A feeling of abandonment

My new youtube channel - Doz FPV

A "race" with Ian

So, Ian decided to make it all competitive by posting this:

I've lost my action camera, but here's my goggles footage of the same session... :)

Following Ian

Following Ian is quite tricky as he's always bobbing around and never seems to go quite the same route round the circuit twice. Almost like he doesn't trust me not to crash into him or something. Nonetheless, I spotted the opportunity twice here... :)

He crashed his quad not long after this video was taken. I had nothing to do with it, honest.

RSSI with Taranis and Vendetta

There are a couple of tutorials around on how to get RSSI displayed on the TBS Vendetta OSD, e.g.

However, there are a couple of gotchas. The Core Pro as shipped with the Vendetta is 1.48 which doesn't have the PPM option. You'll need to use TBS Agent to upgrade the firmware to 1.51. You'll need to open up the Vendetta and connect the OSD to the PC via the USB port on the PCB next to where you fit the receiver.

I have it set up as channel 10 on my Taranis (which shows up as AUX 6 in Cleanflight) and via a mixer that's got a weight of 200 and an offset of -100 so the 0-100 RSSI value is translated to -100 to 100 PWM.

The next problem you'll encounter is the configuration wizard asks you to move the transmitter next to the quad for the maximum reading (which is displayed as about 82dB on the Taranis) and then turn off the taranis for the low reading and press enter. Of course, once you've turned off the transmitter, you can't operate the menus any more (and the physical enter button on the OSD doesn't seem to work in the wizard).

The solution is to temporarily drop the weight down to 0 and set the offset to 100 for the maximum which should give a PWM value around 2000:

You can then change the offset to -100 for the minimum value which should give a PWM value around 1000:

Finally, after confirming, you can then set the weight back to 200 and leave the offset to -100 and the RSSI value should match what you see on the taranis:

Happy flying! :)

Tree fun

I've moved my camera down from about 30° to around 10°, which has meant that I can actually see the ground and seems to have slowed me down a little. So, for the last couple of days, I've been able to have more fun than normal around the trees. Well, except when my power connectors haven't been melting and the quad just falling out of the sky, that is.

EMFcamp 2016

I've got a whole load of other videos to add, but here's a quick video from EMFcamp 2016, which was this weekend:

Some recent flights

I've not posted much recently - all my Mobius HD cameras are broken and I've been struggling with terrible reception from my FPV transmitter recently. But here are a couple of flights from last week when I'd just about got things working again (and since then my VTX quality has gotten worse :( )

And it flies!

I changed the battery as the original battery had badly corroded terminals and the aerial as the old one was bent 90 degrees, but had seen better days anyway (it was covered in a mound of electrical tape to hold it straight!). Nothing on the quad itself was touched, and this is the first attempt to fly it:

Not bad for something that's been sat in a field for 4 months and now has quite a lot of rusty bolts!

Found my quadcopter

So, my shiny Nighthawk Pro went missing back at the start of October on its first trip out since getting a new arm, required from a crash in its first week. Today, four and a half months later, I found the quad. Looks in pretty good condition - not even a bent prop or aerial, but most of the metal seems to have rusted - especially the bolts and nuts, and even my shiny new Mobius which was having its maiden outing. I haven't tried it out yet, but I think the motors may be too rusty to work properly as they're quite stiff to the touch.
Anyway, it seems that the problem was just that the battery plug popped out of the socket on the main board. Apart from that being disconnected it was all fine (although the battery alarm also seemed to have been missing too, although you can hear it beeping just after the crash). Still, the SD card in the Mobius was fine. Here's the flight:

Dominator V3 goggles

I bought some Dominator V3 goggles whilst I was in Hong Kong. Here's what the video quality looked like on one of my first flights back in the UK, a month ago now: