AR Drone
Indoor Drone
Outdoor Drone
Sweet. After having a few near misses with my heli, I have back benched it, only for a little while. So with that in mind I still wanted to do something other than just planes. By chance an email came through on my phone and I checked it, it was from ebay and they were having a special on AR Drones. With not much hesitation I purchased one. It arrived in a couple of days and I haven’t looked back. For those who haven’t heard of them before, your iphone, ipod, ipad or android device is the controller. It has 2 video cameras in it, one athe front and one underneath, which you can record from back to your device.
I Can Fly
Flying Wallet
Well today was a good day for me. I managed to get down the park with the family and fly my new rc aeroplane. The weather was a little windy, but that didn’t stop me. Admittedly I was a tad nervous seeings that my jet has crashed here a couple of times, and that I haven’t even been able to get my helicopter off the ground, unless of course it is trying to attack me. The chopper has now been officially put to the side and more attention on the trainer.
The trainer originally had wheels on it, but they were just a little small to taxi down the runway and kept on stalling the motor. So it was back to hand launch time. The first time it left my hand today I felt my heart stop for a second and then I saw how gracefully it was floating across the sky. Still had a little nerves running through me, but I felt it all come back to me. It was an amazing feeling.
Another Crash Landing
Rebuild No 1
Crashed (again)
On this fine labour day public holiday, myself and Goose went down the park to fly our aircraft’s. The weather a little windy, but I wont blame that on my poor piloting skills. I got Goose to hand launch my stinger 64 for me, and that was great. I could fly it straight (lol), but when it came to turning it I seemed to be putting it into the ground, and because it was airborne, the crashes were a little more damaging. We didn’t get any video unfortunately because by the time Goose hand launched it and got to the camera it was already in pieces. On the other hand Goose managed to fly both his quadcopters without any damage. I think he will be posting some footage of that tonight on his website fangin.com. We met another fellow RC fan out there who also took a chopper and a plane. He flew both of those without any problems either. For me it’s back to the garage and rebuild, yet again.
Helicopters & Fingers don’t mix
My Sexy Finger
It seems I’ve done it again. Just another excuse not to put this bird in the air. Silly me put my fingers into the blades. ‘Why’ some would ask, ‘why not’ is my answer. Well at least there is an answer to why not, and that answer would be 3 stitches in the left index finger. I hit a main vein and it would not stop bleeding. Luckily Goose lives just around the corner and gave me a lift to the doctors, So big cheers to goose, and more cheers for the photo lol.
Mayday
In Pieces 🙁
Lol … I think this is the only way to start this post. Well I finally built up enough courage to take my new jet, Stinger 64, down the park for it’s maiden flight. As soon as I got down there I saw that there was no one there, and that was what I was after the most. Without further hesitation I turned it all on and hand launched it. It lasted two seconds in the air. At first I thought it didn’t have enough guts behind the motor, so I hand launched it again and it still didn’t want to stay in the air. Instead it dragged itself around the oval, which did look funny, but still I wanted air action. Once again I hand launched it and aimed it a little higher into the sky and held back on the elevator. It seemed to belt straight down into the ground which I thought was odd … until I looked at the transmitter and noticed that the elevator switch was reversed, and I really, really should have looked at the rest of the switches, because they were reversed too! Anyway I thought I would give it one last launch now that the elevator was fixed. It didn’t last long in the air again and dragged along the ground until it caught some oncoming wind and took off, which was great, except the ailerons were reversed too. Bang was the next noise I heard.
Ahh well, I have learnt a few lessons and I hope to rebuild it to get some air time out of it. The main thing is I had fun.
Oopsies
Blade MSR
Damn. I’ve been waiting nearly 2 weeks for my new carbon fiber landing gear, and new tail boom for my Blade MSR, and I got them today … Yay. You would think, cool, flights all afternoon. No, num nuts here left the battery charger on for nearly 2 weeks and has puffed the batteries. They are wrecked, I could barely fit them into where they are meant to go and they just don’t hold a proper charge. They do weird things so it’s time to throw them in the bin and buy some new ones on eBay.
The Hunt is Over
Click for bigger map
Whilst going for my bike ride today I found a location to fly my jet. It is Boronia Grove Reserve, no more than 5 minutes drive from the Blackburn Rd exit off the freeway. It even has a car park, so no long treks through mud or long grass, and it also has a toilet block and drinking fountain. What more could I want … Well I would like the wind to disappear for it’s maiden voyage. Or as usual I will just have to wait. Patience is not one of my virtues.
Yeah Boy
My First Jet
I got pretty excited yesterday my special package from Hong Kong rocked up. More importantly I had my jet built in 10 mins, and in another 10 mins i had it all trimmed out ready to go. The unfortunate part is the park I was going to fly it in has bigger trees and smaller amount of open space than I remembered. So this weekend I’m on clear space searching mission ( with the jet in the back of the car ).
Burning Out Batteries
different connection
This connector is normal on all batteries.
smokey bussiness
It's working.
Yesterday I decided to re-wire my Futaba transmitter so I could put another battery inside. For some unknown reason the connectors for the old battery were different to every other battery. This operation required soldering. Now soldering isn’t one of my favourite jobs and I did manage to mess this up. The de-soldering was easy enough and what I thought putting two new wires through would be just as easy. I did a neat job of the soldering … but a couple of threads of wire, off each wire didn’t go through. Once the battery was plugged in my transmitter started to smoke straight away. The battery pack got very hot, started melting the plastic around the wires and the batteries started swelling up. Luckily I could still unplug the the battery pack and threw it onto the middle of the lawn. I have heard of battery packs exploding so I didn’t go near the pack until today. Over night it didn’t explode and nothing else seemed to happen so I was very lucky. Today I wanted to find out if I had only fried the battery pack and not the transmitter, so i managed to remove the connector off the newer battery and got it onto the old battery (which does work, but doesn’t hold a good charge). Plugged it in and “presto” it worked, I am wrapped,that’s one less thing I have to re-purchase.
ABS Is Working
In the garage.
Jacked up.
Black cap... not gray.
Hub off.
Next project.
What a day. Finally fixed my abs problem on the commodore. The problem wasn’t me thank god, it was the fact that the sales assistant gave me the incorrect one. I needed the hub with the black dust cap. So it was just a case of taking the wheel off, hopefully for the last time in a while, and popping the new hub on. The test drive proved successful. I found a small oil under the car so that will be my next mission.