Rebuilding the engine system.

Existing engine pod were too high. The engine pushed the plane down. I had to trim the elevator all the time.

New engines and a 40A ESC from Hong Kong. The motors are 250 watts and 2200 kv.

Construction of engine mounts.

Mounted only one ESC for both engines first. After reading several discussion forums on the net, where some people says it is possible to use only one ESC on two engines, and others says that there must be two of theme, I decided to try it with one. It does not work! Although I used the same engines, adjusted them equally, power lines were same length, the engines went unevenly, sometime they went backwards.

New 30A ESCs and a LIPO battery low voltage alarm. Mounting alarm both on video battery and motor / rc battery.

Control cable from the RC receiver to ESCs.

Two ESCs mounted, one for each engine. In the balsa box, it will be more electronics, the FMA sensor on the top. Has also made a place for the GPS antenna further back on the tail.

Distance check on the ground level.

Today I have done a range check on the ground level with a standard antenna for Hitec rc radio and Inesun 1.5 Watt 1.28 GHz video transmitter.


I'm sure it will reach a lot longer, but I had picture and controll 421 meters away. The plane was in our house close to a window. The signals went through two buildings, and perhaps 200 meters of forest, I'm sure I was lower in the terrain than it had been clear view.



I'll do a test later with a clear view.
The faint red line is the signal.

Testing HDD DVR again, and 130 degrees servo in flight.

The HDD DVR worked very well when I used it correctly. At medium resolution it had at 20 minutes' flying time a video file of 500 MB. This was a bit too large to edit with my video software, so next time I will try the smallest resolution.
Another thing is that the resolution was so good, that I could see how crooked the video was from the bad camera. This I could never see when I used the easycap video to USB device on my laptop.
I have lowered the quality of this video to be able to edit it.

Video:
http://www.vimeo.com/6492223

The 130 degree servo worked great. It was very nice to be able to expand the field of view. Funny to look back on the wing.

Picture of servo modification.

Testing the HDD DVR.

Do not know how to start writing a blog, so I begin with what I'm doing now. What I have done before I will post pictures of later.

Finally I got hold of a cheap small screen, and had made a powerful voltage regulator so that I can use my HDD DVR.

The screen is a 3.5"LCD which cost only 12 $ from ebay Hong Kong. The voltage regulator, I've created myself, it is 5 volts and can provide 3 amps. Found out later that It's possible to buy 5 amps BEC on ebay for 7 USD, and I might just as well use this.

Back to the testing of DRV. I'm sure it was one of my best shots and FPV flights, but the recording was unfortunately deleted, when the finger was faster than my head, and then I struck off on the red power button instead of stop-button.

Another thing that I got tested, and was okey. Is the modification of the pan servo. I had hoped for 180 degrees pan, but was only 130 degrees, so whatever's much better than around 80 degrees.

I have set it so that I can look back on left wing, and perhaps 45 degrees to the right.

The modification is made by soldering two resistors of 2.2 kohm to the potentiometer inside the servo.