S_Dave

Wow, Bill, that's awful to hear!
Very sorry to read that your plane got you. Be careful from now on, because once they get the taste of blood, they want more.

I remember several times it's happened at our field. I'm flying and hear a guy tuning his engine for max RPM on the bench. The pitch rises, falls, rises higher....then drops suddenly. Uh oh. The finger got in the propeller. Next comes three predictable steps:
1. The guy pulls the injured finger up to where he can see it.
2. The guy looks around to see if anybody noticed him do it.
3. The guy shuts down his engine, packs his stuff in the car and drives to the emergency room.

It happens to everybody sooner or later, but yours wasn't fair, since it sliced you during a routine startup. Glad you were wearing a glove.
Hope it heals quickly and you're able to get back out to the field soon.
Take care,

Dave
p.s I'm definitely not a McGiver type. I just assemble other people's magical parts and somehow they seem to work anyway, but thanks for the encouraging words.

rc34074

My Feedback: (5)

Bill- sorry you got bit - do you normally sand the edges of your apc props? I started to sand mine when they started slicing my starting hose. They are much less likely to cut you or other things that way.

also- thanks for the info on your use of the giant stick. How big is the area in the fuselage (length/width/depth) for the radio, gps and autopilot, etc?

do you have any pics of your installation you can post here?

Thanks again

Ed

wjglynn

Ed,

We are on the third generation of camera mount for the GBS. The last gasser mount was above the fuselage between the wing and vertical stab. The current E-Stik mount is under the fuselage. The spring starter for the G38 extended the engine out from the firewall quite a ways giving me lots of latitude for camera gear weight back on the fuelage.

The Stik has three main compartments. The front one will be consumed mostly by fuel tank or batteries. The middle compartment normally has the reciever and battery. Without the shelf its area is about 4" wide, 3" tall, and about 5" long. The CG is in this compartment and one of my pictures show a rod laying across it at the CG. The back compartment is about 4"x3"x8". In its original configuration there is a servo tray for the throttle. For my gasser the pan servo was here also. There is plenty of room in the square fuselage as the taper is gradual to the tail. It only becomes a balancing game as you get further back.

I do not have original pictures of the E-Stik but will provide them as the rebuild progresses. The E-Flight 160 is extended out from the firewall about 6". The Castle 110 ESC is attached to the extended motor mount out front. The two 4000mah batteries are mounted in the front compartment. The middle compartment houses the tail feather servos to lighten the tail. A fluid head tripod mount is mounted upside down under the fuselage with a large hitec sail servo panning it 140 degrees. Two 80" servos ganged provide tilt power. The triangular aluminum frame holds either the Nikon 5400 or the Sony DV cam. The only two flights so far were made with the DV with great results.

I copied and pasted some of these pictures from earlier in this thread and you can find the larger versions there. Hopes this helps with your GBS evaluation. - Bill

S_Dave

Hey, Bill,

It's actually snowing here in Atlanta! Not a big deal in some places, but unusual here.

The club webmaster posted a video of mine on YouTube:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=UEKj_LJ8Vns

The plane is that Mini UltraStick with a modular camera/transmitter taped to the top of the fuselage, looking over the tail.
We're using a technique inspired by JP's hat antenna to keep the antenna pointed at the plane.

The snow started here about 5:30pm, and wasn't heavy enough to make me dash off to the flying field. However, it would
be great to video the ground and trees covered with snow....

Those are some good shots of your big Ugly Stick plane. You should be a photographer.
Are those planes still available from Cedar Hobbies, do you know? Anybody out there talked with the good folks at Cedar Hobbies lately?

Cheers, and hope you all get to fly on Monday if you have the day off.
Best regards,

Dave

wjglynn

Great video Dave! I like watching the the rudder slam and the instant horizon spin. You video demonstrates the challenge of shooting at dusk. The auto exposure control on the camera easily gets faked out by the bright sky and make the ground too dark. Then as soon as the horizon is out of frame it corrects itself. And there is not really anything you can to about it.

Actually I am a photographer. Grew up with a darkroom in the house. Been shutterbugging for about 37 years. I did a professional stint as a horseshow photographer on the side for about 3 years until I got bit by this RC sickness. I have not taken my commercial site down yet. You can see some of my horseshows and Joe Nall 2007 at www.flyingdollarphotography.com . Not looking to sell any of the RC pictures but it is the only place I had to put them on the net. If anyone wants the full resolution Nikon 6 megapixel images I would be happy to share.

While the Stik has been around since the sixties and sold by many, mine is the Great Planes giant version. It sells for under $250 I believe. I like it because of the huge wing area, almost 1500sq. in.. The fuselage has flat surfaces making mounting points easy. The generous vertical stab/rudder tolerates a lot of camera surface area blocking it. The Nikon 5400 was fully above the fuselage in front of the tail feathers with no adverse handling. The main part of the fuselage is fully boxed also so little modification is needed for internal gear mounting. It ain't purtty but we ain't takin no dang picturres of the aeroplane! Its more like an atypical whitetail deer rack. The more ugly stuff hanging off of it the more impressive it looks!

We got about 4" of snow last night. No flying here this weekend. It is about 10 degrees. Instead there is a big RC swap meet in Kansas City Saturday. Time to buy, not fly.

Hope you get to fly on the weekend! Leave the dumb thumbs at home!

Bill

S_Dave

Bill,

Be careful in Kansas City. I heard "there's some crazy little women there."

Good hunting at the Swap Meet!
I used to take the wife along to those things--stay in a nice hotel, eat meals that someone else prepares, swim in the cement pond. Then, she and I would troll the show floor and she used to help locate valuable goodies at low prices. Eventually, she figured out that it was all about the swap meet and not so much the romance, fine dining, and togetherness. Well, gee whiz.

It's above freezing here, but sleet just turned to snow and my motivation for going to the flying field just plummeted. Good day to tinker on the planes indoors. I'm trying to package my video camera and transmitter into a module of some kind. I thought it would be good to hang it under the fuselage or under a wing, and was searching for some of those plastic eggs that ladies' stockings come in. The ladies in my family inform me that they are no longer available. Rats. However, they, say, the "Party City" store sells jumbo plastic Easter eggs that may be the same size. Ahhh! My thought was to make the electronics on a plate and slide it on rails inside the plastic enclosure--like avionics gear that can be accessed easily for charging batteries, maintenance, etc. Or, I could just stuff it inside the plane...

Wow! You have a 6MP Nikon on the tail of your Giant Stick? That's impressive considering what the AE types are teaching me about "tail moments" and balance. I used to think a "tail moment' was when you were drawing your bowstring and watching a big whitetail, then a flash of white appears and the deer is gone.

Back on topic--I'm not finding our friends at Cedar Hobbies on the internet any more. Have you heard if they moved or something?

Best regards,

Dave

vdojoe

What camera did you use????

wjglynn

High resolution photography will always be about the glass (lens) in the end. I bought the Nikon 5400 off of Ebay. It weighs 14oz. I chose it because it has 5megapixel resolution and is capable of shutter priority operation at 1/4000 sec. and with an acceptable ISO speed. I am using small servos for zoom and shutter. It also has A/V output so I can see through the lens in flight via the BWAV transmitter. I am able to put that much weight that far back on the fuselage because I have the G-38 hanging so far out in front of the firewall. It is mounted to a spring starter and all along I have been concerned with how much stress the firewall can handle but so far so good. We were very cautious with a concern that the camera would disrupt air flow over the vertical stab and rudder. No problem. The big wing is so stable that all panning and tilting either above the fuselage or below (with the new mount) requires no compensation by the pilot. The only consideration with the new mount is that it has to be in the full up position for takeoff and landing. Sort of like the ball turret on a B-24, really close to the ground. The lift of the GBS and the thrust of the G-38 made the 19lb plane really perform. We switched to electric because of vibration. The 160 outrunner driven by 2- 4000mah 5 cell LiPos spinning an 18-10 E-prop is also performing well. At 20lb. the GBS no longer floats though. Wing loading is noticeably higher and must be flown accordingly.

Dave - I am not too familiar with Cedar Hobbies. I do mostly Horizon Hobbies and some Great Planes. I would love to hang one of my D70s on a plane but the real heavyweight digitals are heavy in weight and price.

Hope you are all flying today!

Bill

S_Dave

Bill, JP, and AP Gang,

Have you ever had a digital camera turn itself off because of low temperatures?

I flew my plane with the small point-and-shoot Pentax digital camera last Saturday,
Monday, and yesterday (Sat. 26 January). Each time, the camera had a fully charged
battery and plenty of memory card, but when I landed, it had only taken 50 or 60 shots
(interval set to every 3 sec.). The "auto shut down" or "sleep" mode is deactivated,
so unless there's some little guy hiding in the plane turning it off, the camera is turning
itself off.

The temperatures were about 32F or a little above each time. Pentax specs the camera
to 32, so I'm wondering if it's getting cold...
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2004_.../optios5i.html

Any ideas?
Maybe I can make it a little sweater like people put on poodle dogs. Good grief.

Cheers,

Dave
p.s. Good news! It's 52 F today, so I'll try it again and report findings.

wjglynn

Software vendors are notorious liars. Perhaps there are specific conditions only under which the shutdown feature applies to. Did you test the deactivated sleep feature on the gound? It may very well be temperature related but I would also be suspicious of the sleep feature still being on even if it tells you it isn't.
Good Luck!

Bill

S_Dave

Hello Bill and JP,

Yep, I'm still around even after that tornado hit downtown Atlanta a week ago. Bill says, "Hah! One tornado and they think they live in the danger zone. HERE's your Danger Zone!" I know that Kansas is Tornado capital of the world. Hope you are not getting any near you. Common place or not, those things are bad news.

Hey, I've been watching some YouTube videos of guys with RC cars equipped with pan and tilt video cameras. They have a "Head Tracker" that swivels the camera P&T mount in sync with the gizmo mounted to their hat.
http://www.rangevideo.com/index.php?...9167f980fca347

As I understand it, the Head Tracker device plugs into the buddy box port on your RC Transmitter. Is that correct?

I always assumed that nothing comes in that port unless the "master" has the switch held down so the "slave" or student is active.
Any details you guys may have would be appreciated.

Thanks and I hope you all enjoyed a blessed and Happy Easter. Wont be another one this early in any of our lifetimes, they say.
Best regards,

Dave

goodfriend22

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JettPilot

My Feedback: (6)

Is it still possible to buy the Lift Miester ? I wonder what happened to everyone in this thread, hate to see it fade into nothing

I looked for Cedar Hobbies, but dont see anything about the lift Meister, if anyone knows please post a link, thanks !

JettPilot

RolandS888

I have just finished reading this thread from start to finish, and there is some really good info there, thanks guys.
I wanted to give it a bump in the hope you guys might continue to post.

Jettpilot, I've watched your vids all over the net, your work is inspirational, well done. One question does come to mind and that is how did you go with the 900Mhz Mobicom radio reception.
I am putting together a UAV project (Sig Rascal 110) and after some research have chosen the mobicom as it has a wide range of freqs that cover the range of legal license free channels in Australia (gotta try and keep it legal). I am very interested to know what success you had with it, or not as the case may be.

The Rascal will initially be set up as a camera plane, then the AP and the rest of the UAV gear will be installed in stages.

Dave, I know it was March when you posted the question about head trackers, but I just received my TrackR2 (gyroscopic HT) and it is amazing. Rock solid control, no noticable drift and very easy (and fun) to use.
I was going to go for an MHT (Sinvertronic) but being so low in latitude (Melbourne Australia) limits the performance, so I had to go for gyroscopic.

Keep up the good work guys
Roly Schreier

S_Dave

G'day, Roly,

I've been looking for information from actual users of the head tracker. RangeVideo.com offers one and I thought I understood that the output plugs directly into Futaba transmitter buddy box ports. Does that sound correct?
Does your HT work that way?

Have you got any videos or photos you would like to post here?

I've recently built a video camera box that uses the 480-line camera from RangeVideo. I have a Bob-4 On-screen Display board that accepts GPS and overlays the GPS time, lat/long and ASL altitude (m).
Here's one attached hereyou can tell that I need a better screen capture programI'm using Adobe Photoshop Elements and it's not made for that.

I'll look into the TrackR2 you mention and see if it's available here.
Have a great weekend and thanks for bringing the thread back to life!

Dave

RolandS888

Dave, the RangeVideo MagTrack is a version of magnetic head tracker, and without wanting to shoot it down, has had some criticism about lag in responsiveness. The original Sinvertronic MHT is credited as being the best (programmed specifically for the earth magnetic flux angle at your location) but is currently out of production as its creator has personal commitments in other directions. Also, being magnetic, the magnetic trackers have to be orientated in either north or south to obtain the best control.

The next best option is a gyroscopic head tracker, but the TrackR1 (and others) had some drift issues, until now. A 'no drift' upgrade is available for the TrackR1, and the TrackR2 which is the upgraded version has been adapted to allow you to run Fatshark video goggles directly off the TrackR2. (So thats the TrackR2 AND video goggles all powered off the transmitter battery via the trainer port, a very tidy setup, but I did have to upgrade my transmitter battery to a 2600mAh LiPo.

The head trackers do plug into the buddy box port of Futaba transmitters, and it is only Futaba radios as they have the ability to assign channel usage through the trainer port.
The TrackR2 is certainly available near you, as mine was purchased from new generation hobbies in Canada (Zoltan runs the show there and is excellent)

I am also running a BOB4 based OSD (with GPS, alt, battery data and return to base control) and the resolution of the lowercase onscreen text is excellent.

Unfortunatly I dont have any pics or vid yet as the project is still in its infancy, the motor has just been run in and I am in the process of mounting transmitters in both the wingtips (mobicom vid Tx in one and RF modem in the other) I hope to have some visuals to post before too long.
Sorry, getting off topic here..
Cheers,
Roly.

wjglynn

Hi guys!

The thread is not dead. Only been lurking on the board lately. I expect it has just been a busy summer for all so far. I have been spending my time on my Funtana X100 and finishing my scratch built 84" Flybaby. (Alas, neither have cameras aboard.) The E-PhotoStik is still on the building stand and I hope to get back to it very soon. The new plane will have the 6000mah batteries (bricks) situated sideways in the fuselage just behind the firewall and slide in from the side. This time the Castle 110 ESC will be mounted inside of the motor mount with the 160 outrunner extended as far as the mount will stretch. Sunday flying has been horrible here this spring. We have only had 2-3 decent flying Sunday's so far. I can't wait to see the Rascal 110 project pictures!

Dave - Did you go to Joe Nall?

Bill

S_Dave

Hi, Bill and Roly,

Billyep, it's alive! No, unfortunately I didn't get to Joe Nall fly-in but our club VP didhe went for 8 days and camped out. He said it rained a lot on him and some days it was windy.
No matter, I understand that it's always a fantastic event with lots of great airplanes and good pilots to watch and talk to. Maybe I can go next year...

Rolycould your RF modem be for sending down the GPS?
Reason I ask, I was going to do that also, but heard about the Tiny Trak III that takes GPS serial data and converts it to audio for sending down via the audio channel on your video transmitter.
Trick is, I haven't been able to find a simple way to demod on the ground to put the serial into the laptop. You can use a box made for packet radio but it's a little $$$$$ for me.

Cheers to both of you,

Dave

dzbum

My Feedback: (5)

Jettpilot,
sadly I think you are correct. Not only does the lift Meister seem to have gone away, so has Cedar Hobbies website. Anyone know the details?

Roadtorque

any of you guys using a [link=http://www.bergenrc.com/ObserverTurbine.php]Bergen helicopter[/link] to do your work? If so how do you like it? Do you sell your work to offset the cost of equipment? If I only had that type of money for toys it would be mine

wjglynn

Well guys, I finally have got back to working on my E-Photo-Stik project. Lessons learned from the ill-fated first stik was that it was a real pain to remove batteries for recharging so the new stik has been modified for their easy access. A cowl is being fabricated to house the onboard current/voltage monitor and also direct airflow across the brick size batteries via the air scoops on the side. The IMAA required kill switch is shown atop the cowl. I have been taking pictures this time to show you all. Here are pics of the Eflite 160, the Castle 110 ESC, and the Thunder Power 6,000mah batteries in place. Also included is a picture of the camera mount with the sony DV cam. Notice the little servo driven tailwheel that operates the zoom control. It works great! The tilt servos are easily seen in this picture. If you look close you can also see the ball link for the pan servo linkage. After we get this bird back in the air I will be adding a second small camera dedicated to monitoring the volt/amp meter. An electronic switch will be used to switch from the main camera to check fuel consumption.

And they thought the stik could not be made to look uglier!

Bill

S_Dave

Bill,

That is some OUTSTANDING work you display here! You watch outNASA will be coming to see if they can sign you up!
Looks like you have done a lot of planning on the ole Stik and have adopted a systems engineering approach.
That Eflite 160 looks like it will have no trouble powering the plane and all the goodies. We'll be looking forward to reading your reports (and photos/videos I hope) about how well it flies.
Keep up the good work and thanks for sharing these in-progress pictures.

Send us some more rainGeorgia's getting pretty dry (still).
Cheers,

Dave

wjglynn

Dave,

Thanks for the compliments! The powerplant and camera mount were both proven out on the stik we crashed. This plane leaps into the air with as much or more authority as with the G-38. Overall weight adversely impacted the low speed handling which led to the crash. When you pull the plug on the throttle it is definitely coming down. I am not expecting much change in weight with the new mods. I preliminarily balanced the plane early on by stacking the batteries on top of the fuselage to determine where to cut the holes in the sides. I plan to perform final balancing using the other battery packs. The camera mount took a little heat in the crash but was easily repaired. The secondary camera should keep us keenly aware of battery consumption. We have recently had some decent flying days but with some pretty harsh crosswinds.

Bill

Aady pitt

I surely like the lift master, how are the reviews on it as far as character of structure and flying?
___________________________
Aady
Addiction Recovery Mississippi

wjglynn

Dave,

One of the battery packs for the E-Stik went bad so we had to send it back. I went back to my gas Stik and fabricated a fixed mount for my small Aiptek DV. Here is some of the video shot last weekend. This is proof to everyone that good video can be gotten with a gasser (G-38). With no camera mount I had 9oz. of lead and the reciever battery half way to the tail so the 6oz Aiptek and wooden mount was a slam dunk to install. No telemetry or PTZ here, just the DV cam strapped into a foam padded mount with velcro. My flying buddy Jim Copeland did the honors with the transmitter. I am not nearly precise enough in my flying skills to produce the video results I want.

http://rcuvideos.com/item/73CWSR7V5KNBNJWN

Hope to get the batteries back soon to continue on the E-Stik!

Bill