Today was a day of great fail.  First, my FPV plane on its maiden flight got stuck in a tree.  A friend of mine was piloting it and got a bit too close.  On a positive note, the flight up until the crash was awesome.  I am amazed at how fast the skysurfer plane isContinue Reading

Now I’m getting a bit more comfortable in my flights.  I have a good flight done from around my house as well a new PIP with the FPV OSD overlay.  

I’ve been flying quite a bit lately and experimenting with different video configurations.   I’ve made a few tweaks to the Naza config and the improvement is notice.  Take a look!  

The TBS Discovery had two cameras on board.  One of which is one that is used for FPV and streams analog video for FPV purposes.  The second one is a gopro which captures 1080p video of the flight.  The high resolution causes vibration to be very noticable.  I’ve already balanced the props/frame, so the nextContinue Reading

Continuing with my normal tradition, its time to dust off the quadcopters and get to flying.  So to get things kicked off I decided to convert my DJI F450 into a TBS Discovery.  I’ve added some leg extensions to the bottom to make landings and takeoffs easier. I’ve also added some additional lighting for flyingContinue Reading

The battery life of quads is a bit dismal in its current state. I can typically fly for 7-12 minutes per battery, but that goes by very quickly. It also means I can cover much ground with it flying as a UAV. I’ve decided to branch out and get a glider. This will allow meContinue Reading

If you’ve seen some of the near dark videos of my f450 flying, you can see how hard it is to see with a dark backdrop. I’ve started to design a lighting prototype around a TLC5940 chip and an arduino micro. I’d like to be able to do animations based on one or more inputs.Continue Reading

I thought a gyro-stabilized gimbal would improve the video footage from my quad. I decided to go with X468 carbon fiber gimbal. The servos are driven by the naza controller. It works nicely as you can see below.

So I crashed again . I was at a local park and it got out of control. Rather than injure someone or something, I dropped the throttle and grounded it. Looks like I’m going to need some more arms …

After the last video I posted of the ardupilot loitering, I decided that I was trying to tune it blind. I’ve never had any other quad, and the frame on that one I had built from scratch. In order to truly know what needs to be done to improve the frame, I need to flyContinue Reading