rcplaneresource.com

[apeman88]

I learned to hover a heli in one day. With a Shuttle (pre-bearing model I think around 85) I went to the local club with wind gusts of 5MPH with an occasional 30MPH. Expecting to just shoot the bull, the old timers said NO, go practice hovering, the wind shifts will be good for you. While hovering i was hit by a 35MPH plus wind and my heli went straight up in seconds. Expecting me to pull the throttle (major mistake if I had) and have it crash everyone watched with great expectation of a spectacular crash! Instead somehow I managed to rotate the tail, point the heli down field and moved into my very first FAST forward flight and landing 30 yards away from me..... I was no longer referred to as the newbie


Awe.. I miss those days.

Ya... the advances of technology today makes it so much easier. My first flight was on a GMP Hughes 300 without a gyro... they just came out and was too expensive. Flying with fixed pitch and no gyro was a bit of a challenge... the tail would whip left and right with the slightest command not to mention the RPM variance. I never hovered that GMP very well until I finally got a mechanical gyro.

Brings back memories! :-)

Ken

[David Bord]

Im a member there as well. I posted that I had a tormach and I think posted some pics several months ago.

Wife bought me a little Blade MCX2 coax for Christmas. Then bought a Blade SR120 single rotor fixed pitch, then its smaller brother the MSR, then a DX7, a simulator, an Align 450, and then a align 450 clone because the align was too nice to crash.. haha. All in the span of about 3 months. Im suprised my wife didnt kill me! Yeah I was out of control...

The CP helis are really challenging, but the technology, as mentioned earlier is getting very good in the area of self leveling gyros that are tuneable. Im waiting for one of those to be reasonably priced.

The 450 kinda scares the crap out of me when it spools up and lifts off. Its freaking insane.

David

[apeman88]

Im waiting for one of those to be reasonably priced.

The 450 kinda scares the crap out of me when it spools up and lifts off. Its freaking insane.

David

The original Captron Helicommand is still around $500 for the auto pilot module... but the Flymentor clone dropped to $70! I got my first one when it came out at $125. HobbyKing Online R/C Hobby Store : Flymentor 3D helicopter stabilisation System

The little 450s spin pretty fast! Some of the 3D guys I've seen spins it at over 5000rpm... that's over the rating of the blades... scares the cr@p out of me when they fly.... but what a sight to see! You should also see the 60's and 90's gas helis... they don't spin as fast as the 450s... but it moves a lot of air with their 690mm to 710mm blades!

Ken

[twocik]

Not sure if you guys have seen these... Seems to be a pretty big demand ! If anyone here wants to partner up on a project like this I'm in.

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Helicam aerials with Canon 7D on Vimeo

Helicam 5dmk2 samples from Steamboat Springs, CO on Vimeo

[JC1]

Not sure if you guys have seen these... Seems to be a pretty big demand ! If anyone here wants to partner up on a project like this I'm in.

Store « Aericam

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Helicam aerials with Canon 7D on Vimeo

Helicam 5dmk2 samples from Steamboat Springs, CO on Vimeo

Hi Twocik, about 7 years ago I worked with a friend doing an Aerial Helicam thing. We had 2 Bergen Intrepids with some nice pro pan/tilt mounts. ( Jon's R/C Helicopters - Bergen Intrepid EB nice piece of machinery!) and did a couple of test shots with them. The gassers were great as they had a lot of power and with a huge rotor disc it was no problem dragging up cameras.

We linked the camera to a video down-link, one of us would watch the video and control the camera while the other one did the flying. We tried the setup first on a Raptor 50 at our local R/C field

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTBZE3Iyyfs]‪Helicam Monitoring the Launch of a Model Rocket‬‏ - YouTube

And then we did some footage of a High Power rocketry event as seen below. (sorry the video is lower quality, it was 7 years ago and shot on mini-DV and the video support of an 8MP Canon camera)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3Slajq4_OU]‪CTRA NARCON 2005 Invitational Rocket Launch Via Heli-Cam Sept-10 2004‬‏ - YouTube

Good times though things didn't work out. There's still a lot of room in the industry though you have to lock yourself in on insurance (the hardest part!) and some places simply don't allow you to do heli's over non-sanctioned areas and others you'll need a permit, etc. For doing property shots a lot of people are doing extendable booms which mount to their trailer hitches with a pan-tilt mount on top of a 50+ foot mast which eliminates most hazards other than powerlines.

And if that's not quite your style, you can always fly in first person
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PadPhVBG96E"]‪FPV Flight 3 Reactor Biplane‬‏ - YouTube

[apeman88]

Here's my Aerial rig... Flies surprisingly well. Have a few aerial videos but it's for a client so I can't post it.

It's got GPS for waypoint flying and can fix itself via GPS. Have a 900mhz modem so it can also be controlled via my notebook.

"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8nsL3OtMQ0"]‪10-06-04 Hexa Test Flight 02.mp4‬‏ - YouTube

[JC1]

Here's my Aerial rig... Flies surprisingly well. Have a few aerial videos but it's for a client so I can't post it.

It's got GPS for waypoint flying and can fix itself via GPS. Have a 900mhz modem so it can also be controlled via my notebook.

That's awesome, what are you using for 900Mhz modem? I have some spare Freewave gear floating around. I've always been impressed with the multi-rotor designs and all of the in-depth development going on with them.

[apeman88]

The modem is a Xbee 2.4Ghz USB data modem (thought I put in the 900mhz). XBee Pro 60mW Wire Antenna - Series 1 - SparkFun Electronics . It works very well and distance, especially land to air) has been tested upto 1/2 mile.

The Multi rotor is catching on and the best one are the Mikrokopter. en/MikroKopter - Wiki: MikroKopter.de . MikroKopter started off as a project between 2 engineers in Germany and it grew from there. There are now 2 distributors in the US selling their stuff. Check out some of the videos on youtube and the Wiki page. They are amazing. More stable than RC Heli and more payload as well.

Ken

That's awesome, what are you using for 900Mhz modem? I have some spare Freewave gear floating around. I've always been impressed with the multi-rotor designs and all of the in-depth development going on with them.

[JC1]

The modem is a Xbee 2.4Ghz USB data modem (thought I put in the 900mhz). XBee Pro 60mW Wire Antenna - Series 1 - SparkFun Electronics . It works very well and distance, especially land to air) has been tested upto 1/2 mile.

The Multi rotor is catching on and the best one are the Mikrokopter. en/MikroKopter - Wiki: MikroKopter.de . MikroKopter started off as a project between 2 engineers in Germany and it grew from there. There are now 2 distributors in the US selling their stuff. Check out some of the videos on youtube and the Wiki page. They are amazing. More stable than RC Heli and more payload as well.

Ken

I need to dig into Xbee more, I hear it's Arduino friendly and all. The freewaves are good up to 60 miles Line-of-site, so probably a bit overkill. I talked a bit with a guy at the 2010 NEAT fair who had an octo and he was really happy with it. We shot some overlapping video of a particular warbird by accident and it worked out well.

Thanks for the information, this is one of the reasons I wanted to build a CNC router, to build interesting aerial devices, but I was so distracted with everything else invovled I forgot about it(!!). I might machine some arms and such for one of those super-simple tri-copters this weekend.

[BlueFin]

Not sure if you guys have seen these... Seems to be a pretty big demand ! If anyone here wants to partner up on a project like this I'm in.

This is the kind of stuff I am ultimately interested in doing, but from an industrial stand point. SAR, Fire Fighting, Inspection, etc. There are a lot of uses for this where sound does not matter like it would for surveillence, thus gas engine is my interest with large rotor disk attached. Basically a remote sensing transport unit, you could have color visual, audio, thermal imaging, radio frequency reception/transmission, gps mapping, small item transportation, etc. I see a huge and growing potential use in the industry that I work in. And yes, costs are high, but so are the costs of the real thing that get paid to do the same things that could be done remotely. The biggest use I see would be in thermal imaging large forest fires at night with GPS plotting of certain info when the real ships can't fly. We pay people to walk with handheld FLIR units looking for hot spots all night long, they might get a half mile or better done in a shift, a helicopter could do miles of line per shift. Real ones can not fly at night in Oregon, only IFR ships fly at night in California.

[apeman88]

60 miles!! Wow. The XBee is said to have a few miles of range... but I only tested it to the range of my radio which is a little more than 1/2 mile.

Look into the Quad MikroKopter... I have the Hexa... but if I had to do it again... I probably settle ion a quad as it's smaller and I think is a better platform. Good luck!

Ken

I need to dig into Xbee more, I hear it's Arduino friendly and all. The freewaves are good up to 60 miles Line-of-site, so probably a bit overkill. I talked a bit with a guy at the 2010 NEAT fair who had an octo and he was really happy with it. We shot some overlapping video of a particular warbird by accident and it worked out well.

Thanks for the information, this is one of the reasons I wanted to build a CNC router, to build interesting aerial devices, but I was so distracted with everything else invovled I forgot about it(!!). I might machine some arms and such for one of those super-simple tri-copters this weekend.

[apeman88]

One of my client is LE and they are very interested in a Quad for Surveillance. Problem is... with any kind of Surveillance, including SAR, Fire Fighting and etc, they are still NOT approved to use them. FAA still have not defined what can or cannot be used. Last paper published by FAA a few months ago states a max of 5.5lb is being "considered" for LE use and there are a lot of complaints as most birds will be closer to 10lb or more fitted with thermal or zoom cameras. A new ruling is suppose to be released in Q4 of this year but with the feds pulling funding on FAA projects... I have a feeling the ruling will get delayed. For now... LE or SAR can use them but must get a permit from FAA for every single use under "experimental use". There are about half a dozen companies in the US and Canada working with multi rotors for LE and military use and the best one I've seen so far are the Draganfly and Aeryon. Check them out below.

Aeryon Labs Inc.

Draganfly.com Industrial Aerial Video Systems & UAVs

This is the kind of stuff I am ultimately interested in doing, but from an industrial stand point. SAR, Fire Fighting, Inspection, etc. There are a lot of uses for this where sound does not matter like it would for surveillence, thus gas engine is my interest with large rotor disk attached. Basically a remote sensing transport unit, you could have color visual, audio, thermal imaging, radio frequency reception/transmission, gps mapping, small item transportation, etc. I see a huge and growing potential use in the industry that I work in. And yes, costs are high, but so are the costs of the real thing that get paid to do the same things that could be done remotely. The biggest use I see would be in thermal imaging large forest fires at night with GPS plotting of certain info when the real ships can't fly. We pay people to walk with handheld FLIR units looking for hot spots all night long, they might get a half mile or better done in a shift, a helicopter could do miles of line per shift. Real ones can not fly at night in Oregon, only IFR ships fly at night in California.