Hello all! Glad to have found this forum! From reading the various posts, I think this forum will be excellent source of technical and practical knowledge!
As for background, I have been flying CP helis for years and have had in my hangar, at one time or another, various helis ranging from the Trex 250 all the way up to the Logo Xxtreme 800. I built an F550 kit when they first came out, but parted with it soon after as it was a novelty/curiosity at that time more than anything else. Recently, as FPV and gimbles have become more common, I decided to give multirotors another go. I started with a phantom 2 (with plug and play gimble, transmitter, and iosdmini) about six months ago and was hooked! However, being a self-labelled hard-core RC person, I simply could not live with the status quo.
So, I decided I needed to build a "long range" multirotor. After a lot of calculation and experimentation, the current incarnation is as follows (pictures attached).
MR Configuration
F550
Naza M V2 + GPS
Spektrum AR9310 (for the long antenna leads)
Zenmuse H3-3D gimble + GCU
GoPro Hero 3+
iOSDmini
MFD TeleFlyPro OSD (only for antenna tracking, OSD turned off)
Immersion RC 600 MW VTX
Immersion RC Spironet VTX antenna
2S 2350 mAh video battery (runs TFP OSD, VTX, an Hero3+)
4S 11,000 mAh flight battery
Ground Configuration
Spektrum DX8
Immersion RC Diversity Receiver
Immersion RC Spironet RX antenna + RHCP "patch"
MFD Antenna Tracker (NEMA encoded on the video downlink)
generic 7 inch video display (also diversity but not used)
With the current MR setup, I'm getting about 17 mins of forward flight time (at reasonable forward flight speeds). Next steps are to change the transmitter/receiver to Dragon Link UHF, as my range is currently limited to about 1.5 miles (after that it starts to get dicey).
Anyway, I'm sure you are bored reading by now so I will stop there. Although I could go on as I'm absolutely hooked on the MRs!!!!
As for background, I have been flying CP helis for years and have had in my hangar, at one time or another, various helis ranging from the Trex 250 all the way up to the Logo Xxtreme 800. I built an F550 kit when they first came out, but parted with it soon after as it was a novelty/curiosity at that time more than anything else. Recently, as FPV and gimbles have become more common, I decided to give multirotors another go. I started with a phantom 2 (with plug and play gimble, transmitter, and iosdmini) about six months ago and was hooked! However, being a self-labelled hard-core RC person, I simply could not live with the status quo.
So, I decided I needed to build a "long range" multirotor. After a lot of calculation and experimentation, the current incarnation is as follows (pictures attached).
MR Configuration
F550
Naza M V2 + GPS
Spektrum AR9310 (for the long antenna leads)
Zenmuse H3-3D gimble + GCU
GoPro Hero 3+
iOSDmini
MFD TeleFlyPro OSD (only for antenna tracking, OSD turned off)
Immersion RC 600 MW VTX
Immersion RC Spironet VTX antenna
2S 2350 mAh video battery (runs TFP OSD, VTX, an Hero3+)
4S 11,000 mAh flight battery
Ground Configuration
Spektrum DX8
Immersion RC Diversity Receiver
Immersion RC Spironet RX antenna + RHCP "patch"
MFD Antenna Tracker (NEMA encoded on the video downlink)
generic 7 inch video display (also diversity but not used)
With the current MR setup, I'm getting about 17 mins of forward flight time (at reasonable forward flight speeds). Next steps are to change the transmitter/receiver to Dragon Link UHF, as my range is currently limited to about 1.5 miles (after that it starts to get dicey).
Anyway, I'm sure you are bored reading by now so I will stop there. Although I could go on as I'm absolutely hooked on the MRs!!!!
