Paul's Flight Log

[Graham Lawrie]

The Lemon RX and Sats are very good Paul. I was put off initially by them being so cheap, but they are excellent:)

[cml001]

I like that flight a lot Paul... Great area to film with the snow.. Looks good!

[cml001]

Lol.. Thought u were gonna drop that tree in your backyard?

[pvolcko]

I did almost no flying back there this past summer so my interest in cutting it down waned. Given my desire to flying more this year I may well be getting rid of it. More of it has died this past year so I'd be putting it out of its misery (and mine). But it does serve as an obstacle to avoid and fly aroudn which may be useful with the FPV stuff I'll be getting into this season...

[cml001]

Lol

[danhampson]

I did almost no flying back there this past summer so my interest in cutting it down waned. Given my desire to flying more this year I may well be getting rid of it. More of it has died this past year so I'd be putting it out of its misery (and mine). But it does serve as an obstacle to avoid and fly aroudn which may be useful with the FPV stuff I'll be getting into this season...

It looks like you have enough space there for a permanent fpv track paul. and still plenty of room to fly anything else.

nice flight. ive seen video from a yuncee q500 before and they do shoot excellent video at a fraction of the price if an inspire, how is the firmware for features does it do the same stuff as an inspire, rth, way point, ect...

[pvolcko]

No way points. Yes rth. Follow me mode (need to read up on it). I think one more mode too. Along with smart mode k cyclic forward is always away), and angle mode (leveling and hold but cyclic is model relative instead of polar). Camera Tilt control from remote.

I did another flight today. Video feed went out again while out over the farm field, despite walking out further. I'm not thrilled with the short distance of the video link. Inspire has lightbridge, I think, which has far better capability. Otherwise I'm pretty happy with it. I'm impressed with the video quality and the gimbal on it.

[pvolcko]

The other mode is "point at me". Where as follow me will track your position, but not necessarily be pointed at you, point at me mode will keep the transmitter in frame. Not sure if it will move by itself to track while in point at me mode, or if you can only move it around with the sticks or what.

Also, cracked open the goggles and got them tested with a HDMI source. Will try the analog from the vortex later tonight. Still waiting on either the DSMX sat converter adapter or a CPPM rx unit to do the full setup and test fly. Pretty stoked.

[pvolcko]

Well, finally got the new Vortex up in the air. Did about a minute LOS to see how it behaved in HORIZ mode and ANGLE mode. ACRO will be after some more flight time.

Had an initial problem with the pro-tune presets, but got one programmed in. Tooled around in the driveway a bit and decided to try out the goggles and FPVing it. First go I got it into a neighbor's yard and didn't want to turn it around FPV so I raised the goggles and tried to bring it in LOS. I didn't think to verify orientation though (thought it was tail in, it was actually side in) so I ended up crashing it into my driveway. Nicked a prop but otherwise no damage.

Took off again with some more LOS. Flew it to my back yard area, brought down the goggles and tried FPV again. Couple of touch and go bounces but made a back and forth FPV. I need to tighten up the camera mount a bit. Slightest bumps on landings/bounces will cause it to tilt which can be very confusing mid flight. I like the EzOSD setting which has a bunch of info around the sides, but lacks the artifical horizon display. HUD mode has the horizon display but lacks most other info. Wish there was a setting that combined them or that there was a way to configure it custom how I'd like it.

So first FPV went okay. Still a lot of learning to do. Tomorrow is my club's annual "snow fly" fun fly. Calling for 41F temp (mid afternoon peak) and very low wind, clear skies. Should be a great day. I'll bring the vortex out but I probably will not fly it.

I've been working on getting my crashed helis back together and going. Got the gob 500 and 550x repaired and test flown. Need to redo setup on the gob 500. Collective was way skewed toward negative. Don't remember what I did that would have caused that. Must have had to replace the blade links and I'm not remembering it. 550X flew well. Need to adjust tracking. Put a new set of Switch blades on it main and tail. Also need to tape down the ESC. It's zip tied, but forgot to put some stickum under it to keep it from sliding around.

That leaves the TRex 700 still to be repaired. If I remember right I need to replace a gear set on the elevator servo, which sucks since it is the difficult one to get at. Hopefully that's it. Hoping I didn't bend any shafts during the autorotation attempt that went awry.

[cml001]

T'is the season!

[pvolcko]

Got the trex 700 back in shape. Two cyclic servos were stripped. The other is iffy. Will do some testing on it before flying it.

Got a full day of testing, setting up, and flying tomorrow. Will try to get some video and pics!

[Graham Lawrie]

Bring on the video:)

[cml001]

Werd!

[pvolcko]

Busy couple of days. Should gave some time tomorrow.

[pvolcko]

Still working on the pics and video. But in the meantime I had some time to install the 16x9 camera in the Vortex. Took a bit of fiddling to get the thing focused properly, but once installed it tested great. Really looking forward to trying it out in flight. Tomorrow is looking like rain all day, but Friday or Saturday are looking great.

[pvolcko]

Well, I finally got some video edited together. Doing a two compilation videos from my time at the club this past weekend. First one should be posted later today.

Second bit of news, got my Vortex firmware upgraded (both the vortex OSD firmware and the cleanflight version installed on it). Need to redo setup now, but hoping it cleans up some of the oddities I was experiencing.

1) Tendency to yaw nose left and roll right. Very slight, but made holding a hover or straight line in forward flight a bit of a chore. I checked Rx center point values in cleanflight and only 2 points off of 1500 for rudder channel. Roll is off by 2 in the opposite direction. Pitch was off by a lot more (8 if I remember right) but didn't see any bad behavior in that direction in flight. Once I go through setup again and recalibrate the Tx we'll see what happens. May need to put in some deadbands or adjust subtrims.

2) In acro mode (yes I flew it in acro mode a couple times this past weekend, I like it better than angle or horizon mode) I had one odd experience mid flight where the quad seemed to do a piro out of nowhere while in a steepish, fast dive. Didn't crash thankfully. And luckily I was up a ways and out away from the flight line when it occurred or else it might have been ugly.

Waiting for some better weather to test things again.

[cml001]

Sounds like progress to me!

[pvolcko]

https://youtu.be/PRQSOxOVOmE

[Graham Lawrie]

Nice compo Paul:)

[cml001]

Looks like a fantastic day that the field to me! Now, the T-28 wasn't u was it? What did u guys figure was the cause for the alarm & loss of signal? Dead pack? I do like the look of that Blade heli... Seems to me they were selling the crap out of them.. Can't figure why they discontinued production. U finding parts still? Nice flights Paul.. Keep'm in the air!