Friday, January 30, 2015

Some EZFly Pics

 I was going to send someone some close-up pics of my beloved EZFly, the first plane I ever built from scratch that actually flew around.  And I discovered I didn't have any, or at least couldn find them... so off to the bench with camera in hand!
 Stick mounted 1500 kv motor, with 6x3 prop.  Remember, the numbers go forward even in a pusher configuration!
 The rest of the electronics... 12A ESC, OrangeRX DSM2 receiver, and two 9gram servos.
A lot of people fly 1000 mAh batteries, but I've got a lot of 500 mAh batteries for various planes, so generally use those.  2S is fine in still wind, but for me 3S gives just a bit more punch through wind.
 Hot Glue joints work well.  If I were building another, I would switch to FoamTac joints, which are a bit sturder in the long term.
 I used whatever clevis's I had.  Some people have bad experiences with this kind of pushrod connector, but it's worked fine for me.
 To get the CG forward, I had to put the servos way front, and ended up with big giant push rods.  I would try some thinner rods in a new model, although these 3mm tubes have worked well.
A tiny bit of airbrush paint makes the unit a lot more visible.  I've slightly rounded the leading edged, but motorhead's latest revision has a template for chamfered rounded edges.  I should take the time to do that.

Executive summary:  (a) this is a great plane to build, (b) big thanks to motorhead for this great design, (b) check out the RCG thread,  (c) be sure and use the latest R3 plans (on first post in link) which make it easier to balance the CG, (d) good luck and have fun, and (e) let me know if you make one!

updates:

  • For a first build, consider buying a kit from designer motorhead at Fancy Foam.
  • I knew I had a reasonable EZFly video!  Here it is flying on 2S.






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Thursday, January 22, 2015

Two Micro FVP Setups for UMX Radian

BWX_@RCGroups has the Ready Made RC Pico FPV Combo (5.8 GHz).






cjz89civic@RCGroups shares his setup here.  It's based on the Flite Test article.

  • Camera $20 This camera is as good as the one that Flite Test uses and there recommended camera is $50 alone.
  • Antenna $9 for 2 (added this I got better video quality and about 100 meters more distance snipped off connector and soldered right to the board as the stock whip was)
  • Dip Switch is a add on its $3 at Radio shack or cheaper on ebay You can simply solder ground to the channel inputs for desired channel to save 1.2 grams.


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Monday, January 19, 2015

Cartoon SR-71

AJWoods@RCGroups has uploaded a video of a really nifty Cartoon Mini SR-71, and said he'll upload plans before too long.  I think I'll build one!  He reports:
"I have elevons, but the plane could be easily flown as just elevator/diff thrust. Very smooth flyer, a bit less nimble than the F-35, but more forgiving all around (maybe a bit slower too). I designed the fuse profile so that when on the ground the plane makes contact on 3 points with the nose high. This makes for awesome ground handling with no wheels, and allows for ROG takeoffs and touch and go's."
He's got a link to his Cartoon F-35 which also looks pretty sweet!









Here's a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78wNv2tGpkw.


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Monday, January 5, 2015

A few video production notes

Here's some notes on making a custom thumbnail for videos.

To extract a single image:

ffmpeg -ss 01:42 -i foamy-cf.mov -vframes 1 foamy-cf-tmp.png

-ss timecode
-i input
-vframes 1   # single frame

Using ImageMagick:

convert -font Helvetica-Bold -pointsize 200 -fill white 
    -draw 'text 50,800 "First Line"'
    -draw 'text 50,1000 "Second Line"' foamy-cf-tmp.png foamy-cf-thumb.png

-font, -pointsize, -fill  specify appearance
-draw 'text x,y "foo"' draws text "foo" at position x,y


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