R/C Planes
Been playing around with some R/C Planes again. I use to do this about 15 years ago, but sort of got busy and the gas powered ones were a pain to keep running well (and messy) and I seemed like I was always repairing the planes more than flying them. But now, they have really come a long way in the foam planes (Depron and EPP) for strength and super light weight. Also, the motors and batteries are producing some insane power to weight ratios. These are brushless 3-phase motors, weighing under 24g on many and lithium polymer (LiPo) batteries, that can typically carry 2200mAh at 12.6v for less than 8oz.

I've even sort of been thinking about dabbling in some of the FPV, which is First Person Video flying, mostly with electrics and big wing loading soarers. You fly the plane remotely and have a very light weight camera mounted on the plane (many times, connected to servos and a gyro head tracking unit that responds to your head moving around) and it remotely broadcasts the video back to a receiver unit that you watch on head mounted goggles. There is all sorts of stuff to put on there, including full video layer HUD display and even GPS tracking, waypoint, autopilot and speed/altitude information all real time.


- posted by Jeff @ 12:26 PM | 0 comments