Gone fly'n

[RTRyder]

Well not quite yet, it's dark out at the moment, but I'm getting ready to go...

For the first time this year the road into the flying field is plowed and it looks like the weather will cooperate for at least part of the day tomorrow so I'm taking the Droidworx Hexa, Hoverfly quad, the little Silver Bullet, and a bunch of cameras and going flying.

Today the postman dropped off the box pf parts from Minsoo Kim in Korea. I'm amazed at the speed that I get orders from him, I only placed the order Tuesday and I got it today all the way from South Korea, I don't get orders from within the USA that quick!

So I spent a bit of time replacing the two dodgy motors on the Hoverfly quad and I just finished swapping the F/C in the Silver Bullet over to the new KK blue board. I especially can't wait to try out the new KK controller in Acro mode, that should be interesting. This new board has normal mode, acro mode, and something called UFO mode which I assume is probably a beginner or hover mode. The little quad was quite agile with the older board and it's ATMega 48 processor with single flight mode, if the new board with acro mode is anything like I expect it to be it should be a real hoot to fly.

Well, I've got three cameras charging and few more lipos that need to be topped up plus I've got to gather some gear together, so it's time to log off and get to it.

Pictures and hopefully good video tomorrow evening.

Ken

 

[Bartman]

you've earned it Ken, have fun.

 

[Droider]

Waiting for the rain to stop here!!

 

[RTRyder]

SIGH... well the day did NOT go as planned. This morning I decided that getting an inspection sticker (MOT for those of you in the UK) on my GMC 4 x 4 should be the first order of business as the one that it had was due to expire Monday. Once inside the inspection bay the mechanic went through the routine but when it came to the emergency brake he managed to push the pedal hard enough to snap the assembly that connects the front part of the cable to the two in the rear! Now that really set me off as I use the emergency brake a lot so I know it was fully functional, and if he thought it wasn't working correctly, leaning into the seat back and putting all his weight on it to see just how well he could get it to hold as I saw him do was uncalled for. Reject it if it doesn't appear to be working right, but don't break the D**m thing trying to see if it meets the standards!!! He did reject it after he broke the cable junction though...

So from there I headed off to the shop that does all the repair work I don't feel like doing myself, unfortunately they don't do inspections or they would have been my first stop. A couple hours and a couple hundred $ later the problem was fixed and since law mandates that an inspection station that issues a rejection has to give a free retest after repairs are made, it was back to the first garage. After going through the motions again they put a new sticker on the truck, but by then the day was shot as far as getting back to the house and loading up for a trip to the field

So here I sit looking at a workbench full of gear, multis, and charged batteries and no chance of using any of it for another week, it will be snowing by the time morning rolls around.

I did however take the Silver Bullet out in front of the house late this afternoon as I just HAD to try out the new KK blue board. WOW!!!!!!!!!!! I expected it to be better than the older version KK board, but the difference in performance is just stunning! On the old board I had the rudder channel endpoints set to 125% and the yaw was only OK, the first time I cranked the stick to the side to make a turn with the blue board it wound up doing a full 360 in the same time span it took the old board to turn 180 degrees. I had to land and turn the endpoints down to 100% and that at least made it manageable, then I started trying out the various flight modes and found they're all far faster than the old standard mode, the quad seemed to be overresponding to what had been normal control inputs with the old board.

I flew most of a battery pack to get a feel for what it can do and the verdict is that it simply kicks A** regardless of what mode you set it to. I'm going to have to spend some time practicing at the field to get a feel for the hyped up responses before I attempt anything really fancy with it though I did start batting it around a fair bit towards the end of the pack. The best analogy I can think of is that the board swap is kind of like bolting a turbo or supercharger onto your car and then going out and planting your foot firmly on the gas pedal, hang on, here we GO............. I may have to take a sick day from work and go indoor flying with the heli guys Tuesday morning just so I can get some more stick time with this beast

Ken