Well I haven't posted here for a while, I have been a bit down due to losing my night quad.
I had a flight with my IR LEDs on and I did so many stupid things in one flight I have been too embarrassed to post about it.
The first was doing a night flight without a spotter to see where I was.
Then deciding to carry on despite the lens flares due to the lights being too far forward, making it difficult to see.
The third was not landing once I found my way back to the house and knew exactly where I was.
I also should have had some sort of strobe going so that I would know which way was home.
I have an OSD with GPS and a home direction indicator, still sitting in it's box.
Well I flew anyway and lost my bearings, all the lights in the area looked the same.
I started heading towards what I thought was my house, obviously it wasn't as my video started getting real bad.
If I had been thinking, I would have gained some altitude to get away from behind whatever was blocking the signal but I didn't.
If I had done this I would also have seen the lights from the nearest town, giving me some idea of which way I was heading.
The video finally got to the stage where I could see nothing so I lowered the throttle and let it go down.
I checked the video footage from the goggles and I thought I knew where it had gone.
I went hunting in the direction I thought it was but never got any RSSI feed back in my Taranis no matter where I went.
There are 2 ponds in the general direction so I have to wonder if it ended up in one of them.
I have lost my new camera, a new 600mw vtx, a new 4s 5000 battery (2 flights on it) 4 good Sunnysky motors and some ESCs a Naze32 and a D4R2.
About $500 NZ dollars, it made me feel sick so I have flown very little since.
On a lighter note, I had Jacob for the weekend, long one here, 3 days, and he asked about flying one of the little helicopters.
I thought why not, and put the controls of a V911 in his hands.
He amazed me, at only 7 years old he was doing things many adults could not do.
I dug out another one and bound it to a 9x module in my Taranis and we had a ball, chasing each other around the lounge, trying to knock each other out of the air. We ended the weekend with 2 still operational V911s although the spare main blade count has reduced some.
That bit of fun with Jacob has reignited my enjoyment of RC flight so hopefully you will see me post a few more flights as the weather allows.
It is winter here now so they may be few and far between but they will come.
PS sorry about the essay but it's good to get it out and start feeling a bit more positive.
