Remote controlled flying things-Quads, Hex, Octo or anything

[CBRK]

Just wanted to say that Emaxmodel.com have been really good after they stuffed up an order.  I ordered a bunch of MT-3515's from another vendor and I decided I like to have spares of accessories kits, you never know when you will lose stuff.  I could only find them on the emaxmodel site at the time and I happen to order right as they cut over to their new website and they stuffed up my order.  I got those accessory kits about 8 weeks later, after I inquired if they could track what had happened.  They dispatched the items express and they arrived 4 days later, they also offered me a discount on my next order, I said that it would be month or two before I was ready to take them up on that offer.

Well I've just ordered 7 new MT-3515's for my Y6 I'm working on at present (to hold my Sony A5100), normally they are $29.70 USD per motor.  I emailed the guy to ask how to handle it and he remembered me and said that they will do them for $23 USD given the huge delay.  Even after postage that works out at around $40 AUD with quick postage, should be here in under 10 days!  Lowest I could find elsewhere was $43 AUD and it was with slow mail, my previous ones took around 4 to 5 weeks last time.

Chris

[edz]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCHoTIsCtio  not sure if its been on before .

[CBRK]

I have made a very hard decision tonight, I am giving up on the tricopter for the time being, the servo coming off the tilt mechanism is just plain bad design.  Since I'm building the Y6 I can't see a reason to keep a Y6 and a tricopter, that was another build I wasnt planning on.  Good news is that since I ordered 7 MT3515's for the Y6 and I have 3 good motors and one for testing that will give me plenty of spares.....

The Y6 should be far more reliable and be able to handle loosing one motor, it could even loose two but jut not on the same arm.

It was a bit of a worry watching my GoPro crash into the ground at high speed, I had just build up confidence it was good.  I had just under 10 hours of crash free flying.  I need to feel that I can sling my Sony A5100 onto one of my platforms, a Y6 gives me a higher level of comfort, but it will be some time before I feel I can put it on the frame.

Bad news is I killed one of the telemetry radio's, its taken the copper track off where the antenna connector connects to.  Everything else appears good, all the motors are good now that I've cleared out the dirt (very time consuming as you dont want to spin the motor while stuff is still in there).  The LiPo is less nicely packaged, I've check the cells, all good (same IR values too).  So overall not too bad I have to say.  I'm putting this down to the Quanum 15" props, they just vibrated too much which caused the tail servo to disconnect from the tilt mechanism, which then in a high spin as I killed the power it threw the tail motor a good 20m away.  I ordered some more 12" and 13" CF props as they appear to be better balanced, I thought I had balanced the 15" before but I could hear they were vibrating (plus the FPV video was bouncing around). 

Having reviewed the footage and telemetry logs, it seems if I have not killed the power it was looking like I might have been able to bring it to the ground in an uncontrolled spin.  Just would have been down to the tail motor staying on long enough.....

[terravista]

Since a tree ate my little Syma (or a bird took it), I bought a Hubsan X4 to practice with, but thought a FPV flyer was worth trying so that at least I could see where I am looking at to take video or photo's, and then upgrade to something decent.
I have a Walkera QRY100 hexcopter in the mail system, but research shows that spare blades are only available from China or the US with weeks worth of postage delays.
More internet study shows that blades from QRW100S are supposed to fit but being a quad I don't know whether this is true, as the Hubsan quad has different blades from side to side (and different colours front to back), is it safe to assume that hexes may also have different blades to quads?
This raises three queries if anyone knows:
1. Are the blades generally different depending on the motor location on quads or hexes?
2. Is there any other model Walkera blades that would fit the QRY100?
3. Is there any Australian suppliers that sell Walkera blades? 
Cheers
Ian

[CBRK]

Hi,

This raises three queries if anyone knows:
1. Are the blades generally different depending on the motor location on quads or hexes?

In this context there are two types of props, Clockwise (CW) and Counter Clockwise (CCW).  They are placed in opposing directions (directly opposite).  They also come in different sizes and pitches - although they change for different reasons.

2. Is there any other model Walkera blades that would fit the QRY100?

Not sure, but they do appear to have a custom or very narrow hub - its the curse of the small multi's.  Seems they have a small screw that holds it to the shaft of the motor.

3. Is there any Australian suppliers that sell Walkera blades? 

Can't help you with this one. 

Not Australian but it seems places like GLB and other sites where they sell them cheaply (either free or low cost freight options), I'd buy alot (like 20 spares) and reorder another set when you get down to 10.  I have 20 spares for my mini quad, my other models i have a few to a dozen spares.

Good luck with it

Chris

[terravista]

Thanks Chris.
That pretty well confirms everything, it looks like a wait for spares.
Cheers

[edz]

No more selfie  sticks or go pro's needed with this thing   https://www.youtube.com/embed/4vGcH0Bk3hg?rel=0

[Mandrake]

Should have been out test flying today but the cold has got to me so I stayed in --
Been thinking about a reversing camera for the Dmax and had a few odd FPV pieces left over
from various quad things - So I built this today - The camera/transmitter is totally portable so I
can rest it on the DMax rear step for hooking up or on the rear of the camper for backing in ...
Being wireless I didn't have to tap into the Dmax wiring loom -
Screen is a 2.4Ghz DVR which I use to record flight data from the OSD on the Phantom ...


Mandrake

[edz]

Very nifty there Mandrake, now of to china with it put them into production and flog them off before the copies hit the shelves  ..

[edz]

Thought you blokes might be interested in this doco .. http://tenplay.com.au/channel-ten/documentaries/2013/9/1

[CBRK]

Thought you blokes might be interested in this doco .. http://tenplay.com.au/channel-ten/documentaries/2013/9/1

I have a team in the current comp, hoping to get to the final 20 teams that get to fly. This time we have to fly upto 30 km's away, locate Joe, land within 30 to 80m away,  receive an item and fly back.

Chris

[D4D]

It was bound to happen
http://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/drone-packed-with-handgun-marijuana-and-pornography-destined-for-a-maxmim-security-prison/story-fnh81jut-1227498554135

[Crisp Image]

Thought you blokes might be interested in this doco .. http://tenplay.com.au/channel-ten/documentaries/2013/9/1

And we get excited to get them off the ground and back safely.
That was very good to watch.
Crispy

[petrolburner]

I no longer fly RC anymore due to time constraints with a young family but I hop to get back into it when my young bloke is old enough.

The fixed wing was capable of unlimited aerobatics has a 170cc twin cylinder 2 stroke making about 20hp turning a 30 inch prop. Totoal weight of 17.5kg's

The heli is a 700 class electric Mikado Logo.

Power system is a 12S 5000mah pack packing 10,000watts of pure electric grunt!!

I will try and dig up some photos of other toys from another computer......

[Marschy]

Great flying field, not many trees and flat as a bicky. Where abouts is it?

[petrolburner]

The top picture is on a mates farm. The whole paddock is lush turf now.  Was great to have a private airstrip!!

The bottom picture is wagga model flying field.

[petrolburner]

More toys I was hopelessly addicted!!

[CBRK]

Hi all,

Having one of those weeks that nothing goes right in the RC world......  My Y6 is a total flop, cant get it to be stable it goes into a terminal spin each time.  I had it 4m off the ground the other day, was good but way to hairy to fly (had to do almost full left rudder to stop it from spinning).  Tried lots of things (motor angles, checked rotation of props 50 times, looked at logs on the pixhawk), also the additional clearance space needed for the bottom set of motors is crazy high.  I noticed it was very hard to get rid of the landing gear out of my images, so I have to rethink this Y6 design.....

So I don't only have my mini quad and fixed wing stuff for the up coming trip, I'm rapidly rebuilding my Y6 as a quad.  Just using two sheets of 1.5m CF and various other spares.  Should have it ready to test fly on Monday afternoon - SES activities and Fathers day are stopping it from happening sooner.  Just doing up the design on CAD before I start drilling into the CF plates (I have 4 sheets, so hopefully if I design it well then all will go well).  Seems like I'll have lots of spare MT3515's, I have 11 of them and now I'm only using 4.  Seems like I should build two of these :-)

To top it off I damaged the motor mount on the flying wing with a hard landing today, but nothing some epoxy wont solve.....  Love that stuff!!

Hope every one else is having success right now.....  Good news is I have a contract for when I return from the trip, so more money to spend on this stuff!!!!

Chris

[Crisp Image]

Well I have been playing with my RC stuff lately but not anything that flys.... or drives.....or floats.
You may well know that I build stage sets for something to do in my spare time for my daughters musical theatre group.
I have been working on automatic gate openers. Nothing new you say but I have been designing my system around electric car window winders.
So using the winders as the motive force couples with a speed controller for brushed motors I have been able to come up with a working model.
All I have to do now is full size it to see if my concept model works. It should I just need to get to the gates that are in storage and bring them home to the cave to test.
I am also waiting on some wheelchair motors and gearboxes so I can build bigger stuff. Exciting times ahead in my shed.
Maybe I should play with the flying stuff too.
Regards
Crispy

[Marschy]

I know exactly what you mean Crispy. The quad copters have led me off on a tangent with Arduino microprocessors. It's amazing when we put our minds to it that we have this incredibly useful piece of machinery disguised as a quadcopter that has so many other ways it can be put to use. My latest adventure is now into creating an MPPT solar controller using an Arduino.

[CBRK]

Good news is that I have now built 90% of the quad, I may have gone a bit big though.....  It's 900mm motor to motor, so I'm thinking of sliding the motors a bit closer in.  I'll see how it goes after its first test flight.  I'm thinking I'll be good for next weekend.

Just need to make one extra landing gear (downside to converting from a tri to a quad) and add the gimbal.

So I may just get to test flying it tomorrow afternoon, if not then Monday afternoon will be it, fingers are crossed that it will work out.

Weight without battery is 2kg, so it should be under 3kg.  With 14 inch props it should give me 4 x 2.2kg lift, thats 8.8kg of lift so it should be fairly agile.  Will also try the 13 inch and 12 inch CF props too as they were so quiet on the tri.

On the playing with other items, I've been playing with some nano's, dataloggers and doing RTK GPS with post processing for highly accurate GPS readings.

Chris

[firefox]

Hey guys,
So I finally took the plunge. Whilst in Melbourne decided to buy one of the new fancy dji phantom 3 advanced. I know I know.. Should have built one, but for me I don't have the capability to do repairs etc and build my own being space and a place to work.

From what I've read the new versions are pretty rock solid (expensive) but seem ok. The build quality looks good. I will take for a test flight tomorrow.

Looks good and will be interesting.. Have a particular interest in the new GPS and other new sensors etc.

Anyhow wil update when I've had a chance to play, I don't know if anyone is running these at the moment on the forum??
JD

[Marschy]

You know Firefox, Melbourne is only a 4 hour drive to the Mandrake and Marschy's Desert Flying Funanza.

We don't discriminate against ready to fly quads vs scratch built, but to get bragging rights for having the latest and greatest you may have to just show us in person. What if someone shows up with the same quad as yours, you'll lose bragging rights. Not to mention all of the collective advice and wisdom that we can and will give you, whether needed or not.

[firefox]

Ha ha.. I'd love to if I had the time.
I was actually in Melb on Monday and Tuesday this week. Actually were I brought the quad.
Though I will have it for the my swag flinders trip and hoping to get some flight time in before the trip.

[Marschy]

Hopefully after this weekend, there is going to be a bit of video that we can start showing of our aerial videography skills (or lack thereof in my case). Got some picture's of your new toy firefox?