Medium sized crash this time around! Smacked right into a tree at a fair clip, sideways, bent two propellors (right side front/rear) and folded the same prop arms. I’m really impressed with this frame, both it’s reliliency and it’s optimizations. I’ve still not graduated from 3S to 4S LiPo batteries yet, but we’ll get there!
I also figured out the video problem - or reliably solved it. It was one of two things:
NTSC mode - I took the NTSC jumper out of the FS 700 TVL camera and BOOM the video quality was impressively better. There was a forum post somewhere which described a field “as if it were drawn by a pencil” and I had been experiencing the exact same thing.
Starting up the Goggles/DVR before the frame’s vTx was fully initialized. I’m pretty sure the glitchy images at the bottom of the screen were happening because it tried to hook into a video signal which was being set-up.
The results? Way better video (still working out that audio glitch, though):
I don’t know what the audio of this clips is going to look like, but I’m pretty excited that I was able to get the internal and external video to sync up!
It was a busy day so I stuck to low and quick, trying to keep very tight control over my elevation. I’m pretty pleased with the line-of-sight cellphone camera, but i’m still struggling with this NTSC/PAL DVR issue. I had originally thought it was an issue with the DVR, but now I’m beginning to think it’s a configuration option that I’ve screwed up on the copter itself!
Also, I’m pleased to report that the 1800mah turnigy a-series battery fits on the frame! It’s a close fit, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to get the balance correct.
Went to MacDonald Park in Medford to take out the Vortexes (vortices?). Having that much space to fly is SO much better - it’s easy enough to practice maneuvers in JP but to really get some velocity behind the turns you need more space. So cool seeing these things zipping around the field! Vortex vs. Vortex, who shall win?
Merlin (the pup) had a hard time until the drones were in the air - once they were up, he was too enthralled to be a bother :)
Flight Notes:
The yaw/roll sliding turn is a lot easier with speed, not to mention more of a slide. Moving at a slow clip horizontally is a lot more difficult to control, but having gotten a feel for what that means in real space (practicing Line-of-Sight) made the transition a lot easier.
If I get caught up in all the excitment, I sometimes forget which stick handles yaw vs. roll - not great when you need to recover
The camera mount gets a little loose over a number of runs, should pack a small hex key to tighten it up in the field
The mAh-consumed marker in the OSD is more useful than any of the other data points - knowing the voltage never drops below 9.5v is good to prevent deep-drawing the cells, but ultimately the mAh consumed provides a more reliable runtime measurement.
☑ Setup the FrSky failsafe (super easy - press a button and huzzah!)
☑ Setup the dominator DVR (also easy, just had to locate a microSD card)
Results are pretty cool, I also realized that the right-side indicator on the HUD OSD mode is actually barometric altitude. The vortex just keeps getting sweeter.
…I guess a lollipop is half of a figure eight? This will probably be the last “Maiden”-theme post. I’m getting half decent at flying this beast line-of-sight, but that doesn’t mean you don’t hit stuff.
Emphasis of this practice session was yaw control and reversed-frame-of-reference flying. It’s pretty uncomfortable flying back at yourself when LOS when the roll direction isn’t so predictable, but again - the more horizontal velocity you have, the better.
skimmed the ground on that one, I didn’t think i’d be able to recover from the ground impact. Funny enough, putting it into “config” mode to turn off gave enough yaw that the vortex took off again with some projectile nice arc. oops.
