Winter FPV Meeting

Prometreus und Richy haben mich am Eichberg besucht. Trotz mittelmäßiger Bedingungen (kalt, windig, schlechte Sicht) war's sehr lustig. Die beiden fliegen halt eher action betont - kein wunder dass da auch mal was passieren kann ;-)

Das zweite Video zeigt die Sicht von Prometreus aus - teilweise die selben Szenen - aber gegen Ende tolle Car-Chase FPV Szenen!

Two friends visited me at Eichberg and even with cold windy weather we had much fun up there. They are real stuntmen - so don't try this at home ;-)
The second vid is from Prometreus - some same shots in there but great additional car chase szenes!

Twinstar2, Funcub and TBS Disco in great autumn Scenery (RCSchim: Reichenau, Klecka Park)

Ein toller FPV Nachmittag am perfekten Hügel in Reichenau. Tolle Kulisse, schönes Wetter was will man mehr? Mit meiner Funcub hab ich's etwas übertrieben, den letzten schnelle Flug bergab hätt ich lassen sollen - zum Landen am Hügel hat dann der "Saft" nicht mehr gereicht. Der Twinstar2 war von einem Freund (Till) und die letzten Szenen wurden mit dem TBS Discovery Multicopter gefilmt.



A great FPV afternoon on the perfect hill - in such a scenery with calm weather - what more could you want? I overstressed the battery on that last fast decend. I should have gone soaring home on the landing hill instead ;-) The Twinstar2 was flown by a friend and the last scenes where taken with my TBS Discovery copter.

FPV Treffen am Eichberg (Till, Flo und Geri)

Letzten Sonntag haben Till, Flo und Geri am Eichberg vorbeigeschaut. Das Wetter war fein, bis auf einen kleinen Zwischenfall mit einem Quad (auf den ich nicht näher eingehen möchte) gabs keine Abstürze ;-)
Es war lustig, mal nicht der einzige "Freak" auf dem Feld zu sein...




Last Sunday Till, Flo and Geri visited me at Eichberg field. The weather was fine, except for one small incident with a quad (I will not go into details here) we had no crashes ;-)
It was funny not to be the only "freak" on the field...

(T)Win(ter)star

Um die finstere Winterzeit, in der man nicht allzu viele Flugstunden zusammenbringt, zu überbrücken, hab ich geeignete Handschuhe besorgt und mir die Finger vorher im Auto ordentlich gewärmt :-)
Die Twinstar ist hier nach langem wiedereinmal geflogen worden. Funktioniert noch immer alles, vor allem die Flaps verstärken die Langsamflug-Eigenschaften noch.
Das Landen mit der TS auf Schnee macht einfach nur Spaß!

To have some flying fun in the wintertime I put on gloves (with pre-heated fingers) and flew the Twinstar since long time again. She still flies great, above all the flaps are the greatest optional component on this bird. Makes her slow-flyer capeabilities even stronger.
Belly-Landings on the snow are simply great!

Twinstar flying - just for fun

One flight without FPV:

This was a day after my Cularis crash. I just wanted to be back in the air quick - without problems. Just enjoying the landscape. Alltough it was quite windy it was fun. Especially the landing approach with full flaps against heavy winds!
And without FPV on board the Twinstar was so lightweight - I could soar a great ammount of time.

and two with FPV equipment:

(quality could be better - but it was great fun to fly there)

Twinstar - 3 videos with new FPV-Cam position!!!

3PV stands for thrid person view - instead of FPV this time :-)
I thought mounting the cam on a panservo on the vertical stabilizer would give an unique fiew of the plane while flying:


I love to see all the control surfaces working - and of course the wing-flex while flying fast.

Music: Rammstein (Sonne, Amerika, Feuer Frei)


This was the second day with the new cammount. This time I tilted the cam a bit more down.

I'm getting used to the low pass flying (but I'm cautious).
I got a way better video-signal by mounting the video TX antenna on the plane in a straight, vertical position.
On the las vid (Easter Special) I had it some 45degree - but this wasn't a good idea. I even had a blackout of about 15secs! Wasn't a nice experience not knowing where I fly (lucky that I was high enough).

Music: Cat Powers - Willi



This is some kind of bonus feature. Didn't do much editing here - this get's to time consuming otherwise.
Btw. the video is darker on vimeo than on my PC - does anyone know this issue?

Music: Franz Ferdinand

Twinstar flight with Blackstork OSD and Lumix as FPV Cam

Twinstar 2, Lumix and Blackstork OSD (720p) from Mario Schimanko on Vimeo.

(click the link above and download the original video from there to have the best quality - and a smooth video)

While this was a very shakey flight, I'm very pleased by the result!

a) It was my first Blackstork OSD experience in the air - GREAT!!!! I can't give this OSD enough credit. It's really cheap, simple to install and of great use in the air.
To see how high, fast and how far you are flying really adds a lot to FPV.

b) I cahnged from my small FPV cam to the Panasonic Lumix FX35 for live video (in my last flight a used it for additional recordingn).
It's really a great livecam also - and you see exactly what you're recording. You can check also IF you're recording - that can be helpful either :-)
So I was able to save some weight of the small cam and it's battery.

get the Blackstork here: www.Immersionsflug.de

Music: SPOON - The Underdog

Twinstar 2 - FPV Upgrade

She's not a beauty anymore :-) but using Lumix gives me the best possible recording quality. Saving the weight of the FPV cam and saveing the additional channel on my radio for the campan are the other "improvements". I now have control over rudder back. Total weight now: 1840g (with battery)



Using the Blacksrork OSD with GPS really adds great immersion to FPV. You sure saw OSD in many other FPV videos. Initially I thought this is to complicated and expensive. But the Blackstork is really quite easy to implement and not very expensive. I bought mine at www.immersionsflug.de
(good price and very good support here!)


(that's the main component - the small thing is the GPS device!)

Twinstar2 - new Cammount Idea

Hi fellow FPV friends!

On my search for a better way to mount a conventional digital still camera on my Twinstar2 RC plane I came to this solution:



This should minimize the air drag (which can definitly be an issue - I learnd this before!)
The position of the cam, facing down left, should give me great flight videos - stay tuned for the first tests!

This way works not so well (but the perspective would be great also):

Von Ablagebox

Twinstar 2 with flaps

This weekend I finally installed real flaps to my TS2. I crashlanded the second flight (with no damage) because of a stall - but after some getting used to the flaps can be a great improvement when it comes to slow gliding with a heavier plane or on the landings (with full flaps the bird gets really slow and will decend quickly - short landings).

Total weight now: 1684g (with battery, 2cams, Video TX, 2 additional batteries for cams).

Greetings,
RCSchim

Twinstar 2 - Iceflyer

Yesterday we were out on a frozen lake wich made a very good runway. Starting from the ground without landing gear was never easier as you'd guess.
Temp was -9°C and foggy - therefore video is a bit blurry. The shakes came directly from me and transfered to the controls :-)
The selfmodded jaytech has some battery issue in this cold - even tough the battery is inside the plane it just lasts about 12mins before it goes out (normally it can record over 60mins). This time I was lucky enough and the whole flight was recorded (but shortly after the landing the jaytech stopped 'cause the battery was frozen).




And here as a special for Paul - the exposureroom-Version of the above video:

Twinstar 2 - Iceflyer By Mario Schimanko
View in HD  Download 720p HD Version  Visit Mario Schimanko's ExposureRoom Videos Page

...and here some bonus footage. The laptop used for recording via usb framegrabber didn't like the cold either and the battery gave up after a few mins.

Twinstar 2 Dualperspective, FPV fun

Today I was lucky enough to fly some rounds on my "home"field.
It's actually the field you can see in the background of this last video: vimeo.com/2682293

First I wanted to test everything and it was a bit shakey. Up and down it flew :-)

Before we packed our stuff I took the chance and did put on my goggles again...

Sadly the cheap JayTech cam stopped recording midair before I reached the highest point of this awesome FPV flight - so you can only guess how great the view was.

Jaytech Cam - new cam setup for FPV recording

After some experiments even with the lumix on top I cam back to this setup:
This solution should have little aerodynamic effect and the position and faceing of the cam is quite good. Additional benefit: with the top mounted FPV cam I can see the back of the Jaytec and the LED status tells me if it still records video - or if I've even forgotten to press the record button!

Here's my history of cammounting:
New FPV Panmount
Twinstar2 - better Cameramount, slightly better Design
Panasonic Lumix on top
JayTec modding, reverse engeneering
Twinstar 2 - neue FPV Cam

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.

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