Sunday, December 28, 2008

Blade mcx as cargolifter

On playing around with this little copter I wanted to lift some weight :-)
See yourself how it worked out...

Blade mcx - battery problems?

Do you have this heli? If yes, what flyingtime do you get with the standard battery charged using the standard charger?
I got 7,5mins the first few flights, then something happend to either the charger or the battery - now I've only 2mins before it goes down.
Usually I charged with the stock charger until the led was completly off or there were 20secs pause between blinking - that's what the manual said. Suddenly the charger didn't start to blink but rather he was lit the whole time (even beyound 40mins).

Solution: I now use the 5g battery taken from the Silverlit TandemZ (130mah)

and I also solderd a better connector to the copter

so now I can charge the battery with a professional lipocharger. The new battery gives me again about 7.5mins - and this after only about 25mins charging (with 300ma).
Next I'll order an 200mah lipo with 5,1g - this should be the perfect battery for the blade mcx.

Hope this helps,
Greetings,
RCSchim

Blade mcx - xmas present

After reading and viewing many reviews the Blad mcx got on my xmas-wishlist and finaly under the tree!


Here's my maiden flying around the Christmas tree:


Since my first indoor heli I always wanted to make a flight through my entire home and show you all the rooms. But most of the little toy helis are very inaccurate and you can not go where you want but rather correct the little helis strange flight actions.
Blade mcx is the exception here - it moves right where you tell him to and so this vide was fairly easy to shoot (except for the two crashes :-)

And you surely noticed my moving back to youtube - they greatly improved the quality - so vimeo.com has stronger competition now!
(watch the heli tour on vimeo for comparsion)

And here's the review from Dave Herbert which finally got me:
Blade mcx flying

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Aerodynamics: dihedral wings for stability

Recently I found this interesting info on the different wing-setups and their aerodynamics. Dave Powers from RCPowers explained this entertainingly and most of all easy to understand. Surely very useful for plane builders!
Dave's explanation on dihedral wings:


Be sure to also visit his great site at www.RCPowers.com
you'll find many very funny and interesting videos there!

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Twinstar 2 - ready for FPV with panmount

I prepared my FPV setup for the next fine, calm weather (that can take a while).
After my e-Savage RC FPV Car "project" the FPV equipment has been mounted back on Twinstar2 and the learnings from e-Savage (panning the cam isn't a great deal but helps for immersion) helped me to integrate a simple panning-solution on top of my plane.
As for now I'll stay by the lowcost variant with no headtracker:

(under the cam I have a servo coverd in cutout styrofoam - I didn't want to touch the wing itself).
To control the cam I sacrificed the ruder controls - I barely use them anyways in normal FPV flying. They're only useful for soft turns up above - but maybe I'll mix some amount of ruder to the ailerons so make nice smooth turns.

As you may have guessed - I really like the repair-tape - it's very durable and easy to build something.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Silverlit TandemZ1 inside

After many serious crashes the rear rotor quit it's job leaving the TandemZ1 unsteerable. Because of that I had nothing to loose here so I applied my "scalpel" and opened the little heli:



The fullriver battery does a good job here - it gives long 10mins of flight time! (it's an 130mah 3,7v lipo battery)
After some tries I somehow "repaired" the heli - it now hovers wonderful again.

Greetings,
RCSchim

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Saturday, December 13, 2008

RC pioneer - Dave Herbert

Hi readers, since thers just little opportunity the fly in the cold season I try to learn from other's experiences. Dave Herbert - I found his videos on youtube - seems to have lot's of stories to tell. He was part of the RC-"Stuntmen" for the movie "Blue Thunder - Das Fliegende Auge" with Roy Scheider from 1985?.

Go and watch a few of his videos - they're very entertaining!

For example:


Subscribe to his videos - he does new RC reviews regularly!

Greetings,
RCSchim