If you want to see me slapping Josh Bixler from Flitetest check out this video:

It was awesome!

I finally have a new logo! After a very long time I finally got around to fixing a proper logo. I threw the old one together more or less just to have a logo of some kind, but I’ve never been very happy with it. But I’m now proud to present the new RCExplorer.se logo!

A big thanks to Mikkis who helped me transform my ideas into ink.

So how do guys think? Do you like it or do you prefer the old one?

That’s right! I’m crossing the great pond and vill be entering the United States of America in just 11 days time.

It’s my great friend Chad Kapper, the creator of Flitetest who is both sponsoring the tickets and letting me stay at his place for 6 weeks! What a great guy. I really look forward to coming to Ohio and whilst I’m there I plan on challenging mr Josh Bixler to a RC duel to the death! (Ok maybe not death, but something close to it) I think we’re going to have a great time and make some entertaining videos for you guys to enjoy.

Also we, that is to say the Flitetest crew and I, will be attending the Weak Signals Toledo show in Ohio on April 1st, 2nd and 3rd. If you got the opportunity, do swing by and say hi. I always love to talk to new people.

A year ago I went over to a very good friend of mine, Andreas Schelin, with my Twin Star II under my arm. I placed the TS2 on the floor of his “workshop” and Andreas started placing tripods around the room. A couple of minutes later there were wires hooked up all over the place. Andreas stared at a computer screen before turning to me and giving me the thumbs up. I grabbed the tail of the TS2 and gave it wide open throttle.

You see Andreas is a musician and he wanted to make a RC song. That night we sampled RC sounds together and only a week later the song was complete. I used it in my “FPV in the Fireworks on New Years Eve” video;


I’m now happy to tell you that I have Andreas permission to share the song with you to use in whatever way you like.

You can download the song by clicking the link below
Twin Stars (RCExplorer Anthem) - By Andreas Schelin.MP3

And as an added bonus he also made a short ring/sms -tone:
RCExplorer ringtone.MP3

And for those with Iphones:
RCExplorer ringtone.M4R

A big thanks to Andreas Schelin
Visit his site at http://goto.glocalnet.net/schelinstudios/

Yeah! My hand is finally healed! (for those who forgot read this) The great news is that I don’t have to have surgery. The finger healed in the right direction and I can now use it again. Sorry for the lack of updates but I do promise a treat for you very soon.

Remember my disqualification from FPV-community’s competition? I have some great news, Feiyu Tech thinks I deserve a FY-21AP and AP117 OSD and so they sent me a package to review.
It arrived yesterday and here are the first pictures:

Nicely packaged in plastic cases.


The FY21AP comes with a GPS, vibration dampening mount, vibration dampening tape, velcro, a jumper, and all the cables needed.


The AP117 OSD comes with a 100A current sensor, Deans Ultra connectors, and all the cables needed.

I can’t wait to try it out. A big thanks Feiyu Tech and Ben Warren for taking action and making this happen.

Winter can cruel here in Sweden.


Now I got to wear a cast for at least 4 weeks and then a plastic-support-thingie for another 2 weeks. Which means no flying for a long while :(

It’s time for me to switch jobs. I currently work in the electronics manufacturing business (who would have guessed?). Problem is that I’m one of the last one in and thus will be one of the first ones out, if the company starts laying off people, which it seems like they will around Christmas.

So I thought I might ask you guys; Anyone know of a good place to work that is currently hiring? Preferably in Sweden.

Or what kind of job do you think I should be searching for?

I need all the help I can get.

Every month FPV-Community has a FPV video competition. I’ve participated in nearly every one, but have always come second to Trappy. This month however, Trappy didn’t participate and I won for the first time! First price was a $50 coupon HobbyWireless so I ordered a new GoPro camera.


This is the video I entered in the competition:

Yay I’m mentioned on a Flitetests review on the F-18. I tipped them off on using a brushed ESC to control the brightness of LED’s and they took the idea and took it a step further:

Keep up the good work guys!

A good friend of mine, Chad Kapper from the US, (who incidentally owns his own production company) has just started a RC youtube show. Since he knows a thing or two about filmmaking, the show is very professionally made, has great flow and is technically appealing. Chad is also a FPV flier and in this episode he uses his TwinStar to get some air to air footage of the Parkzone F4F Wildcat that’s being reviewed. Visit his site www.Flitetest.com


If you like the show be sure to subscribe! The more people that like the show the bigger and better the show will be.

Great job Chad! Keep up the good work!

The Swedish RC magazine “Radiostyrt” has just published an article about the 24-hour competition I entered during my stay at Domaine du Planet. The article is written by my friend Daniel Larson (http://www.pbase.com/larson_daniel) who was on the same team as my self. The article is four pages long with lots of pictures. Ahhh I hope I can reenter the competition next year. I had such a good time.

For those of you that cant read swedish or can’t get a hold of the magazine, Daniel shoot a bunch of great pictures during the competition: http://www.pbase.com/larson_daniel/24hours

I would like to devote this post to all of you that have helped me financing this page and my projects. Without you guys this page wouldn’t be where it is today, and for that I thank you. I would like to give a special thanks to Corey from the USA for all his generous donations. I also want to thank Lucas from Switzerland, Charles from the USA, and Micke from Sweden. Micke donated a Hitec Optima 6 receiver which will be placed in the Tricopter.

No matter if you simply visit this page, write a comment or donate money, I’m grateful for your support.

Hi guys! Sorry for disappearing on you. I’ve been moving to a new apartment (Yay!) and I lost my internet connection a bit earlier than I expected. But now I got it back and the move is nearly finished. The new apartment is 3 room 72.5m2 compared to our old 2 room measuring 57m2. This means that I get a RC-room!

It’s quite a mess at the time but I think it will be awesome once it’s done.

The weather here in Sweden has been terrible the past two weeks and I’ve only flown once since the last update. Oh when I say fly, I mean crash.

The horizontal stab came loose during launch... Now I need a new wing, fin and stab. I will definitely take the time to fix her up or get a new once because F3K is awesome.

Next update will be soon

I just finished writing a review on my stay at the French RC-hotel, Domaine du Planet. I hope you all will enjoy the review and that inspires someone to visit this RC paradise.
Take me to the review

When I arrived home from Italy 7 new packages had arrived. I didn’t quite expect that many packages to arrive during my absence, but I’m not complaining.

The packages contained:
1 Twinstar II model
2 Flymentor 3D
1 FY20A Flight stabilization system from FPV-flying.com
2 Simple OSD XL
1 GPS
9 Counter rotating 12*3.8” Slow fly APC props
9 12*3.8” Slow fly APC props
6 Hobby King 401B AVCS Digital Head Lock Gyro
2 300mW 1.3GHz video transmitters
1 DVD ”Hand Lauch pro clinic” from Radio Carbon Art
1 Fatshark video goggles
1 Aiptek Z500+ HD camera

Now all I need to do is to find time to play with all my new toys

Wow what a trip! My feet have never been so tired as they were after two whole days of walking in Venice. But it was worth it. Venice is a beautiful town. The best thing that happened in Venice was that I got to take a helicopter flight above the town in the front seat of a Robinson R44.




After Venice we went to an island called Ustica. It’s a pretty small volcano island outside of Sicily. The snorkeling there was awesome. It was like swimming in an aquarium. I brought the GoPro camera with it’s waterproof case and made a short video for you guys:


Wonder were we’ll travel next time, any ideas?

Tomorrow morning I’m leaving for Italy. This time though it’s nothing more than a vacation. No RC for one and a half week. First we will be visiting Venice for a couple of days and then were of to an island called Ustica, where we’ll be snorkeling and relaxing for the rest of the trip.

This means that the blog won’t be updated for about two whole weeks guys. Sorry. I hope you’ll manage without me. While I’m gone, fly a flight for me!

My friend Christian reasonably bought a new transmitter as well. He also was deciding between the Aurora 9 and the Futaba 8FG, but unlike me, he chosed the 8FG. This gave me and opportunity to really feel the differences “in real life”

From the left: Futaba 8FG, Hitec Aurora 9, Futaba 7C Read More...

I finally took the plunge and replaced my old Futaba 7C transmitter with a brand new, fancy one. After much contemplation on which one to choose, I settled on this one:

The Hitec Aurora 9. And I must say that I’m very satisfied with my choice. I love the touch screen and the powerful yet simple to use interface. Read More...

The good guys at All things that fly talk about my Welcome to Domaine du Planet video at 13 minutes in to episode #146. You can download and listen to the episode here; ATTF #146.mp3

A big thanks to Diggs and Jamie for doing the shows. I always look forward to tuesdays, because that’s ATTF day.

After spending a total of 60 hours in a car, driving 4426 km and consuming 266,7 liters of fuel, I’m finally home after my trip to France. It’s good to be home but I will definitely miss staying at Domaine du Planet. I had such a great time. Now I need to unpack and start editing the 200+ minutes of FPV video I captured. I will also be writing a review of my stay at Domaine du Planet and also write a report on the 24 hour competition we participated in. So stay tuned!

I’m having a great time here in France at Domaine du Planet. The weather wasn’t great to start with, but it has improved in the last few days. I had some technical troubles as well. The brand new GoPro camera gave up and stopped working all together before I even could get one single flight with it down here. But we ordered a new one with speed delivery from a French distributor and finally I could get some good video. The FPV course got cancelled as there were too few participants, so I got reassigned to make FPV videos of the site and activities here instead. So far I’ve got a dozen FPV flights done. I’ve crashed my TwinStar by the way. It’s in a thousand pieces and I won’t bother to try and repair it here. I’ve practiced a bit for the 24 hour endurance flight competition and we’ve prepared the plane (a PolyClub) for the night time flying.

At the moment the greatest challenge has been to combine my FPV assignment with me teaching the wife to fly. We’ll see if she will be able to participate as a pilot on Saturday or not. I really hope she will, as she looks badass with a transmitter.

A lot more has happened of course, but you’ll hear about it another day. Time for bed. Bonne nuit from France!

This past weekend I went to a big scale glider meeting on Ålleberg mountain in Falköping. IGG stands for “Intresse Gemainschaft für Grossegler” which is german for “common interest in big scale gliders”

I’ve never seen such large model airplanes in real life before. They are huge! The largest one I saw was a scale 1:2 glider which had a wingspan of 8 meters! A 200CC tow plane was needed to get that beast into the air. All the time I was there were at least 3 planes was in the air. Two tow planes constantly towed new planes up.

Only a handful of the gliders were equipped with motors

The finish on these glass fibre monsters was impeccable. It was a pure joy to admire these models on the ground as well as in the air. What an effort it must have been to build these incredible gliders.

I had a great time and met a bunch of nice people. To simply spectate and chill out for once made a nice change. Thanks to all of you from Ålleberg that took the time to talk to me.

I’m going to France to host an FPV course on the RC hotel Domaine du Planet. It will be a five-day course, starting on Monday, teaching all there is to know (or all I know) about FPV. Equipment, models, technical aspects, limitations, safety, etc... Saturday-Sunday after the course has finished there is an RC-endurance contest at the RC hotel. Teams of two (or three, if at least one is a woman) try to keep a plane up for as much of 24 hours as possible. I will probably enter it with my friend Daniel, who lives down there, and we are trying to persuade my wife to join our team (although she will have to learn how to fly first). If you know French, you can read more about it here.

Domaine du Planet. The hotel has everything for the RC-fantast, even a private runway and a small lake!

So on Thursday morning me and the wife are leaving for France. We’re going to drive there, as I want to bring some of my planes and equipment. Not sure what airport security would think if I tried to check all of it in... It’s to bulky and fragile anyway. We thought about going by train, but that would have been more expensive than driving, and it would have taken a lot longer, with a number of train changes. Therefore, the wife and I decided to take our car. Over 20 hours drive each way...

If any of you feel like a vacation for the family and an FPV course for yourself in France in eight days, it’s not to late to sign up. Just contact Domaine du planet! Otherwise, you will at least know why there won’t be that many updates for the next two weeks, I’m quite busy! But, I promise, you’ll get a full account of the trip as soon as I get back home.

Ok, I’ll make a couple of updates before I leave. I can’t leave you hanging with the sneak peak, and I’d like to tell you what I did this weekend too. Coming soon!

This past weekend I visited Norrköping’s flying club “Gamen” to show and explain how FPV works.

Showing off Flytrons super tiny camera and video transmitter mounted on a very small helicopter

The club members were very nice people and easy to talk to. I explained and showed what gear is needed to fly FPV, how to fly FPV and the safety aspects, all mixed in with a couple of my FPV videos. They seemed to enjoy the event and I got a lot of good feedback on my performance.

I had a great time in Norrköping. My friend Per let me pilot his competition DLG (Discus Launch Glider). I desperately need to get myself one! It’s unreal how long you can stay up in the air on one throw.

A2 Competition DLG


Per launching his DLG

Here are two pictures of the latest thing I’ve been working on.



Anyone know what it could be?

I’m sorry for not posting in a while. I’m extremely busy at the moment with and haven’t had time to answer e-mails nor update the page. I hope that the pressure will lift soon so that I can get back to posting regularly.
On a different note, I now got 500 youtube subscribers! When I get a 1000 I’ll send in a request to become a youtube partner. A big thanks to all of you that have subscribed and support this page. Without you RC wouldn’t be as great as it is.

The good guys at All things that fly talk about my Under the bridge and into a tree 2 video at 39 minutes in to episode #140. You can download and listen to the episode here; ATTF #140.mp3

A big thanks to Diggs and Jamie for doing the shows. I always look forward to tuesdays, because that’s ATTF day.

I’ve just finished my review of the Flytron DT-3K headtracker.

I’ve tested it extensively and this is the best headtracker I’ve tried so far. Flawless precision, great resolution and very smooth head-tracking without the slightest jerking, stopping or jumps. It’s easy to mount, lightweight and built to last for a hundred years. The PPM-Inject function makes this headtracker work with simple transmitters, as well as advanced ones, so there is no need to buy an expensive transmitter just to be able to use head-tracking any more...
Continue reading on the review page

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 just got a package full of review items from Flytron.com!

The package contained:
DT-3K Headtracker
SimpleOSD XL
10Hz GPS
11dBi 2.4GHz circular polarized patch antenna
Micro 50mW 2.4Ghz video transmitter
Micro CMOS Camera
USB to PPM converter

Now I got a lot of stuff to review! I will begin with the DT-3K Headtracker. Keep your eyes open for the review.

For more pictures click the “Read More” Read More...

Thanks to all of you that have taken time to write to me via the contact page. I’ve tried to reply to them as soon as I have could. I also have received a bunch of encouraging e-mails.I appreciate that a lot.
I apparently have a lot of fans. I received a couple of e-mails asking if it is possible to donate funds to support this homepage. Wow, I never thought people wanted to give away money to help me feed my RC-addiction. I must be doing something right! This is why I added a donate page to the sidebar.

I’ve made a couple of changes on the page.
I get a lot of messages through different forums due to the lack of an easy to find contact page, so I added one to the sidebar. I also remade the whole FPV Videos page. Now you get all the videos in chronological order with information about the setup I used when I made the video. Check it out here and tell me what you think.

I just finished up the tricopter setup guide! It took a much longer time to write than I had expected, but I think I got all the necessary information on how to set up your own tricopter in there.

Sorry for the delay. I hope you guys like the guide.

Read the guide

Oops I did it again. I killed another airplane. This time it was my FPV FunJet that didn’t make it.

There were no wind, and the sun was shining. I just had to get outside and fly some FPV. I had equipped the FunJet with the Aiptek Z500 and this was supposed to be the first flight with it. I gave full throttle and chucked the FunJet into the sky. I love the way the FunJet fly, especially when it’s dead calm. After a while in the air, I noticed a tree line 300 metes long and only 3 or 4 trees thick. I couldn’t resist. I started to fly through the gaps in the trees. It was so much fun. On the way back I flew so low that the prop hit the loose snow. I went back for 3 or 4 turns before I did something stupid. I saw a bigger gap in the trees where a road crossed the tree line. I decided fly at full throttle through the gap and then follow the tree line all the way around. But when I got to the gap and started to turn I lost video signal for one second. And it was all it took. When I got the picture back I saw a big branch in the middle of the picture and then it went black again. I heard a loud sound like a whip crack and knew that this was the end of the FunJet.

I started walking the kilometer in deep snow. The pieces were scattered everywhere. I didn’t even manage to find some of them. The ESC lay totally disconnected 10 meters away and the motor lay nearly 50 meters from the tree! This crash had some force to it. Luckily all the electronics works fine, even the camera. It’s just the airframe that’s needs replacing. I ordered a new one and I hope the next FPV FunJet will take up the mantel and do an even better job than it’s admirable predecessor.

Unfortunately the camera was disconnected in the crash which resulted in a corrupt video. I’ve been trying like mad to get it to work but without success. Anyone happen to be an expert in video recovery by any chance?

Yesterday I was invited to a local club to talk about FPV. It was Falköpings model flight club, Blue Max, that had requested me to show my FPV gear, my videos and talk a bit about FPV in general.

It was nice to meet people sharing my interests and they really seemed eager to hear what I had to say. I gave a presentation for about one and a half hour and then we mingled another hour away. They showed me a bunch of slope-soaring models and I kind of want to try that now... In Falköping, there is a great place for slope-soaring called Ålleberg and they showed me videos from there. When winter finally lets go I just might make a visit there.

For those of you that understand Swedish, they wrote about the visit on their homepage.

I was sitting at work, doing a monotone task and listening to the newest episode of All things that fly, when I suddenly heard my homepage being mentioned on the show. They had found my Tricopter build and thought it was awesome. They spent 5 minutes talking about the build and tricopters in general.

You can download and listen to the episode here; ATTF #133.mp3
They start talking about the Tricopter about 36 minutes in to the show.

I always listen to ATTF first then InsideHeli and to my great surprice this weeks episode was named “Lipo Fire and TriCopters”
32 minutes in to the episode they start to talk about my build!
Chris thinks it looks like a scorpion and now wants to build one himself. They spent over 12 minutes talking about the build and tricopters in general.

You can download and listen to the episode here; InsideHeli #84.mp3

A big thanks to Diggs, Jamie, Chris and James for doing the shows. I always look forward to tuesdays, because that’s ATTF day.

I just received 3 AXN 800kV motors, 3 SuperSimple 18-20A ESC’s, 3 Turnigy 302 gyros and 1 HK 401B gyro. All these items will be used in a project I hope to start on soon. Anyone care to take a guess on what it might be?

Want to know precisely how good your RC link during a FPV flight? This is even a better way than displaying RSSI, it’s a “lost package indicator” for any OSD that has an RSSI input. You only need a capacitor, a resistor and some soldering skill to make it happen! In this guide I will show and describe exactly how it’s done and how it works. After this guide I hope no one ever finding them selfs flying unknowingly beyond their RC link’s range.

Click here to read the guide

Pehw, I just finished up a guide to making a crash-proof, light weight, small,aerodynamic and efficient antenna for video transmitters.

It’s called a quarter-wave lambda antenna and I’ve been using it ever since my first FPV FunJet flight.
I also written a guide explaining how to tune a DIY antenna to get the absolute best performance.
Click here to read the guide

Today I got my 200th Youtube subscriber!
Wohoo! Congratulations David! Yay!
And to think that it was only three months ago that I got my 100th subscriber. Thank you, all of you that have subscribed and to all of you that visit this site regularly and post comments. It’s guys like you that made me create this homepage and invest my time. Without you this hobby wouldn’t be any where near as fun as it is. So thank you once again!

Another thing to celebrate is that the Winter Solstice is today. Which means that from today the days will only get lighter and longer again here in Sweden. But to be honest it doesn’t really matter when it’s -18°C (0°F), which is was earlier today, even if it was light enough when I get home I probably would have stayed inside. Lucky I got a lot to build!

Good guesses everyone! The content of the mystery package was a complete FPV setup. I will be building this FPV setup for a friend from www.fullkontroll.se. In return I get a Starmax A-10 twin ducted fan ARF airplane. I hope to be able to finish this build in the two weeks of vacation we have from work now around Christmas. A list of what was in the package can be found after the “Read More”




Read More...

Sorry about the lack of updates lately. I’ve been working overtime nearly every day at work for last one and a half week. But today I have a little teaser...

This enormous package just arrived. It’s 1.3 meters high and weighs quite a lot. Anyone care to take a guess what it could be?
The answer will be reveled very soon...

In episode #118 of ATTF Diggs and Jamie talks about my latest FPV video.
Jamie calls it — "The coolest FPV video I've ever seen before", he particularly liked the part in the ending when I fly by the tractor.

It's funny to hear them trying to pronounce "Dadde".

They start to talk about it at 19:50 into the show.

You can download the episode here: ATTF #118.MP3

A big thank you to all the guys at ATTF!



I was also mentioned on the show a while back

My comrades... The days are getting shorter and shorter in this dark country. We now got less than 9 hours of daylight a day. Another bittersweet piece of news is that I started working here in Hjo. It's nice to get the money but I am now away the all the 9 hours when it's light outside. This means that I can't fly during the weekdays any more... And I won't be able to update the blog as much.

I will still continue to build when I have the time and fly during the weekends, and this blog will be updated, just not as often as before.

On a sidenote, for those who are interested in the progress of the Simple OSD. I can report that I've now tested it extensively and shall soon start with the review. Stay tuned

The FunJet lives to see another day! I crashed it a fortnight ago, but all it took was some boiling water and glue, now it's even hard to see that it has been crashed! Multiplex models are the best ones to crash.

After the crash both me and the wife thought that the FunJet was finished. But now it flies just like it always has; awesome.

I got the chance to try out the SimpleOSD Ultralight Edition from Flytron after the remained.

I'm glad to say that it works just fine. I hope to test it out some more soon.

Me and the wife was out taking some more photos of the FunJet in the air. The Funjet flies excellent in the wind and everything seemed to go well until...
Read More...

My time lately have been devoted to writing the review of the Multiplex FunJet. I enjoyed writing this review. It's really an awesome airplane, both for normal and FPV flying. I hope you all find it well written and informative.

Multiplex FunJet Review

After a weeks wait the package from Hongkong finally arrived.

I ordered an Imax B6 charger so that I can charge more batteries at one. It feels like a high quality charger. The display is easy to read and it looks to have a lot of features. I also threw in the standard stuff like servos and connectors, like you always tend to do when ordering from Hongkong.

Look what I got in the mail today.

It's a 250 page book about Aerodynamics for model airplanes. It looks to be very well written. The language seems a bit technical but I hope it won't be to hard to read.

A while back I got the two RCadvisor's books in the mail.

I enjoyed reading them both. Carlos's writing style is quite excellent which made them easy to read.

To keep the book reviews separated from the other reviews I decided to make a sub category in the review section called RC Book reviews. There you can find the reviews of RCadvisor's "Model Airplane Design made Easy" and "ModiFly". At the end of each review, you can find links to the other book reviews (ok, only one other so far), so as to make it easier to find them.

Here is a link to the new RC Book review section

Yesterday I went to a hobby trade fair in Stockholm here in Sweden. It was a 4 and half hours drive from where I live, and I had never been to the "Hobbymässan" but from what I could gather from the information on the internet, it seemed to be a quite large event. Even Multiplex was going to be there and show up their new "Xeno" flying wing. Unfortunately the day didn't turn out as I expected.


The Multiplex Merlin. Expected release in 2 weeks Read More...

Today is a big day!
I got my 100:th youtube subscriber! Yay congratulations David, woho!

I also updated the homepage a little today upon request.

• It’s now possible to add comments to all the projects in the projects category.
• I added a search page, which makes finding stuff on the page a lot easier. Just click the little icon in the sidebar on the left.
• I added a FPV Videos page, which has an embedded player with all my FPV videos in chronological order.
• I also optimized some code to make the homepage a little faster

So get started with the commenting on the projects!

In my quest towards getting better efficiency and more performance and flighttime out of my power systems , I decided to build a “Thrust stand”.

This is a great tool for comparing different props, motors, batteries, ESC’s separately but also as complete power systems.
Click here to read the build log and find out more

Since the old modification caused me to loose a plane, I decided to get myself an original antenna and put things back to normal. Today the antenna arrived and after a little time of tinkering it was in place. Now I can start flying again.

After being sold out here in Sweden for quite a while, I finally got my hands on RCadvisor’s two books called “Model Airplane Design Made easy” and “ModiFly”.
The first book is about general model airplane design, covering things like aerodynamics, aviation design history, power systems and more. The other book is about a specific design made by Carlos himself that cost less than 5$ and takes less than a day to build, it explains all decisions made and journey to the finial design. If the books are any where near as good as RCadvisor’s calculator they will a treat to read. I’ll report back to you all what I think of them as soon as I’m finished reading.

A couple of weeks ago I got my hands on a GU-365 3-axis flybarless stabilizer. I been wanting to build a tricopter for quite a while but the cost have kept me from taking the plunge, but now that I’ve got a 3-axis stabilizer that might work, the cost would drop enough for me to justify buying the rest of the parts.

But I didn’t want to chance that the GU-365 might work so I asked a friend in Denmark that have loads of tricopters to try it out for me.
Unfortunately the results of the testing were not what I had hoped.

- “It was out of control like nothing else I've ever flown, and it was FAST, I gave up counting the rolls as I gave everything I had in pilot skills to get it down in one piece...”

This means no tricopter for David, at least not for now...
Hmmm, might put it on a plane...

Click on the “Read More” to get read the entire flight testing and watch a video of the tricopter in action Read More...

Ever since the Assan modification of my Futaba 7C I’ve wanted to be able to use the same antenna on both transmitter modules. And now, finally, I got my hands on a U.FL to SMA pigtail. Here is the result:

Looks nice doesn’t it?

More pics after the “Read More”

Now I need some good weather to do a range check. Read More...

Click here to watch in 1280*720

In this episode I cover some of the basics in LiPo batteries, like cell-configurations, mAh, C-ratings, the 80% rule, balancing and among others.

In the end of the episode I overcharge a LiPo until it explodes to show what can happen if you leave the charging unattended, here are some pictures of the inferno:

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

It’s the XGY-1000 from AEORC.com and it’s going to be my first official review for FPV-Community.com. It looks quite nice and I hope to be able to try it out soon.

I just finished up a guide on how to get 180° of servo travel. In the guide I address 3 different ways of getting more servo travel. I also give a complete guide to modifying a servo DIY style, using only two resistors.
Perfect for getting a broader panning view! Click here to read the guide

I’ve wanted to get my hands on a GU-365 3 axis flybarless stabilizer for a while, to do some experimenting with. Well I had some luck, a guy wanted to trade one, so I made him an offer. It arrived in good condition:

I have only had the time to do a few experiments but so far it seems to work as expected. It has no trouble arming ESC’s which is nice, since I’m having thoughts about building myself a tricopter. A friend of mine in Denmark that has a lot of tricopters offered to try the GU-365 out for me on one of his machines, so the GU-365 is on it’s way to Denmark.

Since I’m a curious person, I took the GU-365 apart to see what was inside. Click on the “Read More” to see the pictures. Read More...

This weekend I attended the Elefantastiskt event in Karlsborg here in Sweden.

It was two awesome days of RC flying despite the windy weather.

A highlight of the meeting was when I tried dropping a RC converted Multiplex Fox from the EZ-Stick.

I met a lot of great people and had the best of times!

Be sure to read the complete post by clicking on the “Read More” below Read More...

I’m mentioned on the very well known AllThingsThatFly podcast!

24 minutes and 10 seconds into episode #102 Diggs mentions my youtube show episode 1 and episode 2 as “Funny as hell”.

He is also kind enough to plug this site! After that he mentions my Multiplex Blizzard as “... One of the coolest paint scheme I’ve seen yet on a Blizzard”

Click here to download the episode as a MP3

A big thank you to all the guys at ATTF!

Click here to watch in 1280*720

This is part 2! Click here for the first episode!

In this episode I once again try hitting a target with potatoes and eggs dropped from my EZ-Stick. But this time I manage to hit something! Read More...

My prize from the competition on the FPV-Community forums just arrived in my mailbox!

The quality of this pan/tilt unit from GlobeFlight is excellent. The panning servo is located higher that on any other pan/tilt unit I’ve seen for the Twin Star. It’s also possible to look straight down thanks to the different tilt mechanism. All parts are made from glass fiber and are very strong and light. The whole unit weights 60 grams as seen in the picture. Now I only need a HS-81 size servo to be able to test this ting out.

Click here to watch in 1280*720

This was my first ever youtube show! I plan on making goofy stuff and sharing them with you in this fashion, and I hope you will enjoy it.

In this show I equip my EZ-Stick with a bomb drop device, and I try to drop potatoes and eggs from the air on a target.

For those of you that want to make a bomb drop device of your own, here is how to: Read More...

It has been raining on and of for several days now here in Sweden and the weather forecast does not look good; rain for all of next week too. I sincerely hope that they are wrong.

But there is something good in all that is bad; My wife is letting me buy an Aiptek AHD 300 full HD Camcorder for FPV flying! And she is aware that I will take it apart and remove and desolder all components I don’t need, to save weight. I love her for letting me do what I love (and buying expensive toys)

Many people have asked me how to improve the range of their 900 or 1300 MHz video link, so I wrote a guide to making your own whip antenna that can greatly improve the efficiency and range of these systems.
You can click here to read it.

I hope that it can help improve the range for you people that use the stock antenna on your 900/1300 MHz video link.

I was surfing around the various forums and I found that I had recently received a PM from one of the administrators on the FPV-Community forums. Naturally I started reading it; He complimented me on my website and my FPV flying, I was very flattered so I read on, He wanted to know if I wanted to start a cooperation with their site and become a product reviewer for their review section!

I hope this is the beginning of a long lasting cooperation between our sites, and I hope I get a lot of stuff to review ;)

I found a cool forum that is called FPV-Community, I signed up and posted a few threads. The people on the forums were very nice and I liked the forums structure. So I became a regular visitor. They had a competition going where you could win FPV equipment buy simply contributing to the forums. It ended on the 27th this month and I checked out the tread to congratulate the people that had won, and to my surprise I had come in 5th place! I never win anything and now I won a Pan/Tilt setup from GlobeFlight.

I’m so happy. This forum is great and they will have more competitions coming up, so join up and start contributing to the FPV community!

Yesterday was a very windy day but I was itching to fly, so I decided to take my Blizzard that is missing its spinner for a flight.
I love how the Blizzard handles in the wind! After a little while into the flight I flew over a tree line and the Blizzard stopped in mid flight. It just hung there!
- Perfect, I thought, now I can try to beat my old flight time record of 94 minutes on flat ground.
And I did it! 111 minutes in the air on flat ground! But this time it was with only 2 minutes and 11 seconds of motor time. Not bad! I had another battery with me, but my neck said: - Are you crazy!? and I wanted to get home to my wife. Now I feel like trying out sloping with this thing.

I got some time over yesterday and the weather was quite nice so I decided to fly the DeltaD.
It didn’t turn out well...


I have to admit that the designed was flawed. It did not handle good at all in the wind and I smacked it pretty hard a few times into the ground. But I had a fun time nevertheless. After all I “Explore the RC world, one crash at a time”. I think I’ll give this project up as a bad job for now.

It was a splendid vacation! We lived in a house with a pool on the countryside right among wine and olive plantations. The weather was great the whole week and the temperature was above 30°C in the shade during the days with a light breeze. We visited the leaning tower of Pisa and the Dome of Florence among other things.

I also brought the FPV Twin Star and for some reason people thought that I looked funny when I flew it?


Anyhow, here is the video:


I demonstrate the Hat-Tracker in the beginning of the video and I think it works great. This is also the first video with my new Eagletree OSD PRO, it works well but it needs a little tinkering with before I get it just the way I want it.

There was a lot of interference where we lived, as you can see in the video there was a big radio mast not far from the house and there were a lot of power lines near the house. Thats why the video isn’t as crisp as it usually is, and I get a few dead frames here and there. But overall it was an awesome landscape to fly in.

Sorry guys but I’m going on a weeks vacation to Italy. We will go buy car here from Sweden and drive for about 26 hours straight before arriving at the beautiful house were going to stay at. I will be bringing the FPV Twin-Star and I hope to get some FPV video from Italy to show you all.


See you all in a week!

Look what I found in my mailbox!



This has been long awaited! Now I need to hook it up and start fiddling.

I could not stand buying receivers that cost hundreds of times more than the cheep experimental airplanes that I want to fly. So for the same price as a 6 channel Futaba FASST receiver, I bought myself a Assan X8D Hack module and two 6 channel receivers!

I made a simple guide on installing the Assan module into a transmitter.
You can read it here

Today my lovely wife had to study all day for an exam, so I got a lot of time to myself. After doing some chores, I’ve been sitting trying to explain how Antenna gain works, since I get many questions about it. It isn’t the easiest thing to explain, but now I have tried. Perhaps you can get an insight to the basics, I am no expert myself, and hopefully it will be enough for most peoples needs.

Upon request, I just finished a review the V-Mate memory card video recorder for FPV usage.
Click here to read it.

I was flying my Blizzard yesterday, just a recreational flight, no fancy flying. But when I picked it up after the landing i noticed that the front end of the spinner was missing! I searched around the place where it had landed but couldn’t find anything.

I thought I heard a noise just when I hit the throttle at one time during the flight, when I was at the far end of the field, so I went over there.
During the walk I noticed the grass getting thicker and thicker and higher and higher and when I got to the place where I thought it could be the grass was so thick and high that the only way I would find the spinner was if I accidentally stepped on it.
I hope they harvest the grass soon...

Finally! After 10 months I’ve saved enough to buy a new video camera.

The camera I chose was a Panasonic HCD-SD100 HD camera. So from now on all my video will be available in HD!

The reviews of the Multiplex Blizzard and Twin Star II are done!
You can find them here: Multiplex Blizzard review Multiplex Twin Star II review


Please leave some feedback on what’s good, what’s not, what’s missing, etc.

Here is the video:


The reason that I crashed was that the plane stalled to near the ground and I couldn’t save it. Why the airplane stalled is an other story; I wanted to kill some speed before the landing, but I pushed to far.


Well, at least the damage wasn’t bad, just a crack that could easily could be glued together.

Here is the long awaited Twin Star video! Enjoy!
Click here for the build log of the Twin Star

Woho! Finally I get that extra channel that I wanted. It was my good friend Christian that made me a deal on this T7CP 35MHz transmitter. But I don’t fly on 35MHz so I modified it to 2.4GHz using the “module” from my T6EX 2.4GHz transmitter. It turned out great and works like a charm. And while I was in there soldering I changed the red power led to a purple one, just to add that little extra.

I like the extra programming functions of the 7C.


And since I got the old 35MHz parts left I decided to make an external 35MHz module.

Finally the weather cooperated long enough for me to get some video.
I edited the Blizzard video first and will finnish the Twin-Star one later.
Click here for the build log of the Blizzard.

Enjoy!

Yesterday I did some full-scale studies on an Air-show called “Flottiljens dag”. It was a beautiful day, just the right amount of wind to keep cool and an almost perfect blue sky. I brought the camera and took some pictures when I felt like it, but for the most part I just enjoyed the show. I went with my buddy Christian and his family and we had a blast! If you have not yet been to an air-show, you need to go to one!








These aircrafts were in the show:
SK 16
SK 50
B 17
Helikopter 10
J 29 Tunnan
J 28 Vampire
J 32 Lansen
J 34 Hawker Hunter
JAS 39 Gripen

The good guys Frank and Brian has been kind enough to mention me in episode 57 their podcast called R/C FlightCast again. They seem to like my homepage and my style of posting more pictures than words.

To listen to the show, click here.

Thanks to Frank and Brian!

Today, finally, after over 2 week of bad weather, the wind died down long enough to do the maiden flights of both the Blizzard and the Twin Star.





















I flew the Twin Star first and I was impressed. It flies great! It is super stable in the wind very easy to control. It has plenty of power to! After the flight it was time to maiden the Blizzard. Truth be told I’m a little scared of this beast. My heart rate went up quite a bit when I held it in my hand and gave it full throttle for the first time. I did not even need to throw it, it just left my hand and climbed like rocket. The neat thing with the Blizzard is when you cut the throttle and start to dive it accelerates even more and it keeps its inertia a long time! 8 seconds of full throttle and it’s a spec in the sky and when you dive it makes “the sound”, the wonderful whistling sound that I love. Ahh man that was an awesome maiden flight! It’s nice to pump some adrenaline once in a while.

Thanks to my friend Christian Mogensen for assisting me!

More pictures can be found in the build threads; Blizzard, Twin Star.

This week I have been working on the two airplanes that my wife gave me. Unfortunately the weather this week has been terrible, so I have not been able to maiden either of them. But I thought I would share the work I’ve done so far:

The Twin Star II build log


The Multiplex Blizzard build log


I’ll post more pictures as soon as the weather changes for the better.

It is good to be home again. After a week of snowboarding and only one flight it is nice to be able to get time for the hobby. In the week I was gone my package from china arrived!

Now I can really start building!

I got one flight on the vacation and it was on Sweden’s highest located public road. I have now flown my F1 Hydro over 1000 meters above sea-level.







Now it’s time to start building the Blizzard!

I just want to let you all know that I’m going to the mountains on vacation for a week. I’ll be bringing the AitT and the F1 hydro and if there is an opportunity I’ll get some film for you all. See you all in a week!

The wife and I were doing some errands in the same town as a hobby shop. So I slipped in a comment on that it would be a waste not to visit the hobby shop, and she agreed! I needed some small stuff like some servo cable and a prop. After looking around in the shop for a while my wife says:
-I planned that we were going here so that I could by you some monokote. I want you to see your new planes so that you don’t loose them.

My wife is awesome! I never buy covering since it’s so expensive (At least if you compare it to buying cheep servos from china).
I’m so lucky that I such a lovely wife!

In episode 54 of Frank and Brian’s podcast called R/C FlightCast they mention my build of the Twin Boom Easystar and this site! I’m honored to be mentioned in such a good light by one of the best RC podcasts out there!

To listen to the show, click here.

Thanks to Frank and Brian!

Today my wife and I were cleaning the apartment, and when we were done we had a bag of old stuff that was going down into the basement. So I took the bag and heaved it down the seven staircases to the basement. We have our basement pretty neatly organized so when I opened the door and there were this big cardboard box standing in the way of where I was going to put down the heavy bag. Feeling a little irritated that there was a box in the way I asked my wife:
-What is this box doing... wait a second! Is that?! The airplane!!
My wife is sneaky! And oh so wonderful! I did not expect the airplane until earliest the end of the week.


Which airplane do you think it’s going to be?

I was so exited that I almost felt ill! This is what I saw when I opened it:


She freaking bought me two airplanes! And the two I wanted! She is the best wife EVER! I’m so glad right now!


Now I need to order some electronics from china.

On the evening of the crash of the Twin Boom Biplane I was pretty downcast, and when my wife came home, she could instantly see that something was wrong. So she asked me what had happened. I told her about my day and about the crash and she didn’t even laughed. Instead she look at me and said: - I’m going to buy you a new airplane.

My wife is the best!
That managed to cheer me up quite a bit I must admit.
And I asked what airplane she had planned to buy, and she said:
-I’m not telling, I want it to be a surprise!

I don’t know what airplane she is going to buy but I have been raving on about both the Multiplex Twinstar and the Blizzard and I think it’s going to be one of them.



Oh I’m so exited!

Which one would you pick?

I just posted a review of the Multiplex EasyStar in the Review section.
Hope you like it!

Today I took a trip to the local hobby-shop that is located about 30 kilometers from my home. I bought a 11*7 prop and some balsa. The Turnigy C3530-1100 on 3sA123 only gave me 168W with the 11*7 which was a lot less than I expected considering that the 10*5 gave me 140W. I’ll give it a try and see how it feels in the air.

In the meantime; Care to guess what I’m going to do with these balsa sticks?

It was a beautiful sunset and the weather was just right. This is the second flight after the paint job was finished and I dumb thumb it into the water...

Yet another year of swapmeet/gathering in Skövde is to an end.
This year things were a little different thou, instead of the ”free for all” flying at all times there were a strict schedule.
This had its pros and cons.
I arrived at 11.00 when the event opened. There were a lot of people there but there were no airplane in the air!
Instead there were 3 rc-cars driving around in one corner
-Bad first impression, I must say.
However there were a lot of retailers present which was nice. I bought 2 3s800mAh Loong-Max LiPo’s and a R608FS Futaba receiver at a “nice price”



After 30 minutes the car guys were pushed aside and the airplanes started to come up in the air. I greatly regretted not bringing any airplanes as this space is hugh! and there were only a handful of pilots.
30 minutes later a sponsored pilot came on to the floor with a Beam E4 “450” class helicopter to put on a show. He did a few 3D maneuvers like a funnel and a quite good chaos orb before he slammed the heli into the floor.

After that the in my opinion the most amusing thing of the day took place. A bachelorette party made the bride to be first drive an rc-car witch she managed pretty good, but then they gave her an airplane transmitter.
Now she wasn’t to cocky. But what she didn’t see was that a hidden guy stood with the real transmitter. The plane were a bipe shockflyer, and the guy controlling it made a very good impression of “bad” flying and near misses.
Ahh it was to funny. Poor girl.

A little later the freestyle composition was due. Nothing spectacular in my opinion. One guy has flown the exact same routine 3 years in a row, witch I can remember, to the exact same music. He’s good but come on! And he’s won the last 2 years with that program.

Not the best “Arenan i Skövde” I’ve been to but still worth going.
Next year I’ll bring some models and try to get people to have planes in the air all the time.

I was out on the frozen pond near “Kyrkofalla” church in Tibro planning to fly around with my F1 Hyrdo when the dog showed some interest in chasing the plane.
I took the opportunity and played a little with her.

This is the story of my little brushless boat that I had last summer.







We had some great times...
But now your gone...
Sold, to pay for my RC addiction.

I made the first page:




I do truly look like the king of geekeness.

Now I’m the laughingstock of the town for a while...