what I want to know is why you guys don't have ramjets/pulsejets on yours... heh THAT would be cool. also would this thing be more stable if all the blades moved at top speed and you just had a VERY simple swash on all of them so you could only ajust the pitch of each blade enabling 3D flying? I thing that would be pretty neat, or could you have one monster motor in the center (slightly lower than the rest of the heli for added stability) and have that with 4 belts going to each blade with my swash Idea inplace, do you think it would work, or not?

PS: just some ideas, I don't have one but I thought it might be cool it this thing was 3D enabled...

Hi Roxy. I have found that the DF is easier to fly if you get it up around 15 feet with the TI enabled. It gives you time to gain control. So far I have had mine up to 30 feet and at distances of 100 feet. This does not mean I had full control, but at least some control. I did note that when I could not gain altitude, my power trim was set to low. Once changed, no problem.

My next step is to gain a measure of full control. I am only crashing about 65% of the time. The other are the worst landing you ever saw.

John

I don't know John about your having the !QUOT!worst landing!QUOT! Anyone who's been flying a while will have a few great crash stories...

I too had my times of crashing. Between RCToys, Spectrolutions and Airdyn. I am sure I put them all on the map with my rotor purchases. But you know what I found? I found that it was not all my doing. Yes, like most I crashed and burned due to my inexperience. But the learning curve got worse and worse instead of better. And after sending the board back and forth for repairs it is finally running the way it should.

The one thing that happened was that I had the board repaired again and at the same time I won an auction for the frame stiffeners. The new board and the stiffeners went back on the flyer at the same time. Given that, I don't know what helped the control issues but the flyer is soooo much more stable. Literally I can give it full throttle and shoot it up like a rocket (without Ti) and still have control. I believe in the stiffeners. I thought oh ya, sure, another 20 bucks for some CF tubing. But after winning the auction for 5.00 I took the plunge. Knowing now what I do, I would have easily paid the 20.00 for the CF tubing and associated fittings. So I am not sure it was the stiffeners or the new board or a combination of both but whatever it was, it is resolved! Whoooo hooooo!

Personally the Ti kinda scares me. When I fly it I feel like I have total control of it. But when the Ti flies it it gets the famous (infamous) Ti wobble and does some other autopilot stuff that I don't fully appreciate. I am also thinking that the Futaba transmitter that came with it is not all that good for a helicopter. The trims are really course, and limited. I am upgrading to a spectra equipped hitec transmitter that has digital trims and more fine trim. We'll see... Anyway, just my two cents. By the way, keep all your snapped rotors. I kept mine and will bronze them (like baby shoes) as time permits!

MJ

I can offer advise. Just KNOW that you are going to crash, and crash a lot. It is the nature of the beast. I am a retired peace officer and I teach martial arts professionally. I tell my students that when they go into battle, expect to get hit, kicked, bitten, shot, stabbed, etc. So when it does happen to them they won't be surprised. They are much calmer, and concentrate on learning instead of worrying about being hurt. After you accept the inevetible, the rest is easy.

[X(]
wow! Thanks alot for all your advice. I realize now that I have to be mentally prapared for a lot of crashes specially after reading MarkJester . The only major problem I have is that I live in AFRICA. So I guess I have to keep alot of stock within my reach. What do you guys think I have to keep in stock apart of the Rotor Blades. . Draganfly innovations have sent me a crash kit ( 2 sets of spare blades, 2 motor mounts, 2 CF tubes). How durable are the motors? Do they fail very regularly?? What about the other electronics. Has anybody suffered with the onboard electronic board?? So far I have managed to chip off a very small piece of the rotor blade. I should have taped the blade with tape. My mistake. I am still hovering between the floor and 1 foot Ha Ha ha.

I still haven't taken it outside to fly. Still getting the hang of it indoors. I am seriously trying to get a motorcycle battery as I only have one li-poly battery and every time it drains out I have to wait for 1.5 hours before I can fly again. I have the tether cord. I am hoping that the big morotcycly batter will not destroy the circuity board. Anybody used to tether cord to learn to fly????

If I were you I would get some extra engine mounts, CF strut tubes, extra nylon rotor screws and maybe a main gear. Oh, if you felt like it I would get a vertical riser too. There is a weak, thin point on there that cracks very easily. It is easily repaired with epoxy though. I have an extra motor or two also. Motors take quite a beating as with a bad landing they are the first things to hit. You may consider adding those to your list. That is, unless you want to wait forever for new parts to get to you. I learned this early on.

Pretty much everything plastic is subject to breakage when learning to land. The only thing that is safe, usually, is the board itself. But if you slide into a landing instead of dropping into one the flyer can flip over hurting the vertical board. The plastic canopy helps protect this. After talking with Mike at Spectrolutions he said that he does not fly the canopy as he feels it could interfere with the Ti sensors. I made up a CF flat stock roll cage for my board. It works much, much better than the canopy and does not interfere with the Ti operation. Email me if you have any further questions. [email protected] Thanks

Nice of RCtoys to let us know about this. I did notice that the canopy was really snug around the Ti sensors. I even had to cut out some of the plastic that contacted one of the sensors from improper fabrication. I wouldn't mind seeing your rollcage design Mark.

Now that the flyer is finally working perfectly I can clean off my bench and take a moment to take a picture or two of the cage. I have named it the pimp-daddy roll cage....

ok. I'm not going to ask why that is. Hoping to see some pics soon, though.

Hi! just wanted to know as to what power rating the draganfly is. I want to attach the tether cord to a motorcycle battery. Now the Li-poly battery which is shipped with the VT-i is rated 2000 mAh 11.1 volt. The Motorcycle battery is rated 12V 35 amps. There is no 11.1 volt motorcycle battery available out here. There is another battery which I have seen which is 12 Volts 2.5 Ah / 10 hr. This is a much smaller battery than the 12v 35 Ah. Could someone advice me on which motorcycle battery to go for. I don't want to connect the batter and smoke the circuit board of the VT-i.

Roxy, 11.1 or 12V doesn't matter. They're close. Plus the DF board has a regulator onboard to provide the needed +5V for the CPU. The motors won't care about the .9V difference. Plus, the power ratings (2000mAh) just mean the battery can supply that amount of current for that period of time. The DF board will use the same current regardless if it is connected to the motorcycle battery or the battery packs, it will just take longer to drain the motorcycle battery.

Just make sure the polarity is correct, that's all.

Hope this helps.

Here is a picture of a very rough support I made to replace the plastic canopy on the DF. After 3 crashes, I can say it works! I had planned on making a cross support, but using just one works fine. The plastic wrape underneath is the method I use to save damage in a crash. It too is rough, but works nevertheless.

Also, there is a listing on Ebay for 8 rotor blades that are twice the thickness of DF standard blades. I bought the set last week and can say that are so brittle that they break about twice as easy as the standard ones. I did let the seller know by the way. To me, they were a waste of $24.00, I got two flights out them. Just a note in case others may want to try them.

John

Hello everybody,

I am new French DF addict. I am a beginner and you will see very qickly that my English is very bad [] ! Sorry.
I had the same problem of vibration with my eyecam as lots of people in this forum, but I found a solution ...
I have replaced the original arm of the eyecam with a new one made with silicon and copper wire. And then miracle !
No more vibration ... Here is the first pictures of the new arm, the video will coming soon.

Bye.

Fabrice.

That pretty nifty! Could you please explain how to cast the silicone arm. I wouldn't mind tring that. Can't wait to see the video.

I made two half matrix with bearing ball to let a place for the hole. Then, I put the copper wire in place, close the two matrix, and cast the silicone.
That's all.
I tried four models : one with copper wire, one with brass wire, one with steel wire, one with nothing. The last one is too flexible.
The video are coming next week because now it's raining. Yesterday I made a little test but TI was disable due to cloudy sky,
then my flight seem's like a flea drop !

Wow fmorestin that looks great. I see many emails in your future from people here wanting to try your silicone arm

Hope you can post a video soon. I have mounted my camera with a velcro setup that has most of the vibration gone but still can see some with certain situations, accelerating, strong ascent etc. If you have zero vibration coming through then I GOTTA GET ME ONE OF THOSE! Good work, keep us posted !

Hi draganfliers. I would like to buy few lithium Polymer Battery packs since I only have one and can't fly for too long. Anybody knows of any place I can purchase reasonably priced battery packs??

Great solution to a problem.

Have you considered offering the silicon arms for sale?

John

Yeah I'd buy one of though arms!

Thanks. For the moment I can't write "have zero vibration coming certain situations ..." it's too soon. I hope the weather will go less bad in the futur to test the new arm in severe conditions !

hi draganfliers. Please let me know as to where you guys buy your battery packs!!! I would like to purchase few of them. I believe the ones at dragonfly innovations are a bit expensive. But if there's no choice then I have to procure it from them. Thanks in advance.

I have purhased both of my replacement batteries at my local hobby shop. They can seen on EBay too. Both of them are the Thunder Power, 3 cell 2100 mah. Use a thunder charger for one and the stock draganflyer charged for the other so I can charge both at the same time. http://www.thunderpower-batteries.co...batteries.html

fmorestin: hey you're english is much better than most actually...heh, but how do you make a mold out of metal? I've been wanting to do that before (for my own uses) and have no clue, can it be made out of inexpensive (easy to find) equipment? or do you work for a compandy that uses that kind of stuff and that's just part of the job (if so what do you use?)