faster than I can handle at this time.

Another plus is the availability of spare parts for it. Besides the highly integrated main circuit board, you can get spares for the quad from a number of different sources. Being able to repair it should you crash is a big plus and advantage. The integrated circuit board is also not terribly cost prohibitive either. Which is nice should you have a really epic crash.

Now although it is not a big deal, but it might have been nice if the box the quad came in would let...Continue Reading

I had bought this plane from Maxford USA. I tend to be partial to the more unusual or different airplanes that you normally don't see at the flying fields, etc. Thus the interest in the W.29 seaplane.

It is a model of the Hansa Brandenburg W.29 seaplane that was used by the German Army in World War I. It came out near the end of the war and was the most advanced seaplane at the time. The allies were using biplanes for seaplanes and the W.29 was a monoplane. Thus it was faster and more maneuverable in comparison to the others.

Anyway I have it all setup. But with the weather we have been having lately, I do not know when I will get a chance to maiden the plane though. I was hoping to try it out at our local club's float fly. But they had to postpone the float fly due to the lake being way over its flood level at this time. The park is closed at present. I was thinking of just flying it off the wet grass at our club flying field too. But with every day being super windy I just hate to maiden something on a windy day. A mild wind is OK, but not the higher wind speeds.

For the airplane I am using a Turniqy G25 870kv brushless motor along with a 60 amp ESC. I found that a eFlite 4 cell 2800mah Lipo pack fits in the front compartment just right, nice and snug. So that is the power for the plane. I had been watching others using smaller motors and they were having some trouble with the take offs, so I opted for some extra power. Plus I wanted more weight up front with the...Continue Reading

I have never ever thought that I would actually get a deluxe premium kit for any RC helicopter before. Normally I always got something like this piecemeal, where I buy the basic kit, then later the servos, then the motor, ESC and so on. But never everything in one fell swoop. So this is a first. But the opportunity presented itself for me. So I got my early birthday and Christmas present all wrapped up into one. I bought a Gaui X5 Premium kit. It comes with everything, blades, motor, pinion gear too, 100a Gaui ESC, Gaui servos, and a Gaui mini V-Bar as well.

Anyway some assembly is still required. But it is something I am looking forward too....Continue Reading