were back! And not alot to report. No new vids etc as my last flying session was terrible. Couldnt find anywhere that was dogwalker free. In the small spot we found I also found a very solid tree truck and bent a Steele motor. Very frustrating and annoying! I did manage to get a basic tune done on my new LoFlo that is running the wraith escs and BF3.2. In good news my Runcam Split unexpectedly arrived! Grabbed a quad off the wall and proceeded to fit it. They have really thought about the install. The cam fits with an adapter into an orgional cam mount and the board fits perfectly in a stack. Initial impression of the cam is good so I am looking forward to getting it in the air! And for giggles.... one very expensive picture... ( about $1800 of quads. Dont tell the missus! )
Got a couple of good flights up at the lake this morning. I switched over to the external compass and that seems to have solved all my issues with GPS hold mode (after plenty of compass recalibration). Seems to be flying really well now, I can now start tuning rates/PIDs/etc, and get the gimbal properly calibrated. The gimbal didn't seem to want to play ball earlier, it locked in place and stopped stabilising. Even when the gimbal was working properly there's still a lot of judder in the video. But at least it's flying well now! Got some video rendering right now, should hopefully have it uploaded later.
Good stuff! Its great when it all starts working as it should! I managed to get out today and got my wraith equipped LoFlo tune. Had some great flights and was keen to get a video together, that is until I viewed the footage. It would appear my Runcam 3 is out of focus again although I dont know how with the amount of hotglue I shoved in there the last time! Pulled it apart and found this: The lens mount is cracked and flappin in the wind! Emailed runcam but not holding my breath now that its discontinued so ordered some replacement jobbies from ebay. Hopefully they will fit when they eventually get here and I may put a wider lens in whilst I have it apart.
Good news, Runcam are sending me out a new lens and holder for the Runcam3 under warranty. Happy with that. Bad news. My poor old Tattu batteries are showing their age. Last weekend half of them were not providing the power they should be so they will be relegated to my warm up batteries. My local guy was waiting on a shipment of batteries but didnt know when they would be in so I had ordered some from a company called ChinahobbyCL and their 1300mah batteries. Been hearing good things so thought I would try them as they are also very cheap, $18usd each, just need them to get through customs (been in sydney a week... frustrating! ) Then I get a message today ( sods law ) that my local guy got his delivery in so I popped down there today and grabbed 5 of the Thunderpower adrenaline batteries. Be interesting to see how they compare to each other.
Finally got some decent weather this weekend so managed to get out and try the new batteries. No issues with the ChinaHobby ones, flew great, lots of punch and predictable voltage drop. The adrenaline series though are great but my god the voltage drop at the end is nuts and I almost killed one of them due to it! My voltage warning is at 14v. usually gives me 20 seconds to land. the adrenaline dropped to 10v within seconds of hitting 14v warning! ... I dont like that!
Yeah , the Uk registration is another waste of time. I hope it doesnt go through. If they try and implement anything like that over here I certainly wont be complying.
I don't see the harm in a registration program. We have it here in Ireland for anything over 1Kg in weight. I've registered my P2V+ and even my Mavic Pro, even though it falls under the 1Kg limit. It's €5 per registration and they never took payment for the P2.
The UK weight limit is 250g if memory serves? why not just say all quad/multirotors? What can you sensibly fly outside thats under 250g? My concern is the line of sight stuff, what about FPV? also if registration is required to fly the drone and part of that is displaying competency whilst flying, how are you supposed to get practice? licenced drone driving instructors?
I think it comes down to application. They changed the regulations here to allow commercial use of RPAS (remote piloted aerial systems) without a SOP (Specific Operator Permit) and you can fly within set limits (120m elevation, 300m from operator). If you want to fly in controlled airspace, it requires an SOP, or if the unit is less than 1Kg in weight, then you are exempt from several restrictions (including controlled airspace) but have to stay below 16m. This has been exceptionally useful for me for work with the Mavic.
My question is... my hexacopter is custom built and I can/will replace parts regularly. Therefore, at what point will I have to re-register it? Changing which part would necessitate re-registration - the frame? the motors? the flight controller? the radio system? A custom built thing like this is basically Trigger's Broom (aka Theseus' Paradox). How do you even enforce this when I import parts/multirotors from China? It's a pointless idea. Registration will not prevent some tw@t from flying their quads/drones where they damn well shouldn't be. The CAA "Drone Code" was a fairly sensible piece of guidance; mandatory registration however is fairly pointless. If you're flying solo without a spotter then FPV is already a no-no - you must maintain line of sight at all times.
Had a great weekend this week! Sunday was a full day of flying. Started with an early morning fly with a couple of wing guys and had a bit of wing following going on... and its actually harder than you think! Followed by a few hours at our local chapters first race day then off to one of our local spots for a quiet fly! A great day all round!
Well I had a bit of a bust today. I've been tweaking the PIDs on my gimbal, so I went out for a bit of a test flight this afternoon. The gimbal isn't right - I think I left the yaw motor in "hold" mode, rather than "pan", so it's trying to keep the yaw axis in its original orientation, as opposed to smoothly panning round when the drone yaws. Worse, however, was my last attempted flight of the day. The drone pitched right forward on take off and immediately crashed, snapping a prop in the process. Thought "ah screw it, I'll just replace the lot" and went to put my GemFan props on... except they're not big enough for the motor shafts! . I was sure I ordered the right props, but clearly not. It's not even worth uploading the footage since the gimbal wasn't set up properly - it's just a lot of shots of drone landing gear...
So long story short, crashed gopro karma drone on concrete. Results: 3 broken arms, 1 damaged motor: Bent stabilizer gimbal: Some damage to internal chassis and the fun part, the internal board, some caps went missing damaged modem and stabilizer connectors, inductor Good thing that, at least visually, none of the ICs, antennas or PCB itself got damaged. Have the replacement components for PCB on order, hopefully nothing else comes up.
Was about to land, battery gone into red and it decided to "return home" straight into a tree while I was fumbling around trying to cancel it. It flipped after colliding with a branch and freefalled ~10m onto a concrete path (like 10cm from a tall grass, lucky me ).
