Gloomy day drone flight - Ready for Summer!

Its been horrible flying weather lately. Every weekend I've been off its rained. I managed to sneak in a quick flight yesterday between two rain storms. The trees are almost ready to pop! I'm ready for summer!!

a reply to: Triton1128


Ummm...Although this is the first time I've commented...I love your vids and always watch them...so Kudo's for sharing your passion with us...

Your inspiring me to buy a drone...I was wondering if you use a headset or those new glasses for an FPV...

Thanks for the opportunity to fly your friendly skies...vicariously...







YouSir

a reply to: YouSir

Thanks for the reply and I appreciate your feed back!

These are the goggles I currently wear when flying:

www.fatshark.com...

The drone uses a 5.8Ghz video transmitter on board to send the video wireless to the goggles. Its basically real time. No discernible delay ( or Id crash a lot ) Range is dependent on surrounding obstacles ( trees / buildings ) I generally fly from the deck on the back of my house. Since my yard slopes away slightly, its a great vantage point to fly. I can easily go 1000m away and still have clear vision. My radio I use to fly is 2.5Ghz (note the difference as to not conflict the video/control frequency's) The physical range on the drone is roughly 1.5 miles in stock form.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask. Ill do my best to answer them. ( I not only build my own drones, but I use I BetaFlight to program their flight characteristics ) Its a wonderful hobby!

a reply to: Triton1128

I know what you mean!

We had a nice day here so I took the fixed wing out to map and 3d model one of our tailings dams...
that turned into a nightmare.

Once the drone was in the sky my Ground Control Station came back with a "Communication Error"
I picked up the RC, sure enough, nonresponsive.

I was able to gain some control via the laptop... have you ever tried to fly a plane with a bloody laptop?!

It doesn't work.
In the movie Interstellar when Mathew McConaughey takes control of that drone and lands it all perfectly with his laptop, that's COMPLETE and utter BS!!

This is what happens when you fly with a laptop!

a reply to: Macenroe82

Oh no! Thankfully you were able to recover it !!

a reply to: Triton1128

Let me tell you this, I was very nervous.
When I went to the last reported telemetry, it was not there.
I busted through the bush, looking up in trees, checking high and low - couldn't find it anywhere.

I came back to my office and grabbed one of my quads and sent it up, flying grid patterns while recording video.

On my way back to the office, I ended up finding it lodged into the side of the haul road.

Thankfully, all that's damaged is the airframe.
I put a new battery in it, and everything fired up.

The prop doesnt even have one knick or bur in it!

So it's just a matter of swapping all the internals over - which I started this morning.

But its no rush now, considering its blowing snow outside today!

Something similar happened to me. I have it all caught on video too. Check this out!



It took me over 6 hours and two days to find it out in the woods. (walking grid patterns) I had no direction to go off of, other than the sound it made falling through the trees... That's about $300 in drone gear plus a brand new $250 dollar Session 5. Thankfully, I found it! No damage to the drone at all. Just a broken go pro mount, which I 3d printed. So no real loss there!

a reply to: Triton1128

Oh ya man.
I’ve lost or crashed every single one of my FPV quads.
The first couple times I felt sick because of the work that goes into building them.
But after a few rebuilds it’s become second nature.

That’s awesome you have a 3d printer.
I don’t yet, because they are still very rare and the one I want is stupid priced up here in Canada.
I’ve brought my CAD designs to the library on a USB and they printed them for me for 5 bucks a gram.

Do you 3D design your frames?
I have a couple different designs I’ve made in .STL format that actually work lol.
If you want them I can send them to you.

a reply to: Macenroe82

The printer I have now is a mini delta. I mostly use it just for GoPro mounts. (those seem to break the most for me) I used to have a bigger printer, but it took so long to heat up and use for single prints, that I got rid of it and went with a smaller model. The one I have now is great. I can bang out a GoPro session mound in about 45min. It just doesnt have a very large print bed.

First flight in over a week. Non-stop rain. This was on a single battery.