Tucan in FPV action and RCGloggnitz

Tucan high over the Eichberg

Past weekend I did my second real FPV attempt. I visited different locations which I thought they'd be cool to fly at - but in the end I came back to my secondmost flown field - the eichberg. View up there is great - and even better if you ascend 300m from starting level :-)
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Vergangenes Wochenende flog ich das 2te mal richtig FPV. Ich hatte schon ein paar Ideen wo man noch fliegen könnte, aber letzten Endes bin ich dann doch wieder auf meinem Zweitplatz - dem Eichberg - gelandet (bzw. vorher gestartet). Die Aussicht da oben ist großartig und sie ist noch besser wenn man knapp 300m aufsteigt :-)

Rafaele EDF Jet / Logo Heli (3D flying)

My friends at the local airfield. Franz flies the "Rafaele" in mid winds and safetylands it in high green :-)
Markus shows his skills on his Logo 500 (I love the sound of the main blades in hard turns!).
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Meine RC Kumpel auf dem örtlichen Flugplatz. Franz fliegt mit seiner "Rafaele" in mittlerem Wind und entschließt sich dann zu einer Sicherheitslandung im hohen Gras.
Markus zeigt, wass er schon mit dem Logo 500 kann (und ich liebe den Sound den seine Hauptrotorblätter machen, wenn er einen harten Turn fliegt!)


Markus' Logo 500 with onboard vid (PiP)

I convinced a friend to let me attach my small jaytech cam on his cool 3D heli and get an unique point of view. It wasn't planned well and so the perspective isn't great but it's fun anyways.
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Ich hab einen Freund überredet die kleine Jaytech auf seinem Heli zu montieren um eine einmalige Perspektive zu erhalten. Die Cam haben wir nicht sonderlich gut platziert, aber es ist trotzdem ganz witzig anzusehen.

eSavage on a dustroad

The opportunity of haveing a dustroad in our backyard I had to let the little savage play on his nativ road-surface. Boy had he fun :-)
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Als sich die Gelegenheit einer Schotterstraße in unserem Hof ergab musste ich den kleinen Savage zum Spielen raus lassen. Und er hatte ordentlich Spaß :-)

New Videos from the Solution

Here are some more videos now again with the Blackstork OSD integrated in my new plane. Works great in combination with the lumix as FPV cam (she records in very nice quality!).

Tucan Solution FPV Maiden-Flight

2009-05-31 Solutions FPV Maiden By Mario Schimanko
View in HD  Download 720p HD Version  Visit Mario Schimanko's ExposureRoom Videos Page

This was my first full FPV flight with this plane. Sorry for not cutting out anything from this long onboard vid - skip the boring parts! The overlay shows: Speed, Direction/Distance to home, Altitude (over 99m the third number is cut away).
I used the directly recorded video as main source, than added the OSD enhanced version of the same cam (recorded on ground via downlink) to add the infos. Quite tricky but I love the outcome.
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Dies war mein erster vollständiger FPV Flug mit diesem neuen Flugzeug. Ich war zu faul hier die langweiligen Passagen herauszuschneiden - bitte einfach überspringen.
Die Einblendung zeigt: Geschwindigkeit, Richtung/Entfernung zum Abflugsort und Höhe (hier wurde die hunderter-Stelle abgeschnitten). Ich nutze das Video, welches direkt von der Lumix aufgenommen wurde als Hauptspur und hab dann die OSD-Version des selben Videos darüber gelegt (dieses Video nehme ich am Boden auf und dieses sehe ich auch in der Videobrille).
Ist ein wenig umständlich, aber das Ergebnis ist die Mühe wert.

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and here some more external shots of me testing my setup (prior to the above first FPV flight) / und hier noch ein "Aussen"-Video wo ich meine Ausrüstung vor dem ersten FPV Flug teste:

News: great HD FPV Cam with wideangle

I just found an promising new HD cam which seems to have some interesting features:

ContourHD
Features

Records in H.264 on SD Card (up to 16GB)
1280x720 30FPS
640x480 60FPS
and finally a decent cam with built in wideangle!!!

It's not yet available but you can preorder it for example on amazon:
AMAZON

Tucam Solution Maiden Flight and Flight Nr2

and here goes the maide flight

As you can see everything went well. I just flew a few rounds here. The low speed is amazing! AUW 2kg.
The pusher config is great, I haven't seen vibrations on the onboard video so far - that's a good sign.

Here is the second flight:

First test with FPV equipped bird (but normal flown).
Lumix works great here - only the 8:30 limit is a little downside. But the bird flies like a charm!
This time with 11x10 prop way better!

Cularis FPV Tests and Crash

As requested here comes the (quickly cut together, Music stops after the half - sorry) version of my first flights with the FPV gear on the Cularis.
The location is the same as on the last Video - Eichberg.

FPV equipment worked flawless on this testflight! I landed the plane after 20min because I was afraid to crash her after getting too relaxed in the air. Battery (3200mah) had 46% left after 4:45 mins of motor Time.

This was last Saturdays Testflight - see what happend the next day when I was ready for FPV with her...

Here I had one: elevator stuck upon restarting the engine to gain alt. In fact I think I had a radio glitch and after starting the motor I had no further control (I only tried to use elevator to hold her "up" - didn't try left/right...).

The Cularis crashed 3m ahead of an tarmac road - this was my luck! The road would have killed her!
But here, in the high green the impact was absorbed well - damage is little (prop is broken, forward section is bent a bit, on servo-arm is broken - easy to fix).

But the bad taste of a possible radio glitch again doesn't taste so good...

Readers

Hello RC interested friends!
Please take some time to try out the new "Readers" feature in the sidebar. It would show me who's viewing my work. Also please don't be shy and comment on the vids if you have something to say. Either on vimeo.com or directly here on the blog.

Thanks & Greetings,
RCSchim

Cularis @ Eichberg

This was the most beautiful flight with the Cularis so far. The conditions were great up on the hill and she flew well.
Flighttime over 22mins with only 5mins of motor-useage.

The landing looks a bit rude - I have to work on that. But with butterfly deployed it's really easy to land her.

Greetings,
Mario

Conrad Quadrocopter

This was my second flight with the new rarely available Quadrocopter. It's ready built and has quite decent flight abilities as you can see in the vid.
The QC has plenty of power and should be able to carry some FPV equipment (cam, TX). The flighttime is good - I have no exact measurement yet but it should be around 10mins with 2000mah 3cell lipo.

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Das war mein zweiter Flug mit dem schwer verfügbaren und schon lange angekündigten - Fertig-Quadrocopter von Conrad. Man braucht nur mehr Rotoren montieren, Quarz rein (35MHz Empfänger nicht tauschbar!) und nach einer kurzen Setup Routine geht's los.

Die Power genügt sicher auch für FPV Ausrüstung.
Über die Flugzeit kann ich noch nichts Genaues berichten - ca. 10min mit einem 2000mah 3cell Lipo würd' ich schätzen.

Greetings,
RCSchim.blogspot.com

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)