Video progress report!

[sutty]

Getting down lowwwww and picking up the speed. Pity about the break up, but I still enjoyed it. Cheers Tom.

[Tomstoy2]

Thanks, Sutty. Back to work Wednesday so I can afford all I need, again. Feeling a hell of a lot better.

[Tomstoy2]

Getting the Drak all dialed in.

Got the ground station set up todat and recorded the osd to study the telemetry.

I'm burning between 8 to 13 amps, ( depending if into the wind or not ), cruising at 49 mph.
The landing was at 37 mph. Just shut the motor off and put the nose down, fly her right to the ground and then flair.

Protune drak (4 min 19 sec)

[Tomstoy2]

Turkeys!

Turkeys! (1 min 0 sec)

[sutty]

Great videos Tom. Loved the Turkeys. Keep 'em coming.

[ragge1]

nice , and nice field too

[Tomstoy2]

Thanks, guys.

I was amazed my bud, Greg, spotted them. I was flying at the opposite end under the goggles. He said he saw them, so I asked him to direct me to them.
Once I spotted them the Tom's spread their tail feathers and I then spotted them.
Good to see the big birds are doing well after the flood a few years ago.

The Y600 is a real blast to fly. It can cut thru so much more wind than my Hexa did. 13 mph wind does nothing to it.

[copterboy]

Nice vids tom, enjoyed watching

[Tomstoy2]

Hartsel meet 2016

What a great time! I really love this meet, I learn so much.

First off, no matter how long, how thorough you think you are, nor how long you prepare you will forget something,,, usually important. Like charging up the GoPro or putting an SD card in the ground station recorder.
So, thus the lack of video.

The 250 worked brilliantly,,, or at least so for my skill level.

The Y600, I ended up tipping over upon landing in a high wind and blew out the current sensor. So she was out.



The Drak. Keeping in mind I am still debugging stuff, I am very happy with her and the progress made.
I got the Vector sorted and working perfectly. I still am working on some video issues so I did not go under the goggles. I really wanted that ground station recording, so I can see what the camera is seeing. Really need to get that done first.
High wind, low wind, no wind, she fly's brilliantly,,,, except for one very bad habit.
In the second vid I do a tip stall when I turned into high wind without throttling up.
Considering she fell about 20 feet, plus me goosing the throttle nose down to try to get some air flow over the controls, damage was minimal, but could have been much worse. The 3/4 inch plywood block I put in for the bungee hook saved the body from breaking right off at the wing root!
It looks simple to fix, but first I need to remove the block, which is gorilla glued in.
RiteWing has a new set of verticals, longer, which makes stalls much less radical and easy to recover from. Got a set ordered.

Greg, crashed his quad, first flight and broke off a motor mount putting him out of action.

One guy there, flying a My Twin Dream took an early morning flight from where we were in Hartsel past Buena Vista, 40 miles one way!!!
He had 26000mah's on board and landed with 3000 left!
At one point he had to fly between 2 14000 foot peaks. Another, a 1/4 mile apart from the vertical rock faces! Absolutely beautiful.

Then, there was riding along with the guys using my ground station.
One of the boys whom I have posted a few amazing videos from was leading a couple others down on the deck 9 miles out. And by on the deck, I mean 2 to 3 feet off the ground, thru the trees. Shit that scares me to death! At one point his wing tip missed a tree by mere inches. Yes, he's that good, and exciting to watch fly.

My son and the grandkids showed up. My 10 year old grandson spent 2 full days beating the shit out of me!

4 full days of fun in the sun, filthy, stinking, burnt to a crisp fun. The kind where your face hurts at the end of the day from all the smiling!

Can't wait for next year!

( 1st vid, toward the end, you will see another Drak patrolling the sky. )

6 18 16 Hartsel (2 min 33 sec)

2016 Hartsel last flight (2 min 24 sec)

[Tomstoy2]

A friend was chasing me around and posted this up.

Drak in flight Hartsel 2016 (0 min 46 sec)

[sutty]

Very cool Tom. Sorry about the crash, but I'm looking forward to some longer distance action once you have her all sorted out and dialed in.

No action from me because I have nothing to video. I'm not flying as often as I did, and when I do I'm less capable than I was before. Not much point recording anything to demonstrate regression.

Cheers

Sutty

[Tomstoy2]

Thanks, Andrew, we had a blast. I so look forward to going each year.

My own flying has been extremely limited. My job is going away out of country, forcing me into early retirement. My body is just too worn out now. We go a little time yet, but no need waiting, I'm down-sizing. House is worth double now, so I'm selling.
So, until I get moved I'm pretty busy.

[Tomstoy2]

Stay tuned, folks. Heading back to Hartsel. Just 3 of us this time.

Taking everything. The Ranger, the Drak, the Y600, and the qav250.

Ranger is ready to stretch her legs.

The Drak is all repaired and a new addition. Longer verticals to get rid of that freaking stall!
Hope to get under the goggles this time. Moved the 2.4ghz antenna out on the wing, see if that works. If not I'm bringing along a 5.8ghz vtx just in case.

Trashed out my brand new H4 black! Just picked up one of those $80 4k Chinese knock-offs. I'm done with GoPro. The vids I post up later will be proof,,, or not? We'll see.

[Tomstoy2]

A great time, indeed!

We showed up and were about finished setting up camp when Nate showed up.
We met Nate at the June event.

Weather was overcast, rain showers at times, wind a plenty and good periods of calm, too.

The Drak fly's beautifully with the longer verticals, though I really didn't spend any time down low in speed. Video still doesn't work. I'm planning a drastic overhaul.

The Ranger got only one flight, and it ended not so well. She was flying good and I was just about to turn on loiter and go under the goggles when she started dropping a wing. I would throw in a massive correction to bring it out but she would overshoot and there we go again and again all the way into the ground. No damage at all. The cause, a burnt out aileron servo. Lucky me, could have happened a few miles out as that was my intention.
I have ordered the next set larger servo's for everything on her.

The Y600, I had done a bunch of work to it, getting the motors parallel. The turkey flight I had a bunch of trim in. Well, I didn't get it tested before the trip so was very happy to find out that after removing all trim she flew perfectly!
Only one problem, the video didn't work. Learned an important lesson. Last June up there I left everything out at night as there was no chance of rain. I never thought about dew. The vtx rusted.
So, everything was line of sight, which I was happy to fly, though bummed out because she's ready to run.

The qav250, what a rush. Got the range issue resolved on the video side and took her out a mile. Pretty nerve wracking, knowing that if you screw up your're in for a hunt.

I am very pleased with my new replacement camera for the GP4 black I trashed. I think it is even better in quite a few respects.
To begin with, looking at the video's, see how overcast and dark they are. My 4 would have been dark on playback and would need manipulation in GP studio to correct.
This is uncorrected and you can plainly see everything.

The plane flying, in the distance the 4 would not have made it out at all. I was surprised to see Greg's plane making the down-wind turn so plainly.

In the Y600, the camera is hard mounted, nothing isolating from vibrations, and no stabilization ran in the playback, just straight out of the camera. The 4 would have been like looking at waves rolling across the screen. This is pretty good for fixed!

Plus, it comes with a screen, wifi, 4k, the works and all for $86 plus a 3 year no BS warranty.
Pretty slick.

We still have issues with Greg's quad. Pisses me off, I thought we were beyond that. His maxi-swift however, took to the sky's brilliantly, despite Greg's terrible launches. He had a habit of throwing it with the outside wingtip about 45 degrees up. He got away with that back home, but this is 4000 feet higher.
Fun to watch, a good floater that can handle some good wind, spiritedly.

Nate,,, what a character. He show's up with a trailer loaded with a rack holding half a dozen planes and Blades new 450 quad, forget the name, and every conceivable support equipment imaginary for support including a generator and a large buss-box to hook up all the chargers to.
What he doesn't show up with is camping gear. No tent, no sleeping bag, his shade canopy was moldy. He did have one of those mosquito net canopy's, but no jacket, or pants. Just a tee shirt and shorts. Not even a mat to sleep on!
What a character!
What he brought though flew great and we had a great time flying together.

So, in all, success, but still not across the goal line yet.

Hartsel July vid 5 Nate SkyHunter launch (0 min 12 sec)

Hartsel July vid 3 (0 min 24 sec)

Hartsel July vid 4 Y600 (6 min 54 sec)

Hartsel July 2016 vid 7 Drak flight (6 min 7 sec)

[Tomstoy2]

me 262 (2 min 57 sec)

[sutty]

Lovely job Tom. Much bigger than I thought. Is it the 1.5m wingspan one?

[Tomstoy2]

It's the Dynam model, whatever that is.

She's an excellent flyer. The more I fly it the more I love it.
Had an incident last time out. I ran out of power on my downwind leg and had to set her down way out. So far out my buddy Greg took pity on my knee and retrieved it for me. Only damage, I had to replace 2 of the landing gear.
She does eat mah's!

A couple other vids.

First up, the micro-Wraith. Still working out video issues. Not happy with these new generation vtx's. One, they get hot as hell. Two, you have to turn them on every time you plug them in. If you're not careful doing so you mess up your setting.
There's other things I don't care for, too. Enough so I replaced it with my old stand-by, Boscam. I'm hoping to check it out today.
She's a fun flyer. Being so small, you can easily loose it. That's the beauty of the paint I used, Those reflective safety colors really stand out in the sky.

Wraith 8 30 16 (1 min 32 sec)

The Park, fly's nicely, indeed. Not too many flights on it yet, so still feeling her out. Got stupid and nosed her into the runway. Blew the nose all apart. Nice thing about foam, you don't spend a month putting it back together.

Park 1100 8 30 16 (6 min 54 sec)

And, a short clip of Greg bouncing his maxi-Swift off the runway.

Greg with Maxi Swift (0 min 47 sec)

And, we finally got the maiden of the Corsair out of the way. Only took about a dozen attempts.

orsair (2 min 2 sec)

So, what's new?
Slowly working on my Cub. I'll be moving soon so everything is packed up, but I've been collecting everything to finish her off.
Went round and round about adding smoke. Decided against it. That crap gets into everything and eats the wood. This is something I would like my grandson to have after I'm all done.
So, until I move I won't be doing much, but she's ready for tear down and covering now.

Once I move, I decided I'm going to build a Nick Zirolli 100" Stuka dive bomber. That ought to keep me out of the bars.