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

Frozen Twinstar - last Flight 2008

Here we tried a new airfield up above our hometown. Great view, enough space - a great starting point for FPV sessions. Unfortuately it was way too cold to fly longer than just a few minutes.

Professional quadrocopter (german)

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

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:

Dihedral-Anhedral
by RCPowers_

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

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.