[Max]

45 Consecutive Days of FPV!!!
Colder but nicer. And even Mr Wind was nice today

MILESTONE REACHED: Over 1000 Kilometers Flown!!!
Jan 25, 2015:


I put the Seawolf camera on the LT last night. It is considerably larger than the K171Pro that it is replacing. I had to make a new mounting bracket for it, since it only came with a large bulky mounting bracket that is made for attaching to the side of a building, not an airplane.

The seawolf did not disappoint. It has a fantastic picture, with sharp detail, good contrast and vibrant colours. I like it!. Now when I look off one wing, I can see the detail of the wing very clearly.

With the K171, it tends to wash-out the wing as it adjusts for the landscape/sky. The seawolf also has a weird kaleidoscopic effect when the sun is shining on the prop at just the right angle. Oooh, look at the pretty colours!

Unfortunately, the seawolf wont have the same night vision capability as the K171Pro, but I still have BigRed with its K171 if I should need to do any night flying. I will have to try some dusk flying with the seawolf on the LT. The one thing about the K171 is that dusk flying looks and feels like full daylight flying. As a matter of fact, some of my flights on this streak were made after work just before sunset, and the picture quality looks like it is still daylight. That is one reason why I like using the K171. We'll have to see how the Seawolf fares this week.

I also brought BlackBeauty along for more proving flights.
On its first flight, the third of the day, my Groundstation low voltage alarm went off. Normally I charge my GS battery every other day, but given the number of flights and their duration I made between yesterday and today, as well as non-flying ground operations, the hours of use took its toll on the battery. Up till now I have never been in a situation where I crapped out my GS battery. So as an experiment, I thought I would let it run down to see what electronic component on my GS would fail first. This information would be valuable for future knowledge as well as knowing what to expect next time should I be caught unawares- IE is my GS low-battery alarm fails to function. I kept the plane within the runway circuit not knowing what to expect. Within 5 minutes of the alarm going off, I noticed my picture kept flickering. 2 minutes later it started to get increasingly staticky with the picture blipping out to static horizontal lines flashing on the screen for a second, then back to normal for about 5 seconds before the cycle would start again. I could still see but barely. One minute after that, the flickering was continual for about 30 more seconds and then faded to black.


After I landed, I checked the GS to see what device failed first; The EagleEyes Diversity was functioning fine, my DVR was still on and still recording (black screen) and even my Auxiliary monitor was still on. But my 2 VRX's were out. Aha. I realize now that the alternate flickering at the beginning was one of my VRX's probably crapping out first and the Diversity was flicking over to the still working VRX. The horizontal lines was when the second VRX was on its last legs and when it finally crapped out, that was when the picture went black.
Just to be sure I had identified the cause, I swapped the GS battery with a spare (I always carry a spare for "just in case") and the picture came back perfectly.

My countermeasures will be to charge my GS battery every night after a day of use.
I could always go with a bigger battery. Which I tried a while ago, but that just adds bulk.
I think what I will do is wire a 2 position switch to my GS with a small 1300mah "backup" battery and the main battery wired through the switch. In the first position, the switch will run the power through the main battery. When the switch is tripped, it disconnects the main battery and runs off the backup battery. Based on my estimates, the 1300 battery should provide 30 minutes of backup operation should the need ever arise. The switch would make it easy to toggle between the main battery and the backup battery. Me or my spotter should be able to flick that switch in a split second.

Today I also tallied up my flight distances for the last week. I broke 1000KM!

Flight times:
1: 31.70 minutes: LT40
2: 24.75 minutes: LT40
3: 15.33 minutes: BlackBeauty
2: 33.17 minutes: BlackBeauty

Total air time today:
1 Hour 44-5/6 MINUTES

Total Time in the Air since this streak began:
36 Hours, 11 Minutes

Total Number of Flights since this streak began:
111

Total distance traveled:(Closed circuit)
1145 km

[FD av8r]

Hey Max, have you got a listing somewhere of the equipment you use for FPV. You certainly seem to have repeatable performance from your tx/rx and video equipment. Before I order my stuff I would be curious what has worked...what hasnt and recommendations for equipment out there you would use now.

Daryll

[Max]

Originally Posted by FD av8r

Hey Max, have you got a listing somewhere of the equipment you use for FPV. You certainly seem to have repeatable performance from your tx/rx and video equipment. Before I order my stuff I would be curious what has worked...what hasnt and recommendations for equipment out there you would use now.

Daryll

Hi Darryl.

I would love to help you but the first question that YOU have to answer is:
What Frequency do you want to use?

2 years ago you didn't have much choice. Since then, there have been so many advancement to FPV gear that you have a whole range of frequency/antenna options, all that work pretty good (provided you choose the right hardware).

So you need to choose the one that you prefer.

900Mhz and 1.3G are my frequencies of choice, but just recently I started looking into 5.8 hardware for 250 quad racing.

5.8 range has been improving lately, but still the shortest range of all 4 available frequency bands.

If you see yourself flying within small fields, 5.8 will work. If you want to be buzzing haybales and flying around stands of trees, maybe 1.2 would be a better choice.

My antenna arrangement on my GS is a Biquad and a Dipole fed into an EagleEyes Diversity. For 5.8G I am using just a single CP antenna on the VTX and VRX. I woulndt mind someday going with a 5.8G CP antenna and a Directional patch into a diversity, but that will have to wait for some other time when I can afford it

There are many options for camera's, but a good first choice camera is a something that has good picture quality and low cost- BCSalt steered me to a 30$ Sony Super HAD CCD 600TVL camera that several of my friends now have and they are pretty darned good for 30$. As a mater of fact, that is what is in BlackBeauty right now. Its a bit bulky, but not as bulky as the seawolf, which is quite chunky. By comparison, the K171pro is nice and compact, but its pricey.

Let me know what frequency you want to use and I can put together a wish list of hardware for you.

[FD av8r]

I think that I will use 5.8ghz as my radio is Futaba 10c 2.4ghz. I believe my flying will be LOS around our field not beyond the eyes of my spotter. I am looking at the RMRC 5.8 tx/rx (dual diversity) with cloverleaf antennas. I also like their 10" ground station to keep costs middle of the road. I have a basic GoPro Hero to mount on a simple shock mount for flight recording, and a fpv camera similar to yours for nose mounting on my Ranger EX. Our field is flat, no trees for about 2km and no fences, or buildings either. There is an antannae farm about 2km away so I need to determine if that might impact our choice of frequency.

Daryll

[Max]

Originally Posted by FD av8r

I think that I will use 5.8ghz as my radio is Futaba 10c 2.4ghz. I believe my flying will be LOS around our field not beyond the eyes of my spotter. I am looking at the RMRC 5.8 tx/rx (dual diversity) with cloverleaf antennas. I also like their 10" ground station to keep costs middle of the road. I have a basic GoPro Hero to mount on a simple shock mount for flight recording, and a fpv camera similar to yours for nose mounting on my Ranger EX. Our field is flat, no trees for about 2km and no fences, or buildings either. There is an antannae farm about 2km away so I need to determine if that might impact our choice of frequency.

Daryll

From what I read in your post, your set up seems pretty good.

The RMRC Combo kit with Diversity RX is a great choice to start with. Cloverleaf's are good too.

I looked at the RMRC website for the 10" groundstation you mention to get an idea of what it is specifically. I'm curious to see what it contains and what its capabilities are before I make any comments. Do you have a link for that? There are so many options and choices for GS, you cant really go wrong. The only watch-out is buying unnecessary and/or unnecessarily expensive items. This is especially important for a beginner, or someone who dabbles in FPV. an expensive GS is not worth the money if you are just playing around with FPV once in a while. If you are a die-hard addict like me, banging in 100+ flights in 6 weeks, then yeah, spend the money


If you already have an FPV camera, then you are all set. Just be aware that different camera's have different capabilities. In my early days I experimented with some cheap-o cameras and the results were very unsatisfactory. In more recent times, some of the people I have helped have complained that FPV was very hard, the blamed the gear, the GS, the antenna, etc etc. WHen the camera was swapped for a better brand- BAM! they were flying FPV no problem because they could finally SEE. LOL . Its amazing what a good camera can do.

Hopefully the antenna farm you mention wont give you any problem. My past experience with 900 and 1.3G around these towers has had no impact on my gear. I cant comment on 5.8 as I am a noobie in that frequency range. Once this year's flying season gets underway and start flying 5.8 outdoors, I'm sure I will have more to say

[FD av8r]

Heres the video RX

http://www.readymaderc.com/store/ind...roducts_id=265

and video TX

http://www.readymaderc.com/store/ind...roducts_id=266

ground station

http://www.readymaderc.com/store/ind...oducts_id=1192

antannaes (need 1 more)

http://www.readymaderc.com/store/ind...roducts_id=550

my fpv camera

sony 600tvl color board camera from securitycamera 2000 (already bought)

still undecided about the motor for my Ranger EX Thinking now of a 4s or 5s setup....but havent nailed it down.

Daryll

[bcsaltchucker]

Originally Posted by FD av8r

Heres the video RX

http://www.readymaderc.com/store/ind...roducts_id=265

and video TX

http://www.readymaderc.com/store/ind...roducts_id=266

ground station

http://www.readymaderc.com/store/ind...oducts_id=1192

antannaes (need 1 more)

http://www.readymaderc.com/store/ind...roducts_id=550

my fpv camera

sony 600tvl color board camera from securitycamera 2000 (already bought)

still undecided about the motor for my Ranger EX Thinking now of a 4s or 5s setup....but havent nailed it down.

Daryll

that equipment will do the job very well, yes. However depends what you want to do. The vTx is a lot more power than you need, though. I use 200mW mostly. The new Fatshark 250mW Nextwave is the best in this range, probably a better choice than the 600mW one.

having more power in a vTx does not make much difference, contrary to what we intuitively think.

with 5.8 GHz, the KEY to good videolink is always the antennas. So you make a very good choice with the Blue beams. If you can go for the Mad Mushroom Rx antenna that is the best omni I have ever seen. And if you can fly from the side or corner of the field, then you can consider using a direction like a crosshair or parasitic disk - these make the videolink fantastic, even more solid and multi-km range too


However, I have another suggestion. I just received this new all in one ground station from Foxtech for $160USD. Really impressed with it! It has a 7" screen, a good 32ch receiver, and a built in DVR to record your link. No wires! I wasn't expecting much, but it really delivers. Flew many flights yesterday with it because I forgot my goggles cable. Then you just buy a good Boscam 200mW vTx ($15 a piece now from Foxtech, outperform any vTx if you put good antennas on it) and the bluebeam antennas (not immersion RC antennas) and you are golden. For a lot less $ and wiring. http://www.foxtechfpv.com/foxtech-m7...or-p-1169.html
http://www.foxtechfpv.com/foxtech-58...ter-p-179.html
I fly about 8 planes with this 200mW unit

I plan to use this 7" for spectators and also sometimes bring my 19" screen or 32" screen - tap into the video-out jack of this Foxtech unit. simple. So much nicer than 4 years ago when I started into FPV and everything cost 2x as much and required a lot of fussing around designing and wiring systems.

[FD av8r]

Thanks I shall have to have a look at that setup more closely. I don't mind spending the $ for a good setup, but I have to realize it might end up being something I try and don't continue with....so I dont intend to put out thousands of dollars. I will likely never go beyond 1 km, so paying for long distance equipment is not realistic.

So much to learn

Daryll

[bcsaltchucker]

The Immersion stuff will suit you well, no doubt about it. And there are certain advatnages to it, like it comes in plug and play connectivity, and compatible with Fatshark goggles' receiver (though Doms can accept a module that receives the Boscam type also). Just for best results do not scrimp on antennas. You nly need 2 or 3 really good antennas, then you can buy dozens of vTx for cheap.

for ImmersionRC-compaitble gear though, the Nextwave 250mW unit is VERY good. It has more advanced RF filtering than you get in the ImmersionRC receivers. My buddy uses this one and I am impressed, but it does not seem to outperformn my Boscam 200mW unit, because I use better antennas.
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...DEsaAlTi8P8HAQ

This is all for flying within MAAC rules, though with directional antenna you can go bvlos for a few km. but then if long range is your thing, probably should not go with 5.8GHz.

[Max]

FD, I like your hardware choices as well.

Good conversation guys. As a 5.8 newbie, I like some of the tips I got here I saved some of those links for future reference