IA-Flyer

I’m in shock, happy as can be shock!
I mounted a BlackWidowAV 1-watt system in my video stick a couple of days ago and did a test flight in-between rain storms.
I just wanted to see what problems I would need to deal with, and to get a rough idea of the range of the system.
I set the receiver on the roof of my car and didn’t even have the microphone hooked up to the transmitter yet, very un-scientific.
Even using the stock rubber duck omni receiver antenna it just kept going and going and GOING!

I was having so much fun flying with what seemed to be unlimited range with great video quality that I didn’t even bother trying a higher gain receiver antenna, I just didn’t need it.
I even climbed to the base of the clouds until the lens started to get damp, if you look closely at the intersection where I was standing you can probably see me grinning from ear to ear! I can’t imagine how well this is going to work with a higher gain receiver antenna!
Thanks Bill, my first flight impression is it’s unbelievable!

Here is a short video of the “nasty weather” flight

[link=http://elwood.pionet.net/~jjoy/BWAV_1000mW_First_Flight.zip]BWAV_1000mW_First_Flight.zip right click and "Save AS"[/link]

Mhale71

hey man, you paid for quality

stevennh

Fun isn't it! I have run with Bill's 200mw and 600mw systems (2.4GHz) and find that 200mw is enough for me. I did a very similar flight last night and got my camera wet too! I almost lost sight of the plane in the clouds. I am using the patch antenna sitting on the ground. The higher gain low to the ground helps cut out interfearance from the neighborhood computer networks, phones and such.

[link=http://s93421871.onlinehome.us/extreme2.wmv]Aerobird Video 2[/link]

Steve

Rj-TailSpin

I thought I heard someone giggling all the way up here in Wisconsin!!! Wooooooowiiieeeeeee!!!

Rob

stevennh

I cannot seem to get your video to decompress. WinZip is claiming it is not a valid archive...

Steve

IA-Flyer

I’ve had a lot of fun pointing high gain antennas at low power transmitters but this just feels so different. For the first time getting my HAM license seems more than worthwhile!

Yep, that would have been me Rob!
I thought my video flying was over because a TV transmission tower 30-miles away started swamping me with interference. I couldn’t get a clean signal across the road with my video sender the last time I flew it. It went away when all the storms first hit, I wonder if a RF homing tornado took it out?

Try downloading it again Steve, it may have been a corrupt download because it works ok for me. If anyone else is having problems let me know.

balsabuster2003

Works for me!

stevennh

Wow, you did get up there. Even with my 4.5' wingspan I think I would chicken out way before getting that high! I have to get the nerve to fly by wire. I even have glasses, I just can't bring myself to use them yet. How did you see the plane, did you use the video?

Steve

CenTexFlyer

Wow! Great vids! Now tell us what you hooked up to the RX to record, what you encoded it with, edited with, etc, etc, etc!

BTW.... it doesn't seem you would get much thrust from that prop the way it turns so slow and all... and I guess you're trying to slow down when it goes backwards, huh?

:P

CTF

stevennh

I can tell you what I use. I have a Sony TRV-17 DV camcorder. I just connect it directly to my RX and record to it. I edit with Pinnacle Edition 5.0. It is a high end consumer editor (I work for Pinnacle so it was cheap for me!). I bring the video in DV native via 1394 to my PC (running Windows XP). My camcorder has a 1394 interface and I also have a 1394 card on my PC. That way the DV media stays digital (no re-compression). I export my DV footage to WMV MPEG-2 at 768Kb/s. This gives reasonable quality at a data rate most broadband folks can handle.

Steve

IA-Flyer

Sorry about the delay in replying, I looked at my workbench wondering what I needed to work on next and realized “It’s all working dummy, GO FLYING!”.
So I did! What a fun day!
Here’s a video from yesterday put to music (no mike yet). I was using the GPP antenna this time, and it was nice to see some pretty bright day colors for a change!
[link=http://elwood.pionet.net/~jjoy/VideoStick%205-27-04.zip]VideoStick 5-27-04.zip 18-megs[/link]

I'll probably post it in a thread of it's own so more people can see it.
I thought about asking Dan for his suggestion on a music background because I like his music taste so much. Then I thought, hey us old guys need some nostalgia music and the first part of the video looked like Africa!



Steve:
I was flying visual for the most part, the cloud base was fairly low. Not sure how high it was because I don't have an altimeter or anything yet.
I usually fly a combination of visual and video, sometimes I just watch the plane and glance at the camcorder screen to frame things.
When I fly just by video I've been using the 3.5" screen on my Sony TRV-27, mainly because it's easy to transport and works good enough for me.

CTF:
LOL, yep I try to ignore the prop, it makes me nervous!
I was flying one time and noticed it was stopping at the same place every time.... Out of fuel!

As far as the equipment goes, I'm using a Sony TRV-27 Mini-DV camcorder for the viewing screen and to record the video.
I used VideoStudio 7 to do the simple cuts I did, and used Studio 8 for the ending title in the video above because it does such a nice job with titles and things. If you had to choose only one, you would like using Studio best.
Then I rendered the file to windows media using "Windows Media Encoder" at the same bit-rate setting Steve was talking about, it's a free download from Microsoft.

For my home version to watch on DVD, I render the file using TMPGEnc. It's a very capable and nice encoder but it's slow!