No wind Saturday

Got a call from Robert Saturday morning, there was very little wind and what there was, was coming from the wrong place. He has been building a new quad at work ( its all right for some ) and he wanted to do some testing. As I am a Radio control technical genius and Robert very often relies on my knowledge, I felt it was the right thing to go along and help

We met up in one of the better areas of Westbury.
We thought there would be some interesting objects to film, turned out it was just a lane

We went up to the back of the White horse where Salisbury Plain starts.  This is ROB's ''bitsa'' Quad. Its made up from spare bits from Quadzilla, the motor mounts are from the local dentist, other bits he found lying around. It does have 4 new huge electric motors and 4 new 90amp speed controllers. The flight management system is the DJI Naza and GPS. Have to say it is all very smooth.







We then went and found a farm to fly around, below is the video. As usual turn up loud and full screen it.  Unlike Rob decapitating a seagull last week, I can promise the pigeon that stars in this did not get hurt.






Martin

Fosa at Bobby's place

A quick and last video of the FOSA last weekend at Bobby's place. Now set up it moves like it should do. A bit more weight and I think I will begin to be competitive. Rob thinks the video is crap, but I think his last landing 6 foot down the side of the cliff was crap!

Martin

Portland Bill.. or Bust ;)

The Bobster gave us a call "fly in proper lift" he said, so we trundled down to the South Coast to find out what proper lift was! This is the best picture i can find of the Bobster and definitely his best side. Portland Bill is a lump of rock sticking out of the South Coast like a hemorrhoid. These cliffs are not real cliffs, not like Dover but 60ft high straight off the sea jobs. However produce monumental lift in 20mph of wind. We all stuffed as much weight as we could in and hurled off. First time we have flown over the sea, you wonder if that wing servo will hold, or if that solder joint you have been worrying about will give?

The Dumpster shovelling food in can only mean one thing.. he buggered off for a dump! Dave's Needle was whistling with over 2kgs of ballast, was moving quicker than a pair of hookers knickers on pay day. He was at home here on the coast.. like a Puffin.

The Bobster and local boy Mike know the slopes of Portland very well, if ever Ian Mason wants an advert for the Willow F3F he should film these boys fly! Mike had his willow bouncing around the corners like a Bumble Bee on speed, Bobster showed us exactly where the lift was.... 1 meter above the cliff, scared the shit out of us inland boyz!


As for myself, the Rotmilan was flying beautifully, getting immense height with some carefully executed pumps under the watchful eye of the master Bobster, after bouncing off the compression zone and heading towards the heavens i hit a seagull! poor thing did not know what hit him, i got the glider down with no damage, the boys claimed the bird was bobbing around on the sea.. i think they were being kind as it fell out the air like a bag of turd. As for the crash, stalled the wing to close to the ground following a series of loops! very lucky there was not more damage. The glider fell about 12ft down the cliff precariously balanced... the vid shows the retrieve. New fuz and some super glue... WTF a new glider, what to get?

Turn this up to max... i broke all my own rules here and made a 6 min video. ENJOY



Next is a time lapse vid Bobster took on the day. Watch the moment everyone rushes to the edge after the bird strike... Evil bastards!

Rotmilan on the mend
Rob

Portland Bill Bobby's Gaff

Yesterday we went to Portland (Bobby's Island) to experience compression and some proper fast flying. Rob is putting together the Post with pictures and a decent video. This is a quick video I slung together as an appetiser until he gets his act together and gets something published. 

It may take a few days as he is mourning the Rotmilan

As ever full volume , Full HD and enjoy....




Martin

Son of OctoQuadZilla.... QuadZilla is born!

 I had an idea to build a quad with a few bits i had lying around at work. To keep it simple i thought i would use the same Axi 2612 short shaft motors, the same speed controllers and same batteries. Everything being inter-changeable. I had some broken booms (from some earlier unsheduled landings) which i chopped off and made use of. One blagging email to Droidwork bagged me a couple of carbon centre plates. 

 The motor mounts are made by an ingenious  chap at work. He has a good friend who makes false teeth. So used that pink moulding stuff pushed over an original motor mount to get the mould, let it cure, than filled with a mixture of epoxy and chopped fibre to make exact replicas. Even stronger than originals! I am thinking of getting a 3D printer, then this sort of thing will be a piece of piss!

 DJI Naza board and GPS unit used, as well as Multiplex M link receiver with telemetry. This lets me know flight voltage... important i think. I have a couple of Spare batteries at work, these RedChunk are 5 cell 10,000mah, and are the dogs danglies!

The flight test was... interesting, all captured on film! Make sure you do the usual, kick the wife, animals and kids out for this one and turn up to 11!

Learnt a lesson... do not turn the gains up to high. As soon as i knocked into GPS made it went APE! Over compensating big time....

Turned those gains down and you have a pussy cat! The Naza and the Wookong will level all multirotors at mid-stick regardless of lift available, I wanted to check the lift capacity, so i knocked into manual and flew, i was hovering with about 4mm of stick movement.... Massively over powered. Will lift 3kgs time for a gimbal and some landing gear.......

Rob

Saturday afternoon flopping about in still air

Saturday saw a 5mph NNE wind. We rocked up at Westbury where we knew we had our best chance of flying but we knew it would be a day of scratching about, catching the odd thermal and for the unlucky a bit of landing out

There was alot of new people that we had not seen before, I cannot remember there names so for the purpose of this blog I will call them Dave, not to be confused with Dave the Dumpster Rumble

Dave's Vampire. This was an EDF ready to fly from Hobbyking, but after a small mishap had the motor removed and now gets used as a slope soarer. It weighs nothing and did a great job of coping with the marginal condition

After the thermal always comes the sink. This was  Dave struggling with the conditions. Not sure of the outcome but at least 3 people ended up in the field and several more on the side of the slope

The walk of shame with the Tanga. Unlike the dumpsters walk of shame back from the woods after a clear out, this was different , this was me retrieving the Tanga from the side!

Daves Fly Fly something. Given that it was a fly fly model, a maiden flight , first time slope soaring and the conditions were marginal everything was stacked against it being a completely successful flight.
Dave did a great job, there were a few bum clenching moments but he flew it about for 20 mins or so and brought her in safely. 

A Wotsit

Everything I wanted to say about this sounded cheesy so I am not going to say anything about it apart I from really liked the look of it.








Now for the video, as usual decent level of volume and get as many mega pixels working as your computer will allow






Martin

Midweek Filler..

As we are complete slack arses on posting and i cant find anything else glider related to post take a look at this. It is un-powered flight off a slope sort of.... .


 I love FPV flying, however this bloke has balls that Martin can only dream of.........

Dont reckon he would get to far off Roundway Hill HaHa..

Rob