Shenanigans in the sky
After being approached by an elderly gent telling me I wasn’t supposed to be flying my small quadcopter in a specific countryside area, I decided to investigate the detailed rules and regulations. I had to speak with NATS and the CAA to get to the bottom of it due to some of the language used in the notices and the linkage to maps and terminology that only a qualified pilot would know how to interpret.
Just getting to grips with my new FPV setup on the TBS Discovery. The quality of the video in the Fat Shark goggles is low definition, so it’s going to take a bit of getting used to before I feel comfortable flying it. Watching the GoPro HD video back, you can’t help but think “But that’s what I want to be seeing in my goggles as I fly!”. Alas it’s not going to happen for a few years. I see the Kopterworx guys are playing with the Paralinx Arrow HD Tx/Rx units. I’m sure they get somewhere close to HD quality, but they’re about £1,000 and I’d need to get better goggles (like the Zeiss Cinemizers at £600), and I’m just not ready to spend that kind of money when you know these things will drop drastically in price in the next couple of years. No, I’ll stick with what I’ve got. If Trappy and similar can get the results they’re getting from current VGA definition video, then I’m sure I can too.
Overall, I’m happy with the video quality and smoothness from the GoPro, so now I need to start planning some proper video capture and short quad movie ideas. Watch this space!
MUSIC: Finished Symphony by Hybrid (awesome track!)
After installing the FPV equipment on my reliable TBS Discovery quad, it transformed itself into an uncontrollable meteor.
Postmortem analysis revealed that*something* caused the Naza to go into manual mode after take off (i.e. zero flight and levelling assistance) and I freaked out and crashed it into the ground. I’ve never flown manual before so it freaked me out, but if I’d known that was what happened I would have acted differently and either tried to level it manually, or better still kill the radio controller and go into failsafe mode. Hard lesson learnt!
Cost of repair = £30 … replacing shattered arms and props. Everything else was bruised but okay.
CORRECTION: after rebuild and testing, I discovered that the Naza GPS function was not working properly (it would flash with a yellow light only in GPS mode, and did not to the usual flashing of green/red lights). Also, the quad was handling erratically on test flights, to the point it made me feel nervous and out of control flying it. I had no other choice but to buy a replacement Naza GPS module to see if that would fix the problem. Happily it did, otherwise I would have been faced with the painful prospect of buying another Naza to see if that fixed the issue. So, final crash bill was as follows:
Cost of repair = £152 … replacing shattered arms, props and Naza GPS module.
