I took the family to a local park for a picnic yesterday.  I saw a guy sitting in the grass with what looked to have his own grill.  As I got closer I realized the grill was actually an FPV monitor with a cover, and a huge antenna.  The guy had all sorts of crazy RC gear, with range extenders.  I talked to him and he told me he was getting a 7000 foot range with that setup.  Wow.

He was flying a pancake style quadcopter.  It was a “Team Blacksheep” copter with all sorts of mods.  This unit is basically a DJI Flamewheel 450 modification.  The body is more elongated and the GoPro mount toward the front.  That way the props don’t get in the picture.  He also had a separate FPV camera, but could switch between that and the GoPro on his monitor.

Team Black Sheep Quadcopter

I was VERY impressed with his quadcopter’s performance.  I had thought of bringing my Phantom up to this park, but the winds were high enough that I would not want to fly.  His copter flew as if there were no winds at all.  There were literally NO jumps or spazzy horizontal movements, unlike my quad.  I’m sure it is a combination of a lot of factors, but it made me want to get rid of my Phantom and build a setup like this one for my small bird.  I could easily gut my Phantom and use the parts to build a bird like this.

His quad was running Naza-Lite, carbon fiber props, and it looked like T-Motors.

Perhaps the coolest and most geeky thing I’ve ever seen was the guy’s FPV goggles.  He built a cooling system for them which had a cooling fan and “ductwork.”

I got Gordon’s number, and hope to pick his brain one of these days.  He knows the FPV thing, and that’s a road I need to go down with the big bird.

While construction slowly (very slowly) goes on with my big hexacopter, I’m still working on my little bird for aerial photos and video.  The little bird being a DJI Phantom 1.2 with an Arris CM3000 3-axis gimbal.

I did two test flights yesterday, both with the heavier MadDog 2700mAh battery.  That battery is bigger and more heavy than the stock battery, and seems to make a big enough difference in weight that the Phantom drifts vertically and horizontally.  I also have heavy wobbling and shaking, making video unusable.  That’s the exact description of yesterday’s first flight.  Also as part of the test in the first flight were four hard rubber isolation grommets, as opposed to the very soft ones I’ve had decent results with lately.  Once again, bad vibes.

I’ve finally gotten my hands on a decent blade balancing rod for the capped Phantom 2 propellers I put on the bird.  I switched to these props because the craft has more lift and efficiency with them, as well as double the flight time per battery or more.

I did a rough propeller balance after yesterday’s first flight, and also changed two of the four hard grommets back to soft.  This flight was massively better with only a small fraction of the flight producing vibrations or wobbles.  The problem, and the lesson, is that I changed TWO different things on the bird.  So I don’t know if the change in grommets or the blade balancing was the source of the improvement.  It is also possible that both combined made the difference.

Today’s first test flight (if there is one) will have to be blades balanced with four hard grommets and the heavier battery, since I don’t want to unbalance the props.  Then based on those results I may modify the grommets for the next test.

Following, perhaps a test with the lighter, original DJI batteries.

I had good results with the soft grommets, but they’re so soft I’m afraid the whole gimbal may fall off during flight.  It has come loose during transport in its case.

Frustrating few days.  In attempting to increase my functions and capabilities to include tilt/roll of my gimbal (meaning it could point forward or I could rotate it 90 degrees to do straight down shooting) I screwed up the settings it came with.  First time I plugged it in it nearly bounced off the table top having seizures which would make the worst epileptic look healthy.

I’ve been learning the software which controls the gimbal, SimpleBGC, and slowly working the unit back to functionality.  So far I have two of the three axes working, but the yaw axis (where the camera follows the direction the bird is pointing) is reacting very slowly.

Very frustrating, but I’m learning so much each time I go through these experiences.