bitPimps.lixlink.com

So I've been workin hard and getting a few different planes together...

My first plane, Kyosho Illusion EDF45:
didn't get a chance to fly it really, the battery was a POS, tripped the BEC to glitch, so the plane flipped over and piled into the ground at 25mph first flight... minor fiberglass work to fix it but "I heard" they can exceed 85mph flying parallel with the ground.

My second plane, GWS slowstick, given to me by a friend. With the setup here, top speed was 38.3mph. Several MAJOR overhauls and changes happened over time and as a $30 kit it was cheap to make those changes.

Added ribs, spar, hacked the wingtips off, hooked up flaperons, and skinned the bottoms of the wings with foam to increase top speed to 57.8mph:

Had some issues with one aileron servo locking in the up position, almost slammed into a tree so I decided to switch to single servo with a pushrod and bellcrank instead of flimsy tortion rods.

Started working on wing extensions to double the wingspan from 3'2" to 6'4":

Made some changes with moving servos around to balance weight a little better, but then switched to internal carbon pushrods:

This last new years, my friend and I went flying and had a rediculously graphic aerial collision, the damage here doesn't look as bad because i glued a lot of the wing back together, but both planes hit, spiraled toward the ground with wings ripped off... He picked his plane up, put the wing back on and flew some more, I retreated cause my wing was split in half, with one extension torn to shreds.

And my newest plane is a Multiplex Twinstar II. I built this one to be a fast and efficient flyer, and first flight proved it's worth at 1:25 airtime with an average speed of about 32mph, top speed of 51.4mph. Also it's hard to see this on the slowstick but i threw a micro camera with gimbal on the bottom, as well as a fiberglass housing for a sony cybershot with zoom, power, and shutter controls. Also got a 500mw video TX to fly FPV. So with 2 people you can line up perfect aerial photos via laptop screen from a few hundred feet away.

Started laying colored tape over it, will be olive army green with yellow motor cowels, yellow tail, and single yellow stripes on the wingtips.

A few pictures from the beach area.






And my friend and I flying last week with my twinstar, and him with his slowstick and simplestick.








I like this one especially, with the green color it'd look like a real military aircraft.


Cruising 6" off the ground.

Those look fun man!

I really like how the Stick is coming, looks better than last time I saw it.

What's the white and yellow one supposed to be?

frizzen wrote:Those look fun man!

I really like how the Stick is coming, looks better than last time I saw it.

What's the white and yellow one supposed to be?

And my newest plane is a Multiplex Twinstar II

I've never really been a plane guy, but that looks cool, and most importantly, you seem to be having a lot of fun.

I would say it was pretty cool, but damn it, you're wearing shorts! It's -300 degrees in this part of the counrty and there you are near a beach wearing shorts...it's just mean.

Anyway, that looks like a pretty cool collection of stuff. The micro camera didn't supprise me much, but the Cybershot? How much of a payload can those things carry? Great shots btw.

Oh, you mean there was text hidden in the pretty pictures?
Um, let's pretend I ment "Is that airframe supposed to be styled after anything in particular, or is it generic?"

You're too high over the beach, can't see the bikini babes.

I'm curious, what are all the red roofed buildings? Some kind of resort? Looks awfully fancy.

crazydave wrote:I'm curious, what are all the red roofed buildings? Some kind of resort? Looks awfully fancy.

Hotel Del Coronado, pretty fancy... One night there is like a month's house payment!

frizzen wrote: Oh, you mean there was text hidden in the pretty pictures?
Um, let's pretend I ment "Is that airframe supposed to be styled after anything in particular, or is it generic?"

You're too high over the beach, can't see the bikini babes.

It's pretty generic, more of a utility plane than anything else. It'll pull 2lbs straight up at a decently fast pace, and with a 50ish mph top speed, it's a pretty nice plane to have. I might even fly a banner behind it some time.

You're right about the babes... hopefully when i get good at video piloting, i can do slow and low HD video flybys of the girlies at the beach

So I got pretty busy, and built a snap in FPV and camera platform for the twinstar II.


Here's the progress of souping up my controller..

This set includes adding a 100mW 2.4Ghz conversion, a 500mW signal booster, and a Rhino 2620mAh transmitter pack to handle the larger power/voltage requirements for the new equipment.


This set is my home made biquad antenna and shortened (cleaned up) cables and connectors


Overall range increased from:

1-2mi (500mW 72Mhz)
2-3mi (100mW 2.4Ghz)
6-7mi (500mW 2.Ghz + booster)
10+mi (500mW 2.4Ghz + booster + 10-12dbi antenna)

Dude, that's cool. I don't quite understand it, but it's cool.

After a while, I had to send the cybershot in for repairs, got it back, and the controls for the camera mount weren't working. I think the switches and buttons were a little more stiff to press and move. I redid the control rods on the camera mount, and they work brilliantly now. Also I made a new half wave omni antenna for the video TX and made an adapter to connect the A/V inputs to the cybershot.

What all that means is now i can actually see what the camera is seeing, zoom and all the on screen display goodies from the cybershot. Also with the new antenna setup, the video clarity is extremely good! Basically it's allowing my friend and I to take amazing areal photos with the plane.

My usable picture ratio is sitting somewhere around 1:60. Which is one good picture for every 60 pictures taken. I'm hoping this new layout will allow me to up that ratio to 1:2.. And also allow us to snap pictures from farther away with actually being able to see what we are taking pictures of.

I was kinda getting bored of just putting around "gracefully" and not being able to do anything cool with the twinstar...

I felt the need, the need for speed... So I replaced these little red 70W motors (for efficiency) with the black 150W motors





I hit 65.8mph with it (old top speed was 51.4).. the wings were barely fluttering, but not bad enough, so i just bought and am waiting for these 220W motors, which i'll be running 12" props instead of the 9"!





Also I just ordered a 500W motor for my slowstick because my old 200W motor got bent up from a crash

My aim with the slowstick is to be even more ridiculous than it already is I mean not many people still fly the little GWS planes like that so it's funny to see one zipping around in some impossible looking way, with the wings folding up to about 60deg every time it changes directions and you know if it smashes into the ground , the slowstick kit is $22 and new motor is about $20.......

Those are some nice planes you got there! I'm a heli guy, but can appreciate the time and effort that goes into building a plane.