faceman

John
Great looking machine. Im sure it will tame those desert trails nicely.

Aframomum

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Hi guys,

JPEE,

Your new Polaris looks like a lot of fun...I am sure you were exhausted after that round trip but it is worth it!

Nick,

Sorry to hear about your 450. Still, it sounds like you are having much more fun with your Whiplash and those touch and go's.

Congrats on getting a decent return for your Spektrum gear...always nice to feel like you made off well with a sale.

Glenn,

Hi there to my East Coast neighbor! Did you guys get anything from Beryl last week? Can't believe we nearly had a Cat 1 before hurricane season officially starts. Needless to say we got together our hurricane supplies now.

I understand completely on the thinning down the fleet...easier to upkeep 1 or 2 heli's rather than 5 or 6 (although I'm sure having 5 or 6 heli's is quite nice ). I'm really sorry to hear of the outcome of the MHA field issue...flying locations are such a rarity and to have such a nice field pulled is truely disappointing. (you could always move to Florida...there are 2 great heli flying clubs in the Orlando area...)

Been flying my plane and maybe one mcpx flight each week...work and home projects have been keeping most of my time. Hopefully now that June is here things will slow down a bit and I can fly more.

Take care guys,

Mark

evdreamer

Glenn,

I am enjoying staying up late again. I think better at that time and come up with a lot of ideas. My hours at work will gradually increase. One of my co-workers finally found a full time job after graduating. It will be nice to have some spending money again.

I have been working on my little meter a lot. My lithium version got pretty big with through hole parts, so I decided to work on a lead acid version which can measure two batteries. I have been testing out a lot of ideas. So far the the error is less than or equal to .1% compared with my fluke meter. While I was at it I decided to design a balancer circuit for it too.

John,

That looks like a fun toy.

Mark,

Yeah, the Whiplash is a lot more fun to fly than the 450.

That is good you have been flying some.

Nick

rotarydoc

Hey guys,

JPEE,

That's a fine machine you have there, looks like it could be a lot of fun, for sure!

I know how hot it must have seemed, my dad lives in Havasu, and I hear how hot it is from him...and NO THANKS!!

Glad you have a new toy to play with...

Mark,

Didn't get much at all from Beryl...hardly notice it, maybe a few showers and what not, but nothing much...not like you got down your way...

Glad you are still managing a flight a week or so on the MCPX, I really should get mine out more. Mine actually needs an elevator servo, just been too lazy/cheap to do it...it's missing a tooth on the gear, but it still flies pretty well even with that...

Nick,

I hear you on staying up later, I've always been a night owl...left to my own devices, I'll stay up till 3AM, and get up at 11... Unfortunately, work prevents that most of the time...

Glad you are still tinkering with the meter, and having fun with it. I am having some fun with the little phone/android tinkering.

Hope you guys all have a great weekend, talk to ya later on....

Glenn

evdreamer

Glenn,

I was happy with the results I was getting with the circuit on the bread board, so I ordered a circuit board for the circuit. It should arrive on Tuesday. Hopefully this will be my first successful design. There were flaws in all my previous circuit boards/designs.

Huckfest is going on again at my field through Sunday. It got some media attention in the news paper and there is a live video of the event online. http://lincolnskyknights.org/HuckVision.php There aren't any pro heli pilots there that I know of, so I am going to stop by and see if they want me to do a demo and watch all the airplanes.

Nick

evdreamer

Guys,

My circuit boards came a day early, so I assembled one of them for testing. It looks like I finally have a successful project. The Voltages are accurate and I have a simple balancing program working. It will probably take awhile to perfect the balancing routine, but this is pretty cool!!!

JPEE

Hi nick, congratulations on getting your board and project completed. The feeling of success must taste like sweet victory! It has been a long time coming and I know how much work you put in that project once again congratulations. No flying for me been busy with many other things and this Thursday we are going to take out our RZR and give it a maiden run through the mountain fire roads. I hope to get some GOPRO shots from inside the cab. If they come out I'll post something let you guys see how it goes.

evdreamer

John,

Thanks. I worked on a more advance balancing program today and it works sooo much better than my simple program. I set it to maintain the batteries at less than or equal to 10mV apart. The charger is much happier now. I also programmed it to display the total Voltage and the Voltage difference between the batteries. Now I have a good platform to work on a Lithium version. The Voltmeter circuit would work with Lithium batteries with a couple of different parts, but the balancer circuit won't work at the lower Voltages. I will try to get some pictures of it working tomorrow.

Have fun on Thursday.

Nick

evdreamer

Guys,

Here is my lead acid balancer.

JPEE

Nick,

Very cool! Are those the boards you had made? They are so clean and your readouts are clear as well. It is interesting how can measure the two lead acid batteries? It is like measuring two cells kind of, each one being 12 volts DC.


Congrats there Nick


John

evdreamer

John,

Yeah, these are the boards that I designed. My Hyperion charger can charge two lead acid batteries at a time, but it can't balance the two batteries. So my balancer acts just like the built in balancer of the charger. It measures each battery Voltage and tries to keep both the same. I need to get some spacers and screws to hold up the LCD. Right now I am just using what I have to hold it up. I have two more boards that I want to try some new parts on.

Nick

JPEE

Hello me, when your boards are balancing do they get warm as they are burning off the access voltage?

evdreamer

John,

The boards don't get warm, but the power resistors do. I designed it to have as much of the power dissipated through the resistors, so I wouldn't need heat sinks.

Nick

JPEE

10-4 Nick, that was smarter way to disapate the heat by far.

rotarydoc

Hey guys,

Nick, your board looks very, very nice, congrats, it looks like all your efforts and planning have paid off well...congrats again, I know it means a lot to you!

Hope you had fun at the huckfest if you went...looks like that link isn't working at the moment...[&o]

JPEE,

Hope your testing with the new off road vehicle went well...and you got some nice Go Pro video as well.


Not much new going on here, I met up with Rob at the plane field last Saturday, he test flew the SDX, and then paid me for it. I was glad to see it go to a decent pilot, who will enjoy it, I'm sure.

It was cool, it fired right up, after not being run for nearly a year and a half...and it flew like a dream for him, which I was glad to see...(was hoping for no big surprises!).

As normal for these things, I took a huge loss, I let it go pretty much RTF minus the RX for $350. I had nearly 4x that in it....[X(] Oh well, I enjoyed it while I had it.

Hope you guys have a great weekend and upcoming week...

Talk to ya...

Glenn

evdreamer

Glenn,

Thanks. I ordered parts to finish off my other two boards. Some of my parts on my current board are becoming obsolete, so I am going to try out some newer parts. I want to try out some different chips that are half the cost and shouldn't affect the accuracy. I also want to retrofit a new design into the board. If it works it will be a little cheaper than my current design. So far the only problem I have found is it takes a long time to balance when there is a big Voltage difference. So I will be trying out some lower resistance power resistors to see if that helps. Once I get those boards put together I want to work on a Lithium version. I want that one to be daisy chained, so it can have multiple batteries being balanced at once kind of like my Hyperion charger can charge a 28cell LiPo battery with a network cable.

I enjoyed watching the giant planes fly at Huckfest. There was a nice demo by a pro airplane pilot, but it wasn't as energetic as a helicopter demo usually is. They turned the live camera off after Sunday when the Huckfest ended. Maybe that is why the link doesn't work anymore.

Sorry you had a large loss with the SDX sale.

Nick

Aframomum

My Feedback: (10)

Hi everyone,

JPEE,

Are you having a blast with your new 'toy'? How did Thursday's maiden go?

BTW, I never did thank you for all the info you sent me on the cassette to digital conversion...I saved all of it so I can go through it at a later time. Thanks for doing all the research for me!

Nick,

Well, I just learned something new in that the reason balancers get warm is b/c they are converting excess electricity to heat in the resistors. Never knew that before so neat.

Congrats on your newest design, so do you send your idea to the company and they make the board for you or is this something you are creating at home? It is very cool looking.

Glad Huckfest was a success this year, did they have any 700 (or even 800) class heli's demo'ing? It is kinda crazy to see some of those huge airplanes doing stuff so low to the ground but the heli's do take it in the end.

Did you get a chance to fly there?

Glenn,

Sorry to hear about you having to let the SDX go, but at least you sold it to someone local so you can still get the chance to see it fly. You still have the 500 to fly at the soccer fields right? Maybe in time a new field will become available that will be closer to you.

Not much flying happening around here...the weather has been too hot to enjoy being outside so just taking it easy for now. Just waiting for the next cool front.

Mark

JPEE

Hello Mark,

I believe you did say thanks of the VHS to CD/DVD kit. But your just than kinda guy to be respectful dot the I's and cross those Tee's. Your a good man Charlie Brown.

The maiden got pushed back last week. My buddy that was going along on his quad got it out of the shop on Tuesday, rode it up and down the street and it was fine. The next day he tried to start it to load it up and no go and gas running out of the carb all over his engine! So he had to take it back. Just today in fact Monday the 18th we rescheduled for this Wednesday. I hope it all comes together[>:]

Nothing new here. I hovered down in the back yard two packs for the 500 that were 9 days old on a full charge (bad boy). Just haven't had the time nor the inkling to fly..... at all. I have a bunch of things going on but even with that what is scary is, I don't miss flying. Remember I have flown nearly every day when weather allows for years now. So perhaps a little time away is the cure, much like how weather effects you, Nick, and Glenn. Nothing wrong with a little time off right!


Smiles Guys

evdreamer

Mark,

Some auto engineers for electric vehicles have designed balancers that can remove the charge out of one battery and put it into a lower charge battery. I saw one schematic on the internet and it looked pretty complex. I assembled my two other boards. I am liking the results of the new design/part change compared to my first one. The error is only .15%-.2% The balance current is pretty close to my Hyperion balancers. I have been working on the balancer code for the past few days. It is a big improvement over my past versions. I am one resistor short of finishing off my third balancer. When I powered it on one of my protection circuits kicked in, so that was cool to see that work.

My circuit boards are made my expressPCB. I downloaded their free software. Then when I am done designing the circuit board I send them the files to create the circuit board.

There was an average heli pilot doing a demo with a 90 sized Nitro heli. I don't know if there was any other heli demos, since I only went to one of the four days of the event. I didn't fly during the event.

It has been pretty hot here too.

Nick

JPEE

Hey Guys,

Well after two weeks off I took the 700 out and flew three racks through her. I don't know what came over me buy I did my first auto. I was only up about 25 feet (getting my feet wet) and came in. The auto came off well and I will start doing them from time to time know to make ready for that fateful day when I need it.

We took our RZR out for our first run. My buddy Mike had his 250 quad. I have to tell you, he is 67 and has not ridden in 8 years! I had a time keeping up with him. Oh, the car can kick his butt over all but she is brand new so I want to break her in slow.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJiRfpBYN-8[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U3dr9hemo8[/youtube]

JPEE

Hi Nick,

WOW it looks like Mark is in for a Doozie of a storm hey. The weather map for Florida does not look good at all for him. I sure hope they are OK?

Aframomum

My Feedback: (10)

Hi guys,

All is okay down here...although it has been raining for the past few days almost non stop...and tonight the winds have been picking up. Going to be keeping an eye on the weather and Debby tonight. Thanks for the well wishes. Guess we really don't need to worry about drought anymore as I'm sure the lakes are filling up nicely.

Mark

Aframomum

My Feedback: (10)

BTW JPEE,

Your video was great...did you mount it to the vehicle b/c there was no vibrations at all. Your friend is a good rider...it seemed like he just attacked that hill with no hesitation or fear. Loved the clear blue sky.

Mark

JPEE

Mark,

Good news your all OK down there. Here are the pics of my GOPRO mounted. I have it set on 720 HD FMS which is the most frames I can shoot at any setting. Fast speed helps stablize the picture a bit. Then YOU TUBE helps too when they prep it for viewing. Over all even the clips right from the camera are great.
I have the GP mounted above my GPS

Aframomum

My Feedback: (10)

Things seem to be settling down for now...about 30 minutes ago the wind was howling and the rain was coming down in sheets. Quite amazing to hear all of this for sure.

JPEE,

You must have spent hours washing all the dust off because that thing shines! That is a nice mount...very stable while driving.

Mark