sawdust

My Feedback: (7)

I almost bought one of these at Toledo.

Does anyone have some experience with this unit that they can share?

Thank you.

VinceC

I bought one recently mainly to monitor the battery voltages as I had just lost an expensive scale glider due to a faulty charger. I figure the Picolario could save me in future. I fly mainly on the slope and the height information and vario isn't that necessary but interesting. However when I go to aerotow it will come into its own. Most serious thermal fliers use them to find lift.
OK - they are expensive and I thought for a long time whether I should buy one, but now I am convinced

MTT

My Feedback: (8)

I now have the picolario, and before that, I had the Skymelody.
The Skymelody also has a low batery warning, although it is not by voice readout, but by a low frequency hum, when your voltage gets down.
At the time, about a year ago , Uwe Schulz, the mfgr the Skymelody, was introducing the Skypanel, an add-on unit to the Skymelody, which would give voice readout of altitude, voltage, temperature, and also served as flight log.
However, deliveries were postponed several times, so in the end I sold it and got the picolario, and am very happy with it.
Although the voice readout of the altitude is nice to have, for me the most important function is the readout of the battery voltage, which has saved me one sailplane at least, so far.

In my case, using a thermal sniffer, be it the Skymelody or picolario, has definetly increased my flight times. It will help yuo to find and stay in the lift, ot get out of sink areas, even when your plane is too far away for you to see if it's climbing or sinking.

In short : I wouldn't want to do without it anymore, now my r/c gear installations always are planned with the picolario in mind....

Tim Green

I've got a Picolario - only used it once - but it did indeed allow me to increase my flight time. Showed me rising air I would have missed without it. I'm a believer now, and look forward to many more flights with it - and then I expect my thermalling without it to be improved too.

Landi

My Feedback: (1)

Hi

I have a picolario and it is great once u get used to it even the busards will come to the place where u are circling.

With that little piece of technologie I'm up there while nobody else is.

The sensitivity is so great that it will tell u any small thermal current.

Wtih the picolario in my bigger gliders 4 and 6 meters I can risk to circle even at 100 ft and get me back up there.

It will eliminate the guessing.

Also the batterie monitoring is a great feature.


Saludos

Landi

davef

I’ve seen plenty of discussion on the Picolario and loads of questions about how it works, so I thought I’d post a video with the Picolario output recorded on the sound track.

The video can be seen [link=http://loolee.org/projects/aircam/video/vid005.html]here[/link].

Sorry it's only windows media format, converting to apple video lost too much quality.
Hope this helps.

Dave

Dazzaz

Wow... I totally envy you. Beautiful flying area. Beautiful aircraft.

davef

Heh, thanks Dazzaz. If you look carefully at the video though, you can see that I’m flying and surrounded by showers in the distance. It really was a case of flying between the rain while I had the chance.

I’d recommend the Cularis. It does well for a piece of foam

Merlin1205

My Feedback: (2)

wow very nice scenery there !!!!
Thanks so much for sharing that !!!!!
I have a picolario in my Super AVA and it has most definitley increased my flight times.
It is simple to use and setup and does what it should quite well. I would recommend one.
Though I can say mine has never registered the altitude Davef has
Was she getting pretty small on ya DaveF? Or are you one of those guys with eyes like an eagle?
Hehe

Happy Flying,

Tim

davef

Hey Merlin, thanks for the comments.

I guess at 2,000 feet altitude I’m pushing my eyesight. It’s more about guiding the aircraft around with gentle nudges and then waiting for the response. It did get pretty small, though given more ideal conditions I could probably manage smaller.

I may have a go up to 2,500 feet next assuming I get the right conditions, though the day that video was shot I was dodging storms. Before attempting anything higher though ill reprogram the failsafe to that the Picolario is shut down in the case of interference giving the JR RC receiver the best chance of hearing signals, also ill set up the brakes and descent just in case.

For what is essentially a piece of foam though, the Cularis is an excellent piece of kit, and it flies from a relatively small area (landing field about 500 feet long).

The point of that video was just to show those who don’t use a Variometer and are interested exactly what extra information the pilot gets. For the recording I left a spare receiver in my garage with a recorder running, so the Picolario 10 mw transmitter was penetrating 2 floors of my house and a pile of wood and brick.

That model uses 2,100mah batteries and are good for about 7 minutes of climb, so at 1,000 feet per minute I estimate that it’s possible (assuming I had control and eyesight to match) to power the model to 7,000 feet without thermals.

Cant wait to shoot more video from it.

I also started documenting the airborne camera project on the web. You can see what I have so far [link=http://loolee.org/aircam]here[/link].

Dave

plane-o-joe

My Feedback: (2)

Can the picolario still be found? I searched the web and didn't find it. Anyone know a web site?

Bad_Daddy

[link=http://www.google.com/search?q=+PICOLARIO+Telemetry+System&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-USfficial&client=firefox-a]http://www.google.com/search?q=+PICOLARIO+Telemetry+System&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-USfficial&client=firefox-a[/link]
was the search,
[link=http://www.kennedycomposites.com/accessories-picolario.html]http://www.kennedycomposites.com/accessories-picolario.html[/link] is halfway down the page.

You're welcome.