Project Birs - The Legend of the Eurydice

The second day startet good. The weather was fine and I was really looking forward to this spectacular part of the project that I had right before me.
As the GoPro was lost, I replaced it with the new, glorious Runcam that I've ordered shortly before the project started and I fixed what was broken during the first day.

Then I took the train and went to Court where I've ended the first day. Almost immediately I put the boat into the water and started off.
The first part was still calm and mostly reachable. I thought of nothing bad and was certain to already have good video sequences. Then I took the boat out of the water to cross a big street and put it back in afterwards. From then on the misery had its way.
The hiking path that was marked right aside of the river trough all the valley was acutally right aside of the river but with a lot of hight difference whitch forced me to climb on steep terrain going up and down whenever the boat was in some kind of misery.
The first time such a misery occured was some few meters after I've put the boat back into the water. The hiking path led over a rocky wall whilst the river past almost underneath it. Therefore I could not see nor steer the boat and just saw from afar how it was thrown upside down by some obstacle in the water. I ran further till it was again possible to climb down and access the river. There I found a dam on which the boat was stuck.
I had to cross the knees deep water and find myself a long enough stick to get the boat back to shore. There I checked it, put everything pack in place and put it in the water shortly after the dam.
My approach to follow the river was shortly after interrupted by a bushy under wood that almost hung into the water. I had to climb halfway to the hiking path to be able to walk and lost sight of the Eurydice again. It was just every now and then that I saw her wild red appearing shimmering in the glittering water.
Not after long - the water was fast and turbulent - she turned upside down again. I climbed down but was to slow to reach her. Running to not lose sight of her I was wondering how I could ever manage all the twenty kilometers ahead of me.

Eventually I saw her turning herself up again. Thanks to a good weight management she preferred to sit in the water as she was meant to but still I saw her moving strangely. She even reacted slower to the commands of the radio control that I was still using whenever possible to make her cross white water as smoothly as possible.
I was now pushing myself trough bushes and plants alongside the waterside. I only saw the boat occasionally and was too busy finding my way to be able to steer her. Several times she got stuck and several times I had to go into the water or find a stick to put her back on track. My legs were already starting to hurt.
After another turn the river got wider and was calmer. It was still quite fast but with way less rocks sticking out of it and smoother over the steeper passages. Unfortunately the riverside was wilder and the bushes grew thicker so at a certain point I saw my boat disappearing around a turn while I was stuck in some thorny tendrils.
As I've freed myself I ran as fast as somehow possible but couldn't find the Eurydice any more. She seemed to have vanished in thin air. I crossed the river and to my anger found a way right on the other side of it. I ran back on this side to see the parts of the river that were too close before but still couldn't find her. Somewhat tired and exhausted I decided to move on and finish todays stage.

At around three o'clock I arrived in Delemont where I finished this hike. No Boat, tired and sad I took the train back home and went to bed.


One day later I went out to rescue the Eurydice. I took my drone with me and flew over the river from the last place on where I've seen her. Then I made my way down towards Moutier. The waters were wild and there were many places I could not see from the riverside nor from above as the trees and bushes were blocking my way.
I found three basins of water which I decided for myself could not be passed by the Eurydice in her actual status and so I narrowed down the search area accordingly. Still I had no luck and went home empty handed.

Some time later, when the water level was lower I went to that place again. This time without any electronics but with my bathing suit. As I arrived I went into the water and walked down all the way to the three basins I described before. Every depth was explored and at every turn I imagined whether or not the boat could have passed by itself after this time. Still I could not find the Eurydice. It seemed as if she was sunken to the ground and then down into another universe.

About a month later I finally managed to convince my girlfriend to walk down the "gorges de court" and to see this beautiful part of Jura. It took us about an hour and as we arrived at the place where I lost the Eurydice I looked down into the water and immediately wanted to go and see if I could find her. Fortunately my girlfriend was tired and wanted to finish the hike and take the train home. All the beauty of this valley could not impress her enough to stand for hours aside of a river while her maniac boyfriend was looking for a stupid boat. So we went on on the path and I only looked down occasionally as all of a sudden I saw her. Dirty and broken but still shining bright red was she lying high above the water where I would have never looked for her.
I don't know if somebody had found her and took her up or how she got there but I finally had her again.

Project Birs - Day 1

There was no camera. Of course the DSLR-Camera of my girlfriend was there but it's way to heavy to be put on my boat and also slightly expensive in case anything goes wrong. What could I do in my misery? I went to the next best electronics store and found a half prized GoPro 7 White. Seen, bought, brought home, charged and glued it's socket on the boat. As soon as it was ready I took the train to Tavannes and wandered off to the source of the Birs.


From there on the river passes the town of Tavannes. Either trough private property or underground so I could not use the boat.
Shortly before I left Tavannes the river resurfaced and I put the boat in it. I tested the steering and turned on the GoPro. The boat left and I had to run around a building because of a fence that I could not climb and as I was at the river again, the boat was gone. I ran down the river looking here and there but it had just disappeared. After some I found a branch hanging deep over the water I did not believe that the boat had passed here without getting stuck so I ran all the way back to where I left it. There I finally found it stuck on a piece of wood. Before I was standing on the other side of the river so I did not see it. Now I freed it and together we went for a short distance all happy and peacefully.

Then the river took a sharp turn and after that was a little waterfall. I placed the boat so it would not go trough the wildest part but I made a mistake and so the boat turned over and did not turn back up. The weight of the GoPro on its socket kept the boat in position.

I had to run back, cross the river by a bridge, fight trough a whole lot of bushes before I reached the boat and could put it upright.
From then on it turned several times. Always on the other side of the river of course and always when there was wild water or a branch of wood. I ended up walking trough the cold water so I could reach it as the last bridge was too far.
As the Eurycide got stuck under a three that was hanging over the water, I did not think much but shook it from the riverside. The Boat turned upside down and went further. By the time I managed to catch it, the GoPro was gone. I walked inside the river up to where the boat has been stuck before but there was no GoPro. I walked down in the river and tried to follow the stream but I could not find it anymore.


After a while I decided to leave the water again. It was the beginning of March after all so the water was still cold and my sneakers and trousers where all wet. I did not have shoes or trousers to change with me as I thought mobility might be key. So far, this was a good decision. My trousers dried quickly and the shoes did not bother me much after the water in them warmed up.
Anyways the loss of the gopro with all the video that I've made so far was quite demotivating and I was not sure wether to go to the next trainstation and abort it all or to continue with just the DSLR and take some pictures of the boat while driving it.

As the Trainstation was on the same way as I wanted to go anyways, I put the boat without any camera in the water again and went on. Surprisingly the boat was stable as can be in any rough water. A point that I knew before but didn't really consider: keep the weight as deep in the boat as possible. The GoPro-Socked is propably the worst solution for an RC-Boat ever.

As I reached Reconvillier I had to take the boat out of the water and carry it through the town as the river went cross the railroad and then passed a steep valley which I could not pass.
By the time I reached the trainstation I was too proud to give up. I went on leaving Reconvillier and followed the Birs as close as possible. Whenever I could I put the boat in the water but it prooved difficult to take pictures and steer the boat at the same time Luckily I still managed to get some pictuers.

Project Birs

After a long abstinence from this project, I revived it rather unconsciously by buying a boat.
Understanding how a boat works and what it is depending on should help me understand what is important to build the fuselage of the kingfisher. Also, RC-Boats are made from different materials than RC-Planes so I see some new things there as well.

The boat that I bought was the Riverine Patrol Boat made by Pro Boat. I was insecure wether to buy this one or the Alpha Patrol Boat but the Riverine seemed to be less difficult to modify and did not have spaces where water would collect and stay. Instead it has a little ramp for vehicles to come on board. I might use that in the future.

For now I did some minor modifications mostly in design and then painted it red. The name was given by my girlfriend and it's "Eurydice", coming from greek mythology.

The project followed soon after. I had one week of holidays planned and in this time I then planned to follow a river from its source to it's end. Therefore I chose a river that was not too long and maybe a bit adventurous.
The river is called Birs. Its source is in Tavannes in the bernes part of Jura from where it passes as a mere brook through the valleys.

The Birs is 75km long so my idea was to do 15km a day. This way I have it done in five days and I have enough time to handle the boat.

To record my journey I thought of my Runcam 2 That I put in a transparent Tupperware. This way it's protected from water while still filming. As I received the Tupperware that I had to order online - no store around sold see trough Tupperware - I realized that I could easily fit tow runcams on top of each other. How glorious, this way I had could film with one to the front and one to the back.

Inspired by this Idea I ordered a second Runcam 2 and more battery packs. Then I went to the test drive with the boat. It did not take on too much water and handled waves and turbulent water quite well. Unfortunately my old Runcam got wet and broke beyond repair while the new one was not yet delivered. It was one day before the project was supposed to start.

The Catalina Disaster

As I’ve already wrote when I recieved the Catalina, it was made pretty poorly. Now, just few months later I can tell it was actually crap. But let’s start from where we last finished.

After the day at the lake and the first crash I went home and fixed what was broken and needed to be fixed. On my way to and from the lake I realized how unhandy the shape of the fuselage and this huge wing of the Catalina were. They didn’t even properly fit in my plane bag.
Some days later I rented a small car, put the Catalina inside and went to an airfield for rc planes. There, with all the space and the perfect conditions, nothing could go wrong. At least that’s what I thought. Shortly after arriving I had the Catalina ready. I first tried to start it from the grass but hat to learn that she does not take off properly. Might it be because of the floaters or because of the grass but it didn’t work. I therefore decided to start her from my hand as I’ve already done with some planes. It worked similar to the first time. She took off nicely, gained some air, stalled mid air and came straight down. Unfortunately she did not have as much hight as she had at the lake and so she crashed nose first into the ground.

Once more, the propellers were broken. Also the fuselage was deformed and the cap had taken some asymmetrical shape but the worst was the monting of the wing. The styrofoam was broken and the little screws were all lose.
My Idea was to open the styrofoam, remove the plastic threads and put some metal threads in before I  glue the styrofoam back in shape.
As I opened the styrofoam I heard a bang and I had two parts, the left half and the right half of the fuselage, in my hands. It was not just badly glued, they barely used glue at all.

I’m a man of great patience but not a man of great craftsmanship skills. Once the fuselage was in half and I saw how much plastic they added to the threads I put this mess aside and reevaluated the situation.
The plane is big, unhandy and poorly constructed. The fuelage is in two, the color split off wherever I used tape and I used a lot, the styrofoam is deformed and the props - wether they are the right ones for this plane or not - are broken again. So instead of rebuilding something that will most likely never properly fly anyways I broke the hole thing into pieces and threw it into the garbage. Stupid plane.
Now I’m sitting here, slightly ashamed of myself for giving up so easily and a bit concerned if I will ever get the skills necessary to build the Kingfisher.

Speaking of which: Water has a higher density than air so if the wings are fixed in a way that they stay out in the air but lay onto the fuselage once the plane dives into water, it would reduce the resistance under water a great deal. Should that not be possible with a spring? We’ll see.

Also I uploaded a new video on youtube. Have a look:

A day at the lake

A home built Dornier from the exhibition

Some days ago my fellow model plane club members and I went to an exhibition of model plane producers. They showed the latest products in all branches of remote controlled stuff. Ships, Cars, Drones and Planes were equally presented. I went straight to the propeller producers and got myself some cutting edge airscrews. Back home I mounted them on the Catalina and finally got her ready for her maiden flight.

If you take a good look you see a monkey
and a plane

The next day - by accident - I met some friends at a lake and of course brought her there. I was a fresh day in autumn and a stiff breeze was blowing towards the lakeside. As I am used by the Easy Glider that one can start with almost any wind as long as you start against it, I knew no fear and prepared the Flying Boat for her maiden.
I put an 3 cell Lithium Polymer Battery (3S LiPo) which is slightly overpowered for the Catalina and had to install the Camera on her tail to balance the battery. To prevent entering water I put some tape on the gaps between the cap in front and the fuselage and I covered the camera with a lot of tape. Then I checked everything and put the Catalina in to the water. As the wind blew her towards the shore I gave her some throttle to put her in position and then took off.
The takeoff was glorious. As elegant and scale as possible she lifted herself into the air after just some one or two meters of acceleration. She lifted slowly into the air and I thought this would be an awesome flight before many as I’ve brought four batteries. Suddenly she took her nose straight to the ground and I had to catch her with a lot of elevator. Then she turned towards the forest behind me and quicker than I could have saved her again she crashed into the next tree and hung in its branches.
It took me some serious climbing to get her back down.

Leftovers after the crash

On the ground I found my glorious new propellers both partially damaged, one of the engine cover that protect the engine from splashing water slightly broken and one floater off the wing.
On my way home I already ordered new propellers - I know the producer now. Tomorrow I might do some glueing on the plastic parts and put some pictures online so that in a week or so I can install the new propellers and get her up again. If she flies as she did at first, it will be a very docile and elegant plane that might merit some upgrades but first there needs to be further testing.

For the video of the maiden flight check here.

The Catalina in her element

Catalina - The building

As it is the sense of the project to fly a plane out of the air into water and back up in the air, I bought myself a so called flying boat. My choice was the Catalina from Dynam.

The Catalina is a “Flying Boat”. This means it has a Body like a ship and wings like a plane. Therefore it can land and start from water. This kind of plane was used in WW II. As Bombers, Rescue and transport planes. Some of them were incredibly huge. Today flying boats are mostly used for firefighting. The most famous of the firefighting planes is the Canadair_CL-415.

The fuselage after my first corrections

As I recieved my Catalina, I was very excited. My first plane able to land on water and swim. I’ve read tons of websites and saw many videos on youtube. One can not imagine all the things I wanted to modify. It should be completely waterproof, have one of the windows in the back able to be opened  so I could put a camera there and film in the passenger view, the floats should be able to be retractable and the whole plane should appear in dark black and bright orange / red.

Today I finished most of the plane. It has none of the above features. Let me show you why and how I managed the building.

By the time I unpacked the Catalina, I realized that the quality of the pre made steps was quite poor. The glue did not keep the plane together properly, the colour was already split off in some spots and the GFK parts on the bottom looked like they were glued on by me instead of a professional.

The white line is glue that I had to add

Most of all I was disturbed by those open gaps on the top of the fuselage. I used a specific glue for styrofoam and held the parts together with some duct tape. Then I left it for the night to dry. The next day as I removed the duct tape I had to realize that some of the colour stayed on the tape and left some ugly white stains on the plane.

The colour split off

As I got instructed in several forums, I shortened the carrier of the floats by two to four centimeters and put it in a steeper angle so it would not function as a hook in the water when the plane would be taking off or landing. To do this I cut the floaters open, removed the carriers, shortened them and glued all back together. As you can imagine, the floaters are barely yellow now.

Meanwhile I ordered a reciever from my trusted RC-Store. A great tool from Spektrum, created for full GFK planes with a big range and super fast data transmission. It was as expensive as it sounds.

When it arrived, I put the parts of the catalina together as it was written in the description.

The description was quite simple. Every step has it’s image and there are not that many parts that one could get a problem. I only made some minor mistakes that I could have avoided if I’d have read the instructions properly.

Former Y-Cable now extension

There is this thing with the servo cables that I would like to tell you.

The Catalina has a rudder, an elevator, two ailerons and two engines. In the wings there are two lights that you can turn on and off and set to blink or steady. In the package they deliver you one Y-Cable for the engines so they only take one slot of the reciever and one Y-Cable installed on the Rudder and the Elevator Servo Cables in the fuselage. Even with my little knowledge I knew that you can not put a Y-Calbe on these two Servos.

The Y-Cable takes the signal from the reciever and transmits it to two parts like for example the enginges. These two will therefore always run on the same speed. Or - if you combine the ailerons with a Y-Cable - the servos will always move in the same direction which makes the ailerons move in opposite directions because the servos are installed facing each towards its wing tip. If you combine the rudder and the elevator with the Y-Cable you will have some uncontrollable movement. For example if you put the Y-Cable on the Rudder slot, the rudder will go left and right while the elevator will go up and down accordingly. I should actually try that once I have an old plane ;)

So as I removed the Y-Cable from its wrong place, I thought the servo cables of the ailerons would be long enough so I cut one part of both of the Y-Cables off and used them to extend the cables from the engine to the reciever. Then I put one engine on the throttle slot. This will work as the normal enginge, providing the power to the reciever and getting the throttle signal. Then I took the second engine cable and cut off it’s red cable. The red cable is the + cable and brings power to the reciever. As I just said, the throttle cable already brings power. A second power source could damage the reciever. Then I put the second, castrated, engine on the gear. In the sender I used the “mixer” and put the following settings. 

Cut + Cable from one engine

1. The gear does not have any lever or button as source. If it has a source, you will have trouble programming the following. Believe me, I tried.
2. Throttle and gear move together.
3. There are three flying modes: Flying, landing and water. As on my sender there’s no mode called “water”, I called this mode “throttle”. I put the three modes on a switch with three positions as one is always active.
4. In mode flying, nothing special happens. The two engines move at the same pace.
5. In mode landing, the ailerons move up. The exact percentage has yet to be found out. As default i put it to 75% while moving the elevator down for 10%. At this mode the ailerons have to go into the same direction so the servos will get different signals. Because of that I could not use the Y-Cable on the aileron servos.
6. In mode throttle (water) the two engines move at a different rate as soon as I use the rudder. If the rudder goes to the left, the plane should move to the left. The right engine will turn 15% faster while the left engine will reduce its pace by 15%. Vice versa if the rudder moves to the right. This is used to steer the plane on water while the speed is to low for the rudder to have an effect. This was also the reason why I could not use the Y-Cable on the engines. They get different signals from the sender.

As I finished programming all this - with the Catalina  I learned the most about settings and programming my sender - I wanted to try it out. I installed my super expensive reciever in the plane, bound it to the sender and got an error “beep” from both the controllers. Something was wrong.

Reciever on a mount so it should not get wet in case water enters

Dynam is a chineese enterprise. The fuselage was in a bad quality so my first guess was:

Something is wrong with the engines or the controllers. After a bit of googling I found out that the problem might be the electricity. I tried  with an other battery but had the same result. I tried to bind again, switch on with the throttle stick up and so far and so far. Nothing worked. After some more googling I learned that this beep emits when the throttle slot of the reciever does not recieve the throttle signal from the sender. I then changed all kind of settings on the sender and put the throttle cable in every slot of the reciever. Still, nothing changed. As I ran out of ideas I asked my friends from the Club and their answer was as simple as it can be: If the engines turn with an other reciever, it’s the reciever… It was the reciever. This super glorious, super expensive peace of plastic just does not work. I have to admit I was a bit disappointed. Now there’s a cheaper reciever in the plane.

The last thing I changed was the running direction of one of the engines. As default, most engines run to the right. Once you turn on the throttle the plane will have a momentum to the left. If you have two enginges this momentum will increase. Not double because the engines are not on the same axis but still. To avoid this, one of the engines has to turn towards the left.

Right now I’m thinking: the left engine has to turn to the right and the left one to the left so they don’t  push / splash the water towards the fuselage but away from it… I’ll have to change that.

Today I’ll go to get the following parts from the store:

A set of propellers, one normal and one inverted (never use different propellers or engines on a multi engine plane. It might lead to crashes.)

As soon as I have these things installed I’ll run my first tests with my ugly but interesting flying boat. You’ll get videos and more pictures soon.

There might be a camera mounted on the front one day ;)

P.S.: The features I intended to build in were not made because of the bad quality of the package. I will test now if it is even waterproof and how it flies. Maybe later I can tune it a bit.
Propellers that run opposite each other are hard to find. I told my seller to find some but until now he did not confirm my order.

Flite Test

The more I fly (and right now I’m flying often) the more I feel the need for information. How does this work, what does that do.
Luckily I can always ask my fellow club members that are often flying for years but to get the latest ideas about it with an educational approach, I found “Flite Test”.
On this web site a young team of RC-Plane enthusiasts shows you how to build a plane from scratch, how to fly it and gives you tips about repairing. There’s also a forum where one can ask questions or publish his one ideas or projects.
Of course there are many other websites like RC Network, VTH and others but they usually include a lot of reading or paying while on Flite Test there’s videos and a lot of free or at least cheap stuff.

Maybe, once Project Kingfisher becomes more realistic, I’ll publish it there aswell.

Oh and by the way: