New Cam-Mount

This time I had to find a way to mount the IF OSC flightcam and the Lumix fx35 for recording HD. First I thought about an safebox with foam for protection and vibration dampening but then I came to this design:

Von Ablagebox

It should have less air drag and when using foam under the "feet" of the tripod I should eliminate vibrations.

Twinstar with Landing gear

Here I tried out my custom landing gear. It weights about 150g wich can be a CoG issue. If mounted too far in the forward section - noose-heavy flight; too far backwards and you'll see yourself rubbing your plane's nose in the grass :-)

A thrid wheel would be a possible solution - but that also means additional weight. To small would make a hook of it...

For takeoff it helped giving some extra elevator; takeoff distance is quite short for grass (5-7m?).


Twinstar with Landing gear from Mario Schimanko on Vimeo.

Technical specs:
Motors: 2x MPX Permax 480 7,2v
Props: Graupner CamSpeed 5,5/4,3
Battery: Lipo 3s Kokam 2400H5 (30c)
ESC: Jeti 30+

My conclusion: nice optics, cool feeling on the start, diffcult landings (material consuming), not safe for FPV so far - no extra benefit - I'll stay without wheels for FPV.

PS: did you recognize the music?
It's from this Spencer/Hill movie "Plane cracy" / "Zwei Himmelhunde auf dem Weg zur Hölle"

Twinstar FPV: Huyck-Field

This were a few great rounds above my hometown - above the company I work in to be exact.
I did two flights but on one the jaytech stopped recording (no guess why) - so only one landing.

Twinstar FPV: Huyck-Field from Mario Schimanko on Vimeo.
If you look close you can see the oakmountain-field (behind the castle) and down the city you see the big white building again (chockolate factory with my airfield behind).

Oakmountain flight (external Cam)

I wanted to show some extra material beautifully captured by my girlfriend. You'll also get to see some behind the scenes material :-)

Oakmountain flight (external) from Mario Schimanko on Vimeo.
Unconventional audience, great soundtrack and simply a great day "high above the mucky-muck".

Oakmountain FPV with great sunlight

Yesterday I had to FPV a few rounds over the "oakmountain" - the light was fantastic. This time you'll see footage from the JayModCam again, unfortunatly it was pointed up a bit to high...


Oakmountain FPV with great sunlight from Mario Schimanko on Vimeo.
(If you pause at 00:39 you can see a bright withe building in the background - this is the Lindt & Sprüngli Chocolate Factory and the "Airfield" from the lase vid!)

The mic was covered with foam this time (to prevent heavy noise) - so the air-speed-sound gives you an impression of the actual flyingspeed and motor usage.

I scaled to 640x360 to have smooth vid with 30fps (the old story). I'm still not satisfied with the tele of the jaytech - wide-angle would make a much better overview.

FPV Flight: Foggy Autumn evening

This was my third real FPV flight - and it was great.
Great conditions (only a bit foggy), no technical problems, huge airfield with plenty of space to land...


FPV: Foggy Autumn evening from Mario Schimanko on Vimeo.

Next I'm planning to go back to my JayModCam for recording - should give better quality (now I use a USB Framegrabber wich interlaces to vid - this makes it worse).
Video-Downlink quality is great for flying altough!

Stay tuned,
Greetings,
http://RCSchim.blogspot.com

Gloggnitz viewed from the "Oakmountain"

Gloggnitz viewed from the "Oakmountain" from Mario Schimanko on Vimeo.

First of all - this vid has no real landing - rather a crash. I was lucky enough and my twinstar with its brand new cameramount was not damaged. I'm not really sure what happend - easiest explanation would be a bad piloting, a stall during the too hard and too low turn. It could also be that one of the motors had a failure - this wouldn't be that great. After the crash I could successfully test the plane.
Second problem (which is also visible):
the cam settings have to be improved. Maybe it's because of me using only 8,4v instead of the recommended 10-12v. I'll check this first.

Update: now I tried 12v (a small Kokam 3cell 310mah lipo) and the cam works fine - so don't use less than 10v - quality and automatic lighting will suffer from low voltage!
So this was no real FPV flying because you can see that the sunlight could really bother you with this settings.
-
Please choose your own music - I was too lazy :-)
Btw. the oakmountain is named "Eichberg" in german.

Twinstar2 - better Cameramount, slightly better Design

After a few tipps I tried this:
 

The cammount hast been bent back and than I tape-wrapped the two supports.
Perspective from there is great, but the ultra-wide angle is weird for FPV flying - I'll sty by the "normal" wideangle.

Twinstar - new FPV Camera mount

Now that I have a new, working FPV cam I made a new cameramount for it. Combined with a wide angle lense it will give me a cool perspective (video should hopefully follow shortly!):
 

I'm not sure how the "cameramount" will affect the aerodynamics - any comments?