My poor Tricopter has now suffered over 20 crashes and it’s time to do some maintenance on it.

I replaced the two front wooden arms which had snapped after a couple of crashes and just jammed in place to be able to keep flying. I also decided to replace the motor bells, shafts and propellers to make sure that it will fly silky smooth once again.

Since some of the magnets had come loose after some rough flights, I had to disassemble the Tricopter 2213N 800Kv AXN motors.

While I was gluing the loose magnets in place I noticed that the winding wasn’t very neat on the stator and there was pretty much room for extra copper, so I decided to rewind them... Read More...

The Mini Discus 2C RC conversion project is done, and it flies great! It’s so much fun just throwing it into the wind and trying to find lift over small stuff lying around. I managed to fly over 1 minute over a bush in the middle of a field. Continue reading on the project page.

Link to the project page

I’ve started work on this little cute glider. Originally it’s a free flight model but I’m going to RC convert it. More info on the project page.

Link to the project page

Look what I just got!

It’s a GoPro Hero HD camera. It’s capable of 1080p in 30FPS and 720 in 60FPS with an average bit-rate of 15mbit/s and with a field of view of 170 degrees. I’m planning on mounting it on the Tricopter where the wide angle will be very handy when trying to avoid trees.

More pictures and info after the “Read More” Read More...

After cooling down a bit after the disaster earlier this morning, I went out again to make a Tricopter FPV video. This time I finally caught a break and everything worked out perfect! Considering it had 14 crashes in total before this flight, I think it flies pretty darn good.
I proudly present my first Tri-FPV video; Under the bridge and into a tree

This week just keeps on getting worse. After repairing the TriCopter, I went out this morning to the local park with the intention of making a FPV Tricopter video. Since I’ve got some vibration issues from the two previous crashes, I decided to use a “normal” CCD camera instead of the CMOS HD camera. CMOS cameras are sensitive to vibrations due to their “rolling shutters” which creates what is know as the “jello effect” (here is a video showing the difference between a CCD and a CMOS sensor). An other reason was that I expected to crash, and didn’t want any more corrupted videos due to the camera losing power or the memory card popping out.
Read More...

I’m having a bad week. My first tricopter FPV flight was kind of a disaster and yesterday I was out doing the maiden flight of the FPV FunJet V2.

Having some sense I decided to maiden the FunJet without the FPV gear. I did my usual maiden preflight check. When I came to the movement of the control-surfaces my brain took a holiday. For some reason I couldn’t see if it rolled to the right or left when I moved the stick. I thought they were inverted but to make sure I was thinking right I asked the wife. She also thought that they were inverted so I reprogrammed the transmitter. I picked it up, gave it 3/4 throttle and threw it straight forward. The funJet torque rolls on launch which I’m pretty used to, so I moved the stick to the right and BANG! Into the ground she went.

My tip of the week is to not only double check that everything moves in the right direction, but to make sure you don’t forget which way that is.

I’m proud to present the FPV FunJet V2. This is a direct replacement to the FPV FunJet that I killed a little while ago.

Link to the project page

Spring has finally arrived here in Sweden and the snow is almost gone from the ground. The sun was shining and the sky was blue, so the wife and I decided to go outside and fly. I had just finished adding a FPV setup to the Tricopter and was itching to try it out for the first time. We drove out to a field near the lake Vättern and it was quite windy.


Tricopter camera mount done Read More...