Marc's Public Blog - Rc

A bit of RC flying with Daniel

2011-05-28T15:00:00Z

Since Daniel was visiting us from NYC, this became a good excuse to go flying at Rancho San Antonio, so we did :)

I did most of the cularis flying, so no pictures in flight :-/

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Overfly of Google HQ Campus and Shoreline Amphitheatre with Minimag Cularis Motor Glider and GoPro HD Camera

2010-10-13T15:00:00Z

Ok, so let's settle the tech part first, I figured I'd get the best video by filming from under the Cularis, but since it doesn't have any gear, that means the camera is first to touch the ground on a landing. As a result, I padded it, to lessen the impact and the glue that holds it to the bottom of the glider does give out under impact.
Now, this is not ideal so my plan was also to land in the weeds like I would do at Rancho San Antonio, so the wings get caught in them and the bottom of the glider doesn't touch the ground. The weeds at Shoreline were not very tall though, and because they were far from me, I misjudged the height on landing and landed a bit hard on the ground, which did tear off the camera from the plane, but otherwise everything was fine, the padding worked and the video was intact.
All this to say that this setup however doesn't allow for easy repeated flights :) Takeoff is done at full power with a heavy toss and if I have enough back elevator I can miss the ground despite the added weight from the camera and resulting loss of aerodynamism from having that heavy block handing from under the glider.

you can see the camera under the belly

I get 20 to 25mn flight time with one battery, which was more than enough, and captured the frames below from the HD video. I'll say that unfortunately the HD video quality from my GoPro HD is far from stellar, but it beats the original video I was getting with the non HD versions that came before it (see my first attempt at it last year with my original GoPro hung from my Minimag).
The Biggest improvement from my attempt last year was that the Cularis was much bigger and easier to see from a distance. I was easily able to fly much farther from where I was standing (about a mile) without totally losing track of which way the glider was pointing and how I could still control it to fly it back (which definitely was a problem with the much smaller minimag).

Below are frames I captured from the video:

original main campus

the 'famous' bridge to 1950 :)

1950/alza

46/47

45 and the droid/eclair/cupcake

1098 and 900 alta with 101 in the background

1965

1945 and rengstroff

After getting what felt like enough passes over the campus buildings (the so called 'GWC' was a bit out of reach for safe flying), I did a few passes over the Shoreline Amphitheatre:

Putting aside the fact that my landing wasn't that stellar, this was my only flight and the video was good the first time (thankfully I had gotten some practise shooting from a distance and 'aiming' at targets from almost a mile away). The video quality wasn't awesome but I guess that's as good as you get from a cheap-ish HD camera you can stick onto a small RC plane, so it's not too bad. See more images for Overfly of Google HQ Campus and Shoreline Amphitheatre with Minimag Cularis Motor Glider and GoPro HD Camera

Overfly of Rancho San Antonio with Multiplex Cularis and GoPro HD

2010-08-14T15:00:00Z

I had been doing some gopro flights with my minimag, but it just wasn't a great idea because:

The minimag is just too small and hard to see from a distance, which is why I already lost one plane and camera after losing the plane because it was too small after it got caught in a strong wind.

The minimag needs a lot of power to stay airborne with the weight of the GoPro HD. The wing loading is just really high with that extra weight, and my last flight where the motor died on final, I barely managed to land while dropping from the sky at what felt like less than a 2/1 glide ratio.

A byproduct of the minimag's wing loading means that I have to run on power at all times which causes both noise and vibration, neither are ideal for filming.

That also means that I can't run the battery that long and the flights aren't much longer than 10mn.

If I do lose the plane, better lose a much bigger one that's easier to find in the weeds :)

The one issue with the Cularis is that it has no landing gear, when putting the camera under the plane, that's the first thing to hit the ground on landing, which ain't ideal (I saw someone who put the camera under one wing and used a counterweight, but the view isn't as good.
I ended up putting the camera under the plane with some foam to protect it and planned to land in the weeds. For my 2 flights, that worked fine although it wouldn't work as well if I had to land in a parking lot :)

My first flight (video below) was 16mn and went fine. The second flight lasted a whole 25mn, although that was pushing it, the battery died just as I was landing (i.e. I got lucky :) ).

I took some 3Mpix shots from the video, a few are below:

the flying field

hwy 280

the next door cemetary

another nice view of the cemetary

they have a nice array of solar panels

nice houses next door

why do people fill their garages with junk and park outside?

Here is the video of the first flight:

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Taking over a Multiplex Cularis

2010-07-28T15:00:00Z

One of my coworkers was moving to NYC unbeknownst to me, and I had noticed a glider in his cube. When I asked him about it, he said he wasn't sure what to do with it because he was moving out of California that evening.

Needless to say it was not a hard sell, I offered to take it over and fix it up. The tricky parts were getting a new prop without knowing what motor was inside except for the fact that it was a competition motor with enough power to blow a speed controller or a lipo if either were undersized. He told me a story of one of his gliders where the lipo caught on fire while flying and they saw the glider gliding away while on fire :)

First, the glider is huge. Its wingspan is more than 3 times the one from my old trusty minimag, and about as much as 2 of my bigger planes combined:

The other tricky bit was setting up a radio. This was actually the hardest bit because while I had had the foresight to by a more expensive Spektrum DX7 back in the day and therefore had 7 channels, the DX7 was just a pita to configure for crow/butterfly flaps assigned to the power stick like in this picture (ailerons up and flaps down):

It turns out that the mixers in the DX7 barely allow you to use the power stick to either control the motor, or the crow flaps at the flip on one switch, but it's super non obvious. I owe a big big thank you to the guy who figured it out and wrote this post:
http://www.parkflyers.org.nz/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=4193
Not only he gives the setup, but he explains what the DX7 manual doesn't do: how the hell this all works. This in turn allowed me to improve on his programming and have just a single switch that goes from normal airplane mode to crow flaps and back.

The last piece was figuring out if the ESC's BEC was able the power the 6 servos (in theory, 2A is only good for 4). An amp meter on the battery while moving all the servos seemed to show that things were ok on that front. The only part I just didn't know about was how many amps the motor would try to get from the battery and how far I was from the 15-20C (about 40A for a 2100mAh lipo) I would be.

After a long time programming the radio, I finally convinced myself that the plane would fly, I just wasn't sure about the motor situation... It turned out that if I went past half throttle, the ESC shut down to protect itself and the battery, so launching with power was quite an interesting task, I had to put just enough power but not too much and throw just right or I would crash.
I did crash a few times after some not good enough throws, but eventually got the sucker to fly. I got the hang of it very quickly and I saw right away how it must be nearly impossible to land without the crow flap setup: even with it, I stayed over the ground in ground effect without actually landing for quite a while.
I tweaked my programming after a few flights and was able to get a little bit of uplift and glide at Rancho San Antonio.

I've ordered some bigger batteries that should give me more power and hopefully let me run the motor without it shutting down when I actually need it :) and I'm looking at ways I could put my gopro camera on the glider once I feel that I have enough power to take off without risks (unfortunately, I can't put the camera under the glider since the glider lands on its belly, which would damage the camera on landing).

It was a fair amount of time to setup (and I didn't have to build the whole glider), but it's been fun so far. Now I have to get the hang of how high I am and whether I could safely land back without power if I had to.

Fellow glider pilot at Rancho San Antonio:

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Minimag Crash Lipo Fire

2010-02-27T16:00:00Z

Right after receiving my new motor and mounting it on my plane, I went for a quick test flight at the local park which I've flown at before since it's closer than Rancho San Antonio. I thought I'd save a few minutes by going to the park since I just wanted to have a feel for the new motor.

Ok, I'll save you the details, there was wind (no big deal), I was too close to the street at end of the park and when I made my turn to land back close to where I was, the plane flew right into the sun. I got blinded and by the time I could have seen it, I tried to dodge a power/phone line and lost. The plane hit the line motor first, and the plane fell right onto the street outside the park.

I have to say I actually had a string of good luck there:

cars avoided running over my plane (thank you).

plane actually got fairly little damage, glue to the nose will fix it.

the motor shaft didn't get bent and the motor looks fine.

prop is broken, but that's why I buy packs of 10, no biggie.

the only reason why the plane wasn't flying 1H later was the plastic piece that is holding the motor is broken and I'll have to buy another one. It's more the time to go get one than the $3 it likely costs (update: very strangely, one of my aileron servos died, considering I have zero impact damage on the plane, I was very surprised when I went to the field after fixing the plane, and it failed preflight due to a broken servo. Bummer, now I have to wait a few more days for a replacement...).

lipo got compressed during the sudden stop but looked ok.

Plane damage isn't too bad

I had a look at the lipo and it looked like only the connector piece of it got compressed but the 3 sheets of lipo were otherwise unbent/unarmed. The lipo looked ok so I put it back in my car with the rest of the pieces and drove home.

A good 25mn after the crash, it self ignited on the desk I was working on. I was able to throw it on the ground and then away from close to my car where it landed while the 3 layers of lipo ignited one after another. Nothing actually got burnt despite an otherwise intense fire as the 3 mostly fully charged layers caught fire one after another (it shot pretty vivid flames 2 feet sideways). Sorry, I was too busy watching the fire to take a video :)

this is what's left of the lipo

Needless to say that on top of very limited damage to my plane, I'm very lucky that the lipo didn't self-ignite in my car's trunk, or later on when I wasn't watching it.

Moral of the story, a charged lipo that got any kind of reasonable shock is a ticking timebomb! Check Lipo Fire on youtube for more examples.

Higher Altitude GoPro HD Flights at Rancho San Antonio and Motor Failure, and Video recovery from SD Card

2010-02-26T16:00:00Z

After adding a tail ribbon to my plane (to make it easier to see where is the front and back when it's far away from me), I went for a few more flights to catch some higher altitude HD video.

My first flight went mostly ok: (make sure to select HD in the resolution slider)

Unfortunately, on the second flight, the motor crapped out. First it started vibrating a lot, hence the shaky video, and when I removed the throtlle in flight when preparing for landing, I wasn't able to re-engage it. The video after the fact gives the 4 beep code from the ESC which means motor failure, shutting down. At that point, the minimag with all that weight feels like a 2 for 1 glider at best. I don't remember if I tried to flare, but it looks like I barely had enough lift glide energy left to make it to the edge of the hill (beyond that, it would have gone below my field of view)
Turns out I was able to restart the motor on the ground after a full shutdown, but it didn't restart in flight and you can hear the unhappy motor sounds :)

Just like motor, the video had a problem: after downloading it on my laptop, I screwed up while recompressing the first video and wiped the second video in the process. The second video was still on the sd card, but its cluster table had been freed since I had reused the card already.
In this case, photo recovery software usually only has to find the signature of the file by scanning blocks, read the file header and deduce how long the file is from that info since it's already lost in the cluster table, and then rely on the fact that all blocks are super likely to be contiguous, so you can just keep reading linearly until you have the whole file. This usually worked well, but Christophe GRENIER's very handy photorec wasn't succeeding there, and neither were other pieces of commercial software I tried: the restored file would not play (I restored the file by hand myself too by just copying the blocks and got the same result).
In the end, I got really good help on the mencoder-users list from Reimar Döffinger, whom I owe a debt of gratitude to: he looked at my sd card image and figured out that my GoPro HD Camera wrote the index-related part of the file header, after the data blocks. With Reimar's help on what offsets I should be looking at, I was able to get the first part of the header at the beginning, concatenate the end of the header that was written after the data blocks, and then add the actual data blocks. After almost 2 weeks of trying, his answer worked and I got my file back. If you are interested in more details, see this message from the mencoder-users list.

Here it is: (make sure to select HD in the resolution slider). Jump to 04:20 for the motor failure.

See more images for Higher Altitude GoPro HD Flights at Rancho San Antonio and Motor Failure, and Video recovery from SD Card

GoPro Wide vs GoPro HD

2010-01-31T16:00:00Z

I recently bought the GoPro HD to replace my GoPro wide. The rationale was of course to get HD video, and for that the GoPro HD does deliver (full 1080p 30fps video).

A 4mn clip comes to 360MB in H264 video from the camera, and I can recompress it with virtually no visible loss of quality to 100MB with mencoder set at 3200kbps for H264 (or almost 100MB/mn down to 25MB/mn).

Changes with the GoPro HD so far are:

it's just very slightly bigger and heavier, but my plane still takes off with it

it has an internal li-ion battery which should last a few hours (GoPro Wide lasts almost 2H for a set of rechargeable AAA batteries).

the current firmware does not support shooting upside down, which I do in my plane and car. For now, I use software to flip the images and video.

more importantly, it's supposed to support SDHC up to 32GB, but for me it fails with my 16GB card so I use 2GB SD for now (that's only about 20mn at full quality before it fills up though). Hopefully they'll fix it in a new firmware.

more sadly, colors look washed out on the GoPro HD for me. I contacted support about this and will see what they say.

Here are some pictures comparing GoPro HD colors vs GoPro Wide (that's the 2 pictures per second mode where both GoPro Wide and GoPro HD take 5Mpix pictures). Just in case you ask, pictures were taken just a few minutes apart with the same amount of sun.

GoPro HD: Nice crip picture, somewhat dull colors

GoPro HD: Still nice crip picture, somewhat dull colors

GoPro Wide: Picture slightly less crisp, more vivid colors, more blurry around corners

GoPro Wide: Just prettier picture except for blurriness around corners

So far, I'm a bit torn, the every 2 second pictures are just nicer on the older GoPro Wide for me, and the early bugs on the GoPro HD had better get fixed (SDHC support and taking pictures upside down at least). No idea if the washed out colors problem is solvable or not. If not, that would be a shame.

But yes, the full 1080p HD video does beat the old 512x384 videos hands down though :)

Here is a link to the full 1080p video recompressed to 3200kbps and a link to the youtube page with the video (which allows 720p and 1080p viewing).

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Minimag overfly and pictures of Laguna Seca

2009-10-24T15:00:00Z

I took my minimag to Laguna to take some shots like I did at Thunderhill recently.
Unfortunately I didn't have the time during lunchtime so the sun was lower and showing in some shots.

Laguna was also harder to get because of how much bigger it is compared to Thunderhill where I can mostly overfly the whole track while being in a couple of spots. Laguna has much more track that just isn't visible from the paddocks. So, I ended up driving around the track (not on) and finding other vantage points that had better visibility. This mostly worked, except my 200+ shots taken around the corkscrew: I had a great vantage point, but my camera got knocked out of angle during a tough takeoff and all my shots were unusable :(

Anyway, here are a few of the good shots, and you'll find more in the link below

See more images for Minimag overfly and pictures of Laguna Seca

Minimag RC overfly / Digital Hero wide pictures of Thunderhill

2009-09-18T15:00:00Z

After getting a digital hero wide, and coming up with the idea that I should overfly the tracks I go to to take shots, I brought my minimag to thunderhill and took a bunch of pictures over lunch. Below are a few of them:

short video with takeoff from turn 11 (click for video)

turns 10, 11, 12-13

another vantage point

both straights

5, 6, 7

better view of 14-15

5 looks kind of flat from the sky :)

closeup on 14

another vantage point of 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15

Shot of one of the instructors who went out for fun during lunch

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Trying my new Minimag with Digital Hero GoPro Wide at Rancho San Antonio

2009-09-09T15:00:00Z

After losing my previous minimag and its GoPro camera, I builts a new minimag entirely from spare parts from my 3 previous kits for the plane, and new electronics (which was the expensive part unfortunately).

I did a test run of the new camera pointing forward, forward+down, and backward

a forward facing 180 degree view without seeing the prop or the wheels is hard

obviously the prop doesn't look good when spinning

I pointed the camera down some more, it helped a bit

you definitely get a bigger field of view, but it's distorded

but the big field of view is nice

and the curvature on the horizon simulates being at 100,000ft like a U2 :)

pointing back looks nice but it's near impossible not to get the tail in the shot

See more images for Trying my new Minimag with Digital Hero GoPro Wide at Rancho San Antonio

Lost My Minimag RC Plane

2009-07-13T15:00:00Z

Today, I had just received my new batteries from Hong Kong. I soldered the connector on the Zippy 3S 4000mAh and headed for Rancho San Antonio Park.

After the first quick 1mn flight to check the weight, I added my camera to enjoy a longer flight with the bigger battery (I figured over 25mn since I get around 15mn with batteries half that size).
And then... well, I went downwind a bit too much before I realized that to fly back I had to have the plane point straight at me, at which point it would become absolutely invisible due to how far it was and its cross section becoming almost nil. I was however getting back slowly by making turns so I could see the plane when maybe 7mn into the flight, the battery crapped out and the plane went down so far out of view that I could not really tell where it went down.
The next 2.5 hours were spent with me walking all around the search area, which was quite big. I got to hike around Rancho San Antonio trails, go through the cemetary, jump 4 fairly tall fences that were stopping me from proceeding further ahead, and I brought my controller with me in the hopes that I could maybe hear the plane around me by moving the controls, but no such luck.
Instead, I got to see some hiking/biking trails, scale a few fences à la Jackie Chan, see several deer, more than 10 bunnies, an abandonned railroad track, a horse farm and more.
For now, I searched the Cemetery, Canyon Oak Way, Serra St, Madrone Ct, Manzanta Ct, the traintracks there, and the nearby power plant on California Oak Way.

But no plane :(

Map of the area I searched
and a couple of pictures of the area to give an idea:

Kind of sucks since I had my camera on it, a brand new battery, and $250-ish of electronics in addition to the plane itself :(
If I'm very lucky, someone will find the plane, notice my name and phone number on it, and call me, but I'm not holding my breath...

If someone somehow happens to have found a crashed remote controlled plane and found this post through google, please call me :) 408 7(zero)2 22(seven)1

(update) I went back this morning (the next day) to scope other pieces of the area, but it's basically not in anywhere easily visible. I however dropped 80 "have you found my plane" flyers in nearby resident's mailboxes, just in case it's in their yard, but at this point I'd say my chances of getting the plane back are below 30%.

(update #2) Got no answer from my flyer, or anyone who found the plane, so at this point, my chances of ever getting it back are below 5% :(

(update #3) I ordered a couple of SkyKing RC Lost Model. It would not have guanranteed that I get the plane back, but it would clearly have improved my odds. See more images for Lost My Minimag RC Plane

More Pictures from San Antonio RC

2009-07-03T15:00:00Z

I'm not too sure yet how I should organize random pictures and videos from Rancho San Antonio, but I guess for now I can post a few like this from time to time

Nice converted T-Rex 700

with a nice FPV setup

A T-Rex 600 in comparison

Rancho does have deer :)

See more images for More Pictures from San Antonio RC

Taking Videos from my Minimag RC Plane

2009-06-22T15:00:00Z

So, first I made sure that my plane would be able to carry the extra weight imposed by the camera and be able to fly despite the possible change in CG and in the case of my camera, the added drag (it's likely you'll have to significantly retrim. It's specifically important that the plane flies as straight as possible without any input, both to get nicer videos, but also to predict where your plane is going to fly when it is too small to tell which way it's pointing or flying (more on that later).

Next, I used a long range Spektrum DX7 transmitter with dual channel and dual receiver AR7000 (giving 4 antennas and chances to receive the signal). This isn't park flying anymore, at those distances you want guaranteed control of the plane, it would suck that you can't make it turn back and come back to you. While my plane is reasonably slow speed and all foam and very unlikely to cause any personal harm or property damage due to the low kinetic energy, but you just don't want to take the chance.

Camera angle: obviously, it's important :) In my case I tried a few placements (see previous blog post)

Sometimes video looks like it was shot by a drunk person, but that's really because the video wasn't shot per se, I tried to fly the plane over the target the best I could from a fair distance.
The problems were twofold: first from a distance, it's hard to tell whether you're anywhere above your target, not not. Then, from a greater distance with a smallish plane, it quickly gets hard to know which way your plane is pointing. I even lost it in the sky a couple of times at Rancho when I was pushing distances.
First, I always made sure to have a full battery to start with, and a flight timed to only be half my battery capacity due to how I have to push the motor a lot more to sustain the extra weight, and also keep plenty of altitude so that I could make errors or have a chance to glide somewhere somewhat useful should I lose power (I hadn't quite planned for losing the prop like in the first Google/Shoreline video, but that one worked out quite well :)

Then, when I start to lose the plane and can't even tell which way it's pointing, I do gentle turns to raise a wing, making the plane more visible and the turn then shows me which wing is raised and which way the nose is pointing :)
(needless to say that this is somewhat pushing it a little bit, this may not work for you and you may just lose your plane into the horizon ;)

Now, given all this, it'll make more sense when I explain that given those conditions, and non live video (recorded onto SD and downloaded after landing), it is very hard to film something on purpose, so don't be too critical if you think videos were shot badly: that's because they mostly weren't shot :)

Now that this all out of the way, here are the videos and a few frames I hand picked:
First, flights around the Rancho San Antonio park:

Two of my better and more daring flights around Rancho San Antonio, shows 280, nearby neighborhoods and hiking trails.

Then, flights around Google and the Shoreline Amphitheatre:

First test flight of Google and Shoreline Amphitheatre with prop that flies off:

Better flights of google and Shoreline Amphitheatre (especially 2nd video):

Taking Videos from RC planes at Rancho San Antonio

2009-06-16T15:00:00Z

One of my coworkers had thrown around the idea of attaching an Android G1 phone to an RC plane and taking a movie and GPS track. I found the idea amuzing and knew my Multiplex Minimag had enough power despite its short size, for the added weight (in RC scale, the G1 is a heavy brick :) ).
I'll skip my first flight a few days earlier where I used packing tape to attach the phone, and packing tape didn't hold at all, with the end result of the phone falling off soon after takingoff and falling from 10-15ft up to the packed dirt. Micarulously, the phone actually survived.

Anyway, I came back a few days later with another phone (an already damaged one just in case), and got a reasonable GPS track and so so video (video from the top of the plane pointing down isn't actually so great).

very professional attachment

looks pretty streamlined, except for adding a *lot* of weight :)

seemed lke the natural place to put the GoPro camera, but it picked up the prop

this was actually a better place thanks to the extra clearance I got from the big wheels

First two flights recorded from the Android G1:

gps track of flight #1 and gps track of flight #2

Flights recorded from the GoPro camera, pointing forward (above and under the nose):

(Yes, the lines on the first video are due to partial every X line recording from the camera capturing pieces of the prop, doesn't look so good...)

Flights recorded from the GoPro camera, pointing down and back:

The camera pointing forward and down actually doesn't look that good, I angled it too much. The camera pointing back gives a nicer few, all the way up to where I crashed when the battery crapped out and the plane went out of view (below the ridgeline), so I wasn't able to glide it to a safe landing :(

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More Rancho San Antonio Flying

2009-06-14T15:00:00Z

I recently found out that not so many people come flying on weekends, especially the afternoon when I typically show up, both because the winds are higher, and because there are too many tourists who get in the way and/or stand on the "runway" :)
But I didn't know that people show up in the morning on weekdays and come flying every day while others are going to work :)

Some people bring nice planes

A gyro plane

Ok, some have better collections than me :)

this one is quite nice

See more images for More Rancho San Antonio Flying

Bought and Built Multiplex ParkMaster 3D RC Plane

2009-06-14T15:00:00Z

Daniel tricked me into getting a new RC plane, well, at least that's my story :)
Building was not too bad, the control surfaces are huge, and the overall build was well designed and worked well.

I felt a bit weird that the wing of a high G 3D plane come in 2 pieces

but a good gluing surface and carbon spar for strength helped

I thought the parkmaster was small, it's actually bigger than my minimag

maiden flight

Unfortunately, on my first video'ed flight, in high wind, I found out my DX7 just wasn't programmed properly for the plane: in dual rate mode, a stick throw gave so much deflection and authority that the plane turned all the way left, and then right, and then crashed :)

This was later quickly fixed by putting my exponential rates to 80% so that I don't get so much deflection on partial stick throws. In a later flight in calmer winds I actually did much better, including a little bit of harrier and knife edge. See more images for Bought and Built Multiplex ParkMaster 3D RC Plane

Quick Flight at Rancho San Antonio with Daniel and Xav

2009-05-30T15:00:00Z

We used Daniel's visit as good excuse to go flying at Rancho San Antonio. After flying my minimag for a while, they flew Xav's T-Rex while I was having fun flighting the winds with my minimag and practising all kinds of landings in gusts.
Good times.

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SCCMAS RC Airshow

2008-07-13T14:53:00Z

Daniel almost came over from NYC to see the RC airshow, so it was only fair for us to go there with him :)
But seriously, it was an impressive airshow, the RC pilots were very skilled and had impressive machines.

I could talk about it a long time, but pictures speak louder than words (the better pictures were taken by Daniel with the Canon 40D and nice zoom).

The RC airport we were at, they had a real concrete runway that was long enough for some full scale airplanes

Xav and Daniel taking professional pictures

some planes were seriously big

Everything with an engine will fly, right?

So, no reason why that wouldn't include a lawmower :)

dogfighting between the red baron and the flying snoopy doghouse

Ducted fan jets

And actual Jet-A burning turbine jets, exceeding 200mph

There are also several videos I filmed, showing some impressive stunts, which can find in the picture library .

Nice Takeoff and Landing with minimag

2007-06-10T10:58:00Z

I did a few flights next to work, first in heavy gusts. Let's just say that I had a few bad landings, it was almost unflyable (15-20knots).
I did a later flight around 20:00 when the wind had died down, and things were much better then. One of my coworkers took a video for me, and I actually did a good job for a change :)

Another Baylands RC flight

2007-05-19T14:04:00Z

Another friday, another baylands day.
After my by wheel upgrade, I managed to do some takeoffs from the grass, which is challenging since the grass is thick and the plane not that big (it tends to get stuck and to nose over).
I also managed a few grass landings without tipping over, I'm getting a bit better at flaring and doing soft landings at low speeds (at least some of the time).
That said, in my last approach to landing, I clipped a tree right in front of the runway :)
The tree impact was apparently at fairly high speed, it shattered the propeller, and upset the wing quite a bit. Nothing that some glue won't fix, but it looked like a pretty tough impact. Luckily the motor still looks ok this time :)
Some guy was flying a very nice biplane with a wooden prop, it looked pretty cool.

Returned Draganflyer Ti

2007-04-28T08:56:00Z

After trying the draganflyer Ti (thermal intelligence) for a few days, I ended up returning it.

It worked really well outside thanks to its thermal intelligence (it had 4 heat sensors that could make the unit self-level by seeking the temperature difference between the sky and the ground).
Unfortunately, without thermal intelligence, indoors, it just wouldn't level that well, which was disappointing for a $1000+ RC device, so I returned it.

You can find a few videos here , and if you are curious, the details of my experience are below (as the reason for return that I sent that company)

Below, I am going to give you details for the benefit of your design
team.
While I have obviously had it for more than 1 month, it was DOA and I only
received a working receiver board last week.
I tried it the next day, and the day after with help and feedback from your
tech support, but ultimately, I was disappointed with it because of its
performance when Ti was not enabled.
Your support folks reviewed test hovering videos in my house, showing how
wobbly the unit was and how hard to control it was. They suggested prop
wash, so I went to a bigger indoor facility and had similar results:
The DF does a bad job of saying level or in one spot without Ti.
I'm sorry, but a $150 X-Ufo does a near perfect job of this until you spill
its mechanical gyro. Whatever your solid state gyros do, is good enough to
run the motors in a way that the unit doesn't flip over or stays generally
level, but they can't keep the unit fully level and hovering without Ti.
The X-Ufo can, and with a solid state gyro upgrade kit from Germany, it does
apparently fine flying outside in winds (which the mechanical gyro can't
quite do).
As things stand right now, the DF Ti does do a great job flying outside with
Ti on, but it's just very disappointing without Ti. Because I typically
mostly fly indoors, it unfortunately makes the unit unsuitable for my use
and I would therefore like to return it after 2-3 days of use/testing.
As additional things that disappointed me and that you'll want to look
into fixing:
- a $1000+ unit shouldn't be using analog transmitters anymore. You should
  at least provide a Spectrum DX7 receiver board as an option. There is
  too much chance of RF interference risk in some of the places I fly in
  and the present is digital DSM2. Analog is dead.
- The new style remote you provide (with the Ti on/off switch) just feels
  cheap. Again, it's disappointing for an expensive device like this.  I
  found that it was very hard to give precise, timely, and small control
  inputs to fly the unit indoors: the remote is not proportional and doesn't
  provide enough precision for very small inputs and corrections
- Again, because you use a cheap remote with no intelligence, I have to trim
  it when flying without Ti, and then untrim/retrim it every single time
  I switch to and from Ti mode. That's just silly and hard to accept for
  a unit that price (and even more so for the multi thousand dollar units)
  Again, allowing for the customer to use his/her own DX7 transmitter by
  putting an AR6xxx receiver on an optional board, would fix this.
- your motor mounting rods should have a pinhole or square pattern that
  would allow for the motors to not spin around the axis and always point
  up. The premounted unit that you shipped me didn't even have the motors
  mounted right, and they were quite hard to adjust.
- Generally, the gyro input or feedback is poor. I know the solid state
  gyros work because the unit wouldn't fly at all without them, but even
  when perfectly trimmed, your unit does not self level indoors with no
  control input. The X-Ufo does.
- Your lipo charger seems slow compared to a real thunderpower charger. I
  have 3 cell lipos that look almost identical to yours, but your packs have
  the balancing connector removed, making it difficult to consider charging
  your batteries or using my own with a real lipo charger/balancer (BTW, I
  did not charge your batteries with anything else than your charger since I
  didn't know whether it was safe, but I also noticed how slow your charger
  was).
- your folding blades are hard to adjust so that they self straighten, and
  when they fold, they get caught into the motor gear and stop the motor,
  which can't be too good for it.
I still believe that your product is probably the best one around for flying
exclusively outside with Ti on, but due to the points above, and the fact
that I mostly do indoor flying, I'm going to go the X-Ufo with gyro upgrade
route.

Brushless upgrade for my multiplex plane

2007-04-09T03:07:00Z

After burning the motor on my plane due to overvolting, I upgraded it to a brushless motor (for a bargain of $29). The upgrade was a bit tough since it required a custom wooden piece to attach the motor to (the entire motor rotates around the mount, not just the shaft, it's quite weird).
Anyway, I eventually got it put together, and along with a bigger battery, I went for a few short flights. All I can say is that I'm impressed: first of all, I got a fair amount of flight time from my batteries without emptying them, the new propeller is huge and is generating a lot of trust. The plane is still too heavy to be able to hang off its prop like a helicopter, but the improvement in power is quite noticeable. I went from a plane that wouldn't even move on my carpet to one that darted into the wall and made a small hole in the drywall :)
Thanks to Jennifer for taking a few pictures and a video

Now, I have to do a lot more flying to see wha tthe plane can do and get the hang of the controls, especially the rudder, which I pretty much don't use right now. I guess I can also try to improve my landings in grass (hard since the plane will generally sink in the grass and nose over right away)

First RC plane flights

2007-03-20T02:26:00Z

I finally got my RC plane built last friday morning (Multiplex Minimag with big brush 6V motor (400), driven by 1350 3S lipo at 11V), and went for the Maiden flight.
Except for the first launch that overestimated the power of the motor (I didn't launch it hard enough), the first flights went fine. I had some close calls with the ground, but things went ok after that.
In the afternoon, I did a couple of flights on the terrain next to google, but unfortunately, I first went into a tree, which I didn't judge to be as close as I thought (it wasn't too hard to get the plane out), and my second launch after that didn't work due to bad elevator trim that caused the plane to go right into the ground and eat its prop.
After a new prop, I did a few more flights the next day, although it was in very windy conditions, and I ended up in a much larger and taller tree this time :)
Getting out of it was much harder: my trick of launch a gym bag with shoes for weight, and a rope to pull, dind't work as well because of the difficulty of the throw and the height. I got very close once, but not enough to shake it loose.
Ultimately, I got very lucky as person picnicking closeby just climbed the tree. That guy was amazing, as the tree was not easy to climb, but that guy was very athletic, and did a great job of it).
Anyway, except for a dent prop, some problems to the new prop having been mounted the wrong way and causing little lift :), I actually did a decent job of flying so far and have yet to crash into the ground.
I also scored multiple power off landings when the ESC cutoff motor power due to low batteries. I've been very happy with my flaperons that have allowed me for very slow approaches and "landings" in the grass.

Got into RC

2007-02-17T12:03:00Z

After the X-Ufo, I guess I got hooked into Remote Controlled flying machines, so I got a Blade CX2 helicopter, and a plane kit I still need to build. The CX2 is quite agile, and also more fragile like any RC flying device. The first day, I had to replace its inner shaft which is designed to break about right away, and had to debug a few more things later, but it seems to be flying fine now, and it's fun. You can see a quick video of my CX2 here
The plane will come soon when I find/take time to build it, and I joined the RC group at google, with coworkers who have quite elaborate flying machines, from cool helis that can fly upside down 700 Watt F18 plane that can fly at 120mph :)
Good stuff all around.