Radio Controlled Aircraft – Page 2

March 21, 2018March 24, 2018

March 21, 2018 Snow Storm

It seems like I just posted a blog on a snow storm!

The last couple of days has been preparing for another n’easter to come in to the mid-atlantic area as two low pressure systems collide near my home. With the crazy weather brings some interesting photo opportunities; especially for black and white high contrast photography which I enjoy so much.

The Doukénie’s are nice people. I got to know the owners of this winery with my previous work. I’ve since lost track of them but drive by their place all the time as it’s on a road less traveled.

This corn field is on my regular running/walking route. I give them shit because they use harsh chemical to treat their land. You can’t see any of that under the blanket of snow today.

Drone photography has really changed the way I look at the earth. The first time I saw my first photograph from the drone I knew it was going to be something that would take the world by storm.

Back then I had the DJI Phantom 1 which did not have a camera mounted to it. Instead, I mounted a then unknown camera to the bottom of the drone … my GoPro (the original).

I remember being in my living room seeing the picture for the first time and saying something like, “Oh My!” which got my entire family’s attention. They wanted to know what I was looking at. It was something like you see here.

Producing the photograph is skill. The equipment is pure science.

My “new” drone is the DJI 2. Even the DJI 2 didn’t have a camera so I bought a third party gimbal, wired it into the GPS of the DJI as well as into an OSD module.

The OSD, short for On Screen Display, superimposes all of the flight data into the video transmitter which I also procured and wired into the drone. All of this runs on 5 volts of dc power that I get from the drone itself.

Then I put my “new” GoPro 4 in the gimbal and tie that into the entire system.

When I fly the drone I have my FPV, or First Person View, goggles on my eyes and it is as if I am hanging from the bottom of the drone. It is literally like flying an airplane. I have the exact same instrumentation as an aircraft all displayed in front of me.

I control the drone with 2.4ghz DSS. The video downlink is 5ghz analog. It’s worth noting that the use of 5ghz downlink video is not something normally approved without a license. But I do possess the FCC license to do this.

This camera system that I created is not as fancy as the stuff you can buy today. Since that stuff wasn’t available when I built this I did what I could. It takes a photograph every 5 seconds as well as shooting 1080p 30fps video at the same time. So I get a little of both vs one or the other. But I do have to stay on my target for 5-20 seconds to get the photo I want. That is if I want it in high resolution and not from the video grab.

The video is not the latest 4k with all the latest technology. But for what I am doing with it I don’t need that either. For me and this system anyway, that is just a camera change. Not a drone system change. I just haven’t gotten around to swapping out the camera mainly because I don’t prefer GoPro cameras any longer as they are too expensive compared to all the other technology out there that can do just as well for 25% of the cost.

This is me behind my “camera” this afternoon

I’ve thought about buying a new drone over the past several years and, so far, I haven’t seen anything I’d prefer. There are smaller ones that fit in your pocket but don’t take better video or photos.

I think the next drone I have will be much more sophisticated in the use of aerodynamics. Like quieter props. These are not quiet machines. But they take awesome photos!

December 20, 2017December 19, 2017

Bring it, winter.

Only 1 more day until winter arrives on December 21, 2017.

I like this day for a number of reasons:

a) We can get on with winter.
b) The sun stops sinking further in the sky.
c) Every day gets longer between then and summer.

Pastel skies at sun set – a common scene in winter.

Below is what that sunset looked like over time. I do a little RC flying in the time lapse as well.

Recently I have noticed that a small family of deer (doe and two young post fawn types) have started to come to the house at night to eat the bird seed that the birds don’t eat during the day. At this point they have become a fixture around here. They don’t have the normal flee instinct when we come outside any longer. At night the sleep in the front yard where I can capture them easily on infrared cameras in complete darkness.

Deer in the front yard as seen in infrared. – We are all ready for winter to begin.

As we ease into night time here everyone is finding a place to lounge.

Sock; leaning on one of us while watching the other.

I hope you have had a restful night and a great day ahead.

December 19, 2017December 19, 2017

Flying the Recruit

Lately I’ve been flying my new “delta wing” aircraft called “Recruit” and made by Ready Made RC (RMRC). I’ve put this video together to show my shenanigans trying to get some video of what it’s like to fly one as well as video from the aircraft itself.

Flying a small RC plane is really no different than flying a big one. Unless you want to crash there is a lot of preparations and testing of systems. The different being if you do crash generally it’s only pride that is damaged and something a little glue and spare parts can fix pretty quick. But when you do crash it happens very quickly and sometimes quite dramatically.

There are some outtakes from other sessions at the end of that video so watch to the end if you want to see it all.

Enjoy!

I hope you are having a fun day.

December 15, 2017

It’s snowing.

2017 may be the year we have a white Christmas. It’s been bitter cold with highs in the 20’s lately. The sun goes down a little after 4pm so the nights are also much longer.

Today is about finishing up work so I can help Gloria get ready for her Christmas party here as well as the party we will have tomorrow night. We’ve been working in our spare time to get the house ready for all of the folks that will be here during the holidays.

I haven’t been home much but when I am I try to fly my RC planes and such when the wind dies down in the evenings. It’s absolutely freezing cold when you are out in the open with gloveless hands trying to control one of these things. I don’t have the best circulation in my fingers so I seem to get colder faster than I used to. But I fly anyway. If you look closely in the video (towards the end) you’ll see me flying a couple of my planes.

When I was up in NYC this week I bought an older typewriter. It’s a 1965 model Smith Corona with 10 point pica font. I learned to type on a machine similar to this. It’s been fun getting to learn how to use it again.

It’s totally old school and fun to do again.

Yesterday we went to the radio observatory at Green Bank. Back in the summer I went through the process to get a clearance to go “behind the scenes” to see how things are run, talk to scientists and other technical people at the facility.

There is a 10 mile radio exclusion zone where there are no cell towers or the like anywhere near the facility. It’s nice at times to no get any notifications at all from anyone. If that is what you would like definitely go here. Your cell phone will stop working as you approach from the mountains and will stop working the entire time you are there. It’s kinda nice.

Green bank observatory GBT scope (100 meters)

But they also don’t let you use digital cameras there so you can’t get close up shots of the scope unless you have a film camera. I don’t have those anymore. Luckily there are a ton of pictures available out on the Internet of the facility.

It’s largest scope is the “GBT”, or “Green Bank Telescope”. It’s ~100 meters in size and is essentially the size of a football field suspended in the air. It’s enormous. And it rotates 360º as well as tilts it’s elevation with precision only found at this location. There is not a larger scope of this type anywhere else on this planet. If you are near here it’s worth a drive to go see what’s going on there.

I haven’t taken too many photos lately so not much more to post here. I hope you all have a great week and upcoming holiday.

December 1, 2017

Winter is coming (I’m sure).

It’s cool, not so cold. But you can tell winter is on it’s way. Evenings like tonight look very much like winter with the sun so low in the sky and the wispy high cirrus clouds.

Tonight I finished up a project on my #2 tower. On my way out there I set up a time lapse sequence to capture the sunset as I worked out there before the sun set. I’ll never get used to the sun going down at 4:30 pm. By 5pm it’s dark and we are inside. I have to remind myself that in 22 days the sun will be headed back up north a few minutes each day.

I’ve mostly been posting on Instagram lately but I don’t like how it renders my photographs at all. It’s very hard to fit a 16:9 ratio image into a 1:1 hole. I have no idea why they make it so hard to put a picture on a picture platform. Ha. I also heard they are thinking about a “Re-Gramming” option. This would allow people to take someone else’s content and, like Facebook, “re-post” it on to your own timeline. If they do that, it’ll likely be the last time I use the platform. At least now people have to make the effort to take their own pictures.

Helen was home from school last week so we took the opportunity to go get the Christmas tree for the season. We’ve been going to the same place for many years. Each year the picking gets a little slimmer. This year was no different.

We did manage to find a nice tree to fit into our home but it took some time. We also created a bunch of video but the first cut of the video was quite long and the file very large so I’m not going to post it here.

I’ve been building a new flying wing lately. This is my first wing. I’ve covered mine in laminate so it will survive a few crashes and fly a little faster. This guy is set up for FPV (First Person View) and has a spot for a video camera like a GoPro to record the flights.

My plan is to mostly fly it visually until I can get comfortable flying it with my FPV goggles like I do with my drone. This guy is super fast and will do aerobatics with ease. But I’ll leave the cameras off of it until I can reliably fly it without putting it into the trees. It has three gyro modes so I can fly this with an autopilot of sorts to keep it stable. It’s amazing what you can put in such a small package.

After I finish this guy the next plane I’ll be refurbishing a gas powered biplane that I bought in the summer at an auction. It’ll be my first gas powered plane for about 20 years. The last one I famously crashed in China (no video). But back then the avionics were horrible. I’m going to gut the device and put in all new electronics inside that I’ll use to control the plane from the ground.

I hope you’ve had a good day.

November 20, 2017

Nature’s Leaf Blower.

Remember that I mentioned at some point the wind would come and blow the leaves into the neighbor(s) yard(s)? Well, that day was last Sunday morning!

I apologize for the wind noise in advance. I did this on my iPhone which makes no attempt at compensating for windy conditions.

I love that part of nature. I no longer have to have a leaf blower. We enjoy the leaves and color until the first major wind storm and then they are all gone!!

They don’t make much of a mess … but they’re still gone!

During the time I took the video above I also took a time lapse from the front yard. At the beginning of the video above Mongrel and I move in and out of the frame. Here’s what the day looked like all sped up:

The winds have died down some. That leaves us with autumn with the color gone and we seemed to be moving very hard towards full blown winter. We’ve had fires in the fireplace pretty much every hour of the day for a few weeks now. At least it’s warm inside.

Since the wind wasn’t so bad tonight I was able to get out and do some flying. We spent some time today trying to figure out if we can get a cat in a plane and fly him around. After a careful pre-flight inspection we’ve decided to work on that a while longer.

He seemed to be up for it, though.

This plane has a symmetrical wing which means that it flies upside down as easily as right side up. Definitely an acrobatic bird. I’ll be doing some repairs on this guy as well as replacing all of the electronics related to telemetry and flight control with new, updated avionics. This plane was built long ago with some very old electronics but by a person with wicked engineering skill.

You may recall, I bought this at auction a few months ago. Along with 3 more planes. This one is the largest and heaviest of them all. It’ll be the last one I get flying if things go like I planned. Hopefully by the end of winter or maybe spring I’ll be flying this guy regularly. Of the four I bought I have one of them back in the air and it’s a hoot to fly. It’s previous life was a glider that was launched in to the air with a rubber band. I’ve added a small motor, electronic speed controller, new servos and a flight control receiver. Now I hand launch it, fly it up high and then just glide around after that. Pretty cool.

But before the Extra comes off the earth I’ll pre-flight the crap out of it. I built one of these in the 90’s when I lived overseas where I crashed it on it’s first flight. I have better skill now. And a great place to practice and fly them.

Thanksgiving is in a couple of days. I hope you all are with friends and family or where ever it is that you find happiness this time of year.

Happy Thanksgiving!

October 10, 2017October 10, 2017

Tuesday Oct 10, 2017

It was a busy day of work that started very early but an otherwise quiet day.

There wasn’t much interesting to talk about or take a picture of while I was working and nothing interesting to report there. After working more when I got home it finally stopped around 6pm. Mongrel, Gloria and I went for a walk for a few minutes to enjoy the sunset and quiet evening in the country.

One of my video cameras caught us during a time lapse.

You can see in the video how calm the weather is but what you can’t see is how humid and hot it is. At sundown the temperature is still in the 80’s and the humidity is above 90%.

The trees are starting to change ever so slightly all over the county. They must be confused by the warmer weather we’ve had. I think that the lack of sunshine during the day is what triggers all that. The colors may not be as bright as they’ve been in years past with all the rain and warmer weather. But I’m just guessing on that.

I flew one of my RC planes before the sun went completely down. The wind was calm and air smooth which makes for good weather to do aerobatics. So I did a ton of aerobatics. By the time I landed I could barely see the plane if it weren’t for the strobe lights I have on it. That’s always good fun.

Maybe one day I can do this:

That is so crazy!

I hope you did something fun today.

September 27, 2017September 27, 2017

It’s fall!

Fall (autumn equinox) was Friday, September 22 (today)at 4:02 PM. Happy fall, y’all.

It doesn’t feel much like fall yet outside while it’s still 90º during the day at some point. We haven’t had rain in a while so things are drying out pretty good but that is totally normal. Frankly surprised it didn’t dry up a bit in August but August was cool and wet for us here.

I took a lunch break and saw the bees actively getting all the honey they could. I think this is a golden rod plant which I masked to black and white to show the bee a little better. The sun was wicked bright today so the light was quite harsh.

When I look at this photo on the blog it looks “fake”. But it’s really not. here is the unmasked photo:

It’s so interesting what you can do with a computer and photography these days. I often wonder how one would go about doing something like this if all we had to work with was a negative and dark room. I suspect it would be quite difficult if not impossible.

This is easy to do with Photoshop. Just create a black and white layer mask and “unmask” where you want to color to come through. A few “scribbles” with a mouse or Wacom pencil will complete the work.

I flew my drone about ¾ mile away from home to check out the pavement on 287 near our home. I didn’t make it off the property today so I have no idea of their progress. Turns out the road is still not paved.

While I was up there I took a few photos of the farm. Here’s one above the back fields after a hay harvest today. The drone was about 100 meters in the air at the time.

With no clouds in the sky it’s easy to take some high contrast black and white images. When I was looking at the images I was trying to figure out why my camera had these dots on the image. When I zoomed in it was clear that these are spiders building their night webs in the tall grass. If I posted this on Facebook all that detail would be erased. But if you click on the picture below you’ll see them.

Another fall day begins early tomorrow morning. All critters here have found their safe spot, box or both. I hope you’ve found yours too.

That is all for now.

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September 19, 2017November 24, 2018

Quiet but full day.

Today is September 19, 2017. A pretty normal day.

It was a quiet but very full day. I spent most of the day on the phone on work related projects that I needed to complete today. I don’t normally talk about work but that’s what I do during the week from the time I wake until the time I sleep. I may play in between but I think about work all the time.

Speaking of playing, I was able to fly both my drone and RC plane today. It was one of those super harsh sunny days where there is no clouds in the sky. On these days it’s super hard to take a good picture that is not all washed out. It’s hard to look up at what you are controlling from the ground and for the same to look down and take a decent photo.

Of all the photos I took during the day this the one I liked the most.

Sunny day in Virginia, September 19, 2017

I post in Facebook as well but Facebook will down sample the image and make it look like junk. If you touch the one here you’ll get a full photo that you can fill your screen with and really see what it looks like. Even this one is downsampled a bit. It’s only a JPEG image out of a GOPRO 3 camera. It’s amazing what that little camera will do. When it’s hung under a drone and lifted into the air I just think it changes everything about photography.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw a picture from the bottom of a drone. It was way, way before it was the cool thing to do. I was mesmerized. I mentioned to Gloria that this is going to be a big thing when it catches on. And it did catch on. People like Casey Neistat became quite famous flying drones and publishing videos.

One of the things I did today was work on my weather station. The Raspberry Pi computer had a disk failure and won’t boot. A year ago I bought some “cheap” microSD cards to use as disks. They have all failed so that didn’t pay off. Name brands for me from now on. I’ll pay a little extra for those things now. None of the SanDisk brands have failed even after years of use. They are not hard to fix but it takes too much time. I’ll have my weather station back working again tomorrow.

Mongrel and I didn’t go for our normal walk today. Instead we played in the grass. Well, he played in the grass while I troubleshot my weather station some during one of my breaks from work. Watch it to the end if you want to see what it looks like for a cat to run through grass like a deer … but he’s only a cat.

We won’t tell him he’s any different.

It’s quiet here. Everyone is sleeping. Tomorrow is on the horizon and should be similar to today.

I hope you’ve had a nice day today. If not, I hope you have a better day tomorrow.

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September 18, 2017September 18, 2017

Clearing my cobwebs

This weekend was about goofing off. Goofing off as much as possible. It all started like this:

… sunrise September 17, 2017

Officially I had to do some volunteer work for my radio club but that was over before 10am Saturday which left the rest of the day to do something I’ve had in my calendar for a while now: The Flying Circus.

We didn’t stay long but we made a day of getting there and back like we tend to do now and again. Typical trip down I-81 where you have to be crazy to be with crazy. But it was OK with both of us in the car together to stay distracted. Although I think my driving drives Gloria crazy. She has to listen to me postulate about statistics of queuing and crowding; the mathematical advantage of being in a small car in a big car world. 210 horse power helps but not as much as being small.

The venue for the RC event is atop a hill south of Covington, VA where people are flying all kinds of different aircraft from fixed wing to drones and even some cars and the like. But it’s mostly about flying something. It’s put on by Jeremiah at Stone Blue Airlines. Jeremiah owns the place there in Lynchburg two hours away from Covington. He’s helped me outfit some of my RC gear here that I fly. It’s cool that he’s made a living out of his passion. It’s really hard to tell when he is working and when he is playing. Which is I think the point to life.

After looking through my FPV goggles at other people flying we took back off for home in hopes of getting back at a decent hour. We lumbered along the back way home up SR220 through some really pretty West Virginia and Virginia back roads. After a dinner at the Fireside Cafe it was slabbing it back home as fast as we could once the sun went down and both of us grew tired.

Gloria had a big morning on Sunday and presentation in the afternoon so we needed to get her back and rested. She had a good, productive presentation on how to make Kombucha. She makes really good Kombucha!

Not me. I took the day (Sunday) mostly off. Besides a 5 mile run at sundown I really didn’t do much but goof off with electronics, some photography, RC flying of various types, radio. Some people have said that my goofing off looks a lot like work. I resemble those remarks.

Oh, radio. I chatted with a “DXpedition” station from the Czech Republic operating in Mauritania using call sign 5T5OK. I was parked on a 14 mhz frequency when I noticed the activity on the spectrum scope. Turns out these guys were testing their station and I was able to snag them in a “pile up” on the first call once I figured out how they were set up on the split frequency. We really didn’t chat long and they went on to making more contacts. It’s about 4,200 miles from here to there. I’m always amazed that I can just “key up” and talk to a totally different country on the planet. Makes the world seem really small. I was on and off the radios all day today which was particularly fun.

I’m working on an adjustable square wave generator circuit with a 555 timer chip. I’m not terribly good with electronics so this is half learning and half doing. I want to create a string of LEDs that use a transistor to switch between on and off at a rate that I can control with the timer chip. The circuit is gonna look something like this:

I got my bench power supply back from the shop so I can start building stuff again. Or breaking stuff, depending on how badly I mis-calculate things like voltage, current and the like. My method is less “Ohms Law” and more “Poke-n-Prod” until the blue smoke comes out. When I see blue smoke it’s generally back to the drawing board. It’s a good way to learn but leads to a lot of dead parts.

I’m sure I could buy the circuit from China for a buck but what’s the fun in that? I have this idea on making an LED string look like it’s pumping electricity like water through a tube. I want to vary the alternating lights at a rate and amplitude I can control. Yea, boring.

Mongrel and I got to walk together some today. When we weren’t moving he was chasing his tail. I can’t tell if he is goofing off like cats can do or if he’s frustrated that he can’t control it. One thing’s for sure is that he is very transparent because of that tail which exposes his current mood. The little biting flies were bugging the crap out of us both too.

We were also still a lot today. It’s interesting to watch Mongrel. He generally sits facing opposite of me. If I were to lay down he sits on top of me. Must be some weird instinct thing going on there. Seems to watch out after me when we are together. Anything out of the ordinary while he is on watch will render a “growl”. Could be a dog ½ mile away or a person riding a horse. He just lets me know it’s out there.

When all that is done and we are back in the quiet, cool of the house where his guard comes down he starts to slow down after some dinner. Quietly protesting that he doesn’t want to be inside he climbs in his box next to my desk. He starts off looking at me. Then falls asleep.

Soon he is on his back with his feet in the air. This cat can sleep like none other I’ve ever met. And will sleep like that all night long.

I hope you’ve had a day that was fun like ours. And that you are back in your safe place where ever that may be.

I’m done goofing off. Work tomorrow. Headed to my box.