Soon ready for takeoff

28 March, 2011 by RCExplorer - David Posted in Blog Leave a comment

It’s less than 22 hours until I’m up in the air. I’ve been really busy getting ready for the trip. So busy that I haven’t had time to even update the site. But that is about to change. I’ll be updating much more frequently from now on, charing my experiences and whacky adventures with you guys.

I’ll be flying in a Boeing 757-200 from Stockholm Arlanda (ARN) to New York (JFK). My flight leaves at 9.15 UTC/GMT tomorrow morning. The flight number is Delta Airlines 203. You can track me on FlightRadar.

I have a tip for all of you that plan on flying anytime soon. Check out SeatGuru. They list all the best seats on nearly any airplane type. They also have great travel tips.

New logo

28 March, 2011 by RCExplorer - David Posted in Blog Leave a comment

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!
Logo72
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?

The MiniQuad

19 March, 2011 by RCExplorer - David Posted in Projects 7 Comments

There are something very special about multirotor platforms. I can’t really put my finger on it but maybe it has something to do with how good they fly or how little noise they make. Anyhow I decided to build a small Quad just for the fun of it.

This is what I’m going to use for the frame. 3mm square carbon tubes and a unpopulated KK board I had laying around. The motors I’m planning on using are the 1404N 2290Kv 9.2g motors from Hobbyking. The prop in the picture is a 4*2.5” prop which says something about the scale.

Time to make some motor-mounts. I used the edges of the KK board, which is 0.8mm glass fiber.

I had to drill a hole in the center for the motor axel.

Glued straight on the arms.

Glued the arms together.

Glued the arms to the blank KK board.

The size of the frame ended up to be 22cm motor to motor and 31.5cm across.

Since the carbon arms were hollow I though it a shame not to use it to my advantage.

Internal wiring look so much nicer. I used coated copper wire I had laying around from rewinding motors.

Scrape the coating from the ends and solder the motor. Easy as pie

After some testing I noticed that the 1404N 2290Kv 9.2g motors did not work well at all. Something had to be off on them because they did not spin true. Not a single one of the four so I decided to ditch them and get some HexTronic 5g 2000kV motors instead. They much better and run perfectly smooth. Much better mounting plate as well.

Soldered on.

Heatshrink on.

Glued in place. I decided to go with glue as it saves weight and break away in a crash.

All four motors in place.

I used Turnigy Plush 6A ESC’s

Speedcontroller soldered and mounted using double sided foam tape.

Looks pretty neat so far.

We need a receiver on there as well but I can’t stand having something so bulky and heavy on this little thing so… Receiver! Activate!

Removed the pins and other unnecessary stuff.

The stock “boda” antenna was way to big an bulky so I made a simple whip instead. I’m not planning on flying that far with this little thing either way.

Soldered the signal wires straight board to board. The Optima receivers have a really neat function and that is built in voltage telemetry. That way I always know when it’s time to land without having to have anything extra on the model. Love it!

Started soldering the battery connector and power distribution to the ESCs

Done!

Just needs some foam for the board and it’s ready to fly.

Ready!

It’s pretty small

Needed a lot of tape on the 4*2.5 props to make them balance properly

It flies!

Outside in the cold

It flies outside as well.

Size comparison to some regular sized moose droppings, which is a standard unit here in Sweden, like a dollar coin in the US.

Here is the video!

I’m quite happy with the way it flies. It’s soooo cute! It so stable as well. I expected it to be very jittery, wobbly and all over the place but it feels so locked in. Love it!

After flying the MiniQuad for a while I decided to increase the prop size. But then I ran into some trouble, the carbon tubes twisted under heavy load. To fix this and also make it more impact resistant I added a carbon square frame.

A little bit of extra carbon made all the difference.

The frame is now super stiff and the MiniQuad flies even better in fast forward now.

As a battery I used an old 2s800mAh 15C liPo I had laying around. Flight time is about 15 minutes.

Simply cut the corners at 45° angles and glued them to the motor mounts.

Specifications:
Motors: HexTronic 5g 2000kV
ESC’s: Turnigy Plush 6A
Battery: 2s800mAh 15C
Props: First 4*2.5 GWS then 5*3 GWS
Arm length: Motor to center 16cm (Radius). Motor to motor 22cm
All up weight: 89 grams without battery, with extra carbon rectangle.

I’m going to the USA!

18 March, 2011 by RCExplorer - David Posted in Blog Leave a comment

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.

Free RC song and ringtone

16 March, 2011 by RCExplorer - David Posted in Blog 1 Comment

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/

Arenan in Skövde 2011

13 March, 2011 by RCExplorer - David Posted in Blog Leave a comment

Every year I attend a local swap-meet in Skövde. It’s always a great time to buy stuff at good prices, swap stories and fly inside the big “Arenan”. I had a really good day and met lots of new people. This year we did something different, a pylon race with multirotor platforms. There were three MK controlled platforms – 1 tiny quad, 1 standard size quad and 1 hex competing apart from me with my KK tricopter and my friend Christian’s AR Parrot drone.

Getting ready for my flight.

I flew my race in FPV, which was quite a lot harder than I thought it would be, but I gave it my best.

Here is a video of my flight;

Unfortunately I forgot to start the recording on my GoPro, so no in air video.

We had a great time. Christian knocked over three of the six pylons with his AR drone and the hexacopter blew away the pylons completely! I hope we can do this again next year.

(Photos and video by Patrik Gustavsson)