How long still?

Project Kingfisher is about building a plane which is able to fly and dive into water and fly out of it again - just like the bird can. If possible, it should also be able to film it’s flight/dive.
To start, I am learning how to use a radio controlled plane. I thought it would be the easy part but actually it’s pretty difficult so I looked around and found somebody willing to teach me the basics. I’ll have my first lessons in a week.
Also I’m reading books about RC-Planes and how to construct them right now to get some background knowledge. Once I have sufficient information about planes and how they are built, I’ll dive into the matter of Submarines. I’ll have to learn how they are built, how they function and how they are commandet.
To gain experience with planes I bought five different ones. One is still waiting for repairings, two are completely destroyed and two are not yet assembled. All but one plane were for beginners so you can imagine how much more time it will take me to become an o.k. pilot and I assume it will not be much quicker to become an ok captain.
For the Planes I know now that there are several clubs around who also support you in training, insurance and who offer you an airfield. For the subs I have no Idea so far but I think these informations will come up as soon as I start looking.

For now I have tons of Ideas in my head. About how to cool an engine that is closed in an waterproof capsule while running as fast as a plane engine has to run. About the different propellers needed in the air and underwater. About how to change the weight of the kingfisher when it dives into water and about how to get rid of this added weight once it comes out of the water. About which and how many engines to use and about the force and size of the servos.
The longer I look into the different categories of the RC-World, the more I see and the more solutions I find. It’s a fascinating world filled with tons of things I still have to learn.
Project Kingfisher will - at the pace that I’ve taken so far - be finished not before the next two years.

Introducing the Newbies

After yesterdays crashes, demolished plains and foam parts all over the floor, today was the day to get new planes.

Tadaa:
The "Mini Trainstar” by Volantex RC. It’s tiny. It has a wingspan of 40cm and a lenght of 31cm. With its 20 gram it’s also super light. My first impression when I took it out of the box was that there is really no weight.
Something I have never experienced before is the 6-Axis Gyro. I know that a Gyro is used for filming to keep the Camera still but I did not know, that one can also hold it’s plane still with it. How it looks and how it works are yet to be discovered. What I can say from a first testflight is that it keeps your plane propperly still in the air and there is way less uncontrolled movement. Still I’m not yet familiar with the concept and I suspect the Gyro to take turns on it’s own every now and then.
Also I had my difficulties with the Elevator. Whenever I wanted the plane to rise, I just pulled up the throttle, because somehow the elevator showed no effect.
Afer all I came back from my test flight without any broken planes and some pretty nice landings. It might still be worth having this Gyro.

The T34 from Top RC Hobby. What a beauty. It’s wingspan of 75cm makes it bigger than the Mini Trainstar but it’s still small.

Here I’m a bit worried. The seller asked me if I was a beginner and of course I said yes so he looked at me with this sorrowful expression. He said this plane is quite wild.

I did not yet put it together nor unpack it further. It would really be a shame to crash it too soon. Instead I’ll take pictures of it as long as I can. It really does look good.

It did not

This glorious picture is symbolizing todays tests. At first I went out just with the woodman. I assumed, the glue specifically for Styropor would keep everything in place and it would just be a mather of aerodynamics and heat, wether the test would be a success or not. As you can see, it turned out differently. I started the plane with normal gas and the nose immediately began to sink. With a bit more throttle It came up again and right as I iniciated the first turn the wooden plate keeping the engine and the propeller fell off and the plane fell to the ground. All in all this took about three seconds.

As I’m used to by now, I went back home, charged the battery pack and prepared the woodman for repairing. Little did I know that they would have to wait.

As there was still daylight, I took the Shark for it’s test aswell. I remembered from the last flight that it liked to turn to the right even though I did not know why. It must have had a hard landing where something broke but with the repairings that I’ve done, I thought this’d be fixed.

As the Shark took off for the first time, it came to ground quickly in a sharp right turn. I adjusted the settings and let it take off again. This time, the Shark described a large right turn but it was impossible for me to correct it properly. Instead, as I got a bit stressed, I acceleratet the plane too much and it crashed violently. I had to collect it in pieces.

The Shark in pieces

The cabin fell off during the crash. This saved the camera which was installed on the pilots helmet. The nose that was already a bit weakened by previous crashes broke off and so did the engine. The propeller was lying somewhere in the grass and the wings took some cuts aswell.

All in all it is too much to repair. Especially the nose which I think was tilted to the right which caused the plane to always turn to the right, was so destroyed that I did not see any chance of repairings. Especially not after my glorious work on the Woodman was such a quick failure. 

As I am still far from being a good pilot I decided to order a new plane. This time it will not be Multiplex as I can not afford to continuously crash such expensive toys. I have to get something way cheaper. In the internet I found offers that are RTF ("Ready to fly” which means they are completly built and include all the necessary parts) and cost about a quarter of the Woodman. I ordered one and we will see soon, what differences there might be.

There is a video of the sharks two last flights but it’s really not entertaining and it lasts about four seconds so I’ll spare you this.

Repairings

Before yesterday I had three RC-Vehicles and non of them was able to run.

The car has a part missing. It must have fallen off while I tested the camera. It’s the powertransmission to one of the frontwheels. Also the engine is dirty. There’s dust on all of the pieces and some overflowing fat that glues the dirt to some parts. I will have to dismantle, clean and rebuild the whole thing and order the missing piece.

New look of the Shark

The Shark, the plane with the propeller on its back, had some hard landings and therefor has some cuts. I bought some glue specifically for Styropor because I learned that I’ll need to glue these planes a lot. Also I removed some plastic cover and half of the pilots head to put a stripe of velcro. On this I want to put the camera.
Because of the change in aerodynamics I don’t know if the plane will still fly. If not, I have to put the plastic cover again and find another place where to put the camera.

To apply the wood I needed straight surfaces 

The Funman… It was really time i made some serious repairings on this plane. The engine with the propeller on it were moving almost freely back and forth. There was nothing left where I could have attached it. Therefor I went to the craftstore to look for some small, light plate of iron with some holes in it. Unfortuately there were none so bought wood instead which I cut in fitting pieces. Please note that my craft corner is my kitchentable which is unfit for any woodwork at all. Therefor the results are not very impressive but I hope they’ll do.

On the newly created woodman I’ve put two lines of velcro aswell. One directly on the snout behind the propeller and one on top of the wings in the center.
Because of the wooden snout I’m not sure if I can add even more weight to the front or if I have to put the camera further back. Also I have no Idea what pictures the camera will take if the propeller is spinning infront of the lens. All of this and a lot more are subject to further experiments.

Applied wood

Velcro for the camera

                                              

Camera - Try one

It seems like everybody nowadays wants to make movies. The moving picture has it’s fascination. Even try to put cameras on my RC-Devices.

It started with a GoPro. Unfortunately I directly took it abroad and of course lost it there. The only thing I can say about it is that the camera itself might be good but the app that comes with it is pretty poor. It wouldn’t even run on my smartphone and according to reviews on the web, the performance in general is slow and weak. A bit of a shame considering the price for these cameras is quite high.

Some days ago then I found a Video on youtube where the Pilot put a Mobius Actioncam on his plane. I was impressed by the size and the prize of this camera. It’s way smaller than a GoPro and has a better, flatter shape so there’s less drag and it costs about a third of the GoPro.


Left the Mobius Actioncam, right the GoPro Session 5 - Imagine each of them on your plane…

So now that I have a camera again, of course I want to mount it on every device. This is easely possible by using some velcro on the cam and on the devices. To avoid the camera from shaking too much I first tried to put a line of foam between the car and the velcro and went out immediately

These were the results from my testdrive with my car:
Driving low speed, the foam reduces the vibrations of the car so the camera provides a good image. As soon as the car goes faster, the camera shakes way too much so the quality of the image gets worse. Especially on fast turns, when the camera tilts to the sides.
During the testdrive the velcro that was glued to the foam went loose. I then put it directly on the car. The results were better than with the foam but still not good enough for me. I’m thinking about combining the two techniques somehow to cushion the camera while keeping it steady.