eric's model flying blog

This weekend, I lost my FPV virginity! Nothing fancy, just a quick tour around a tree or two, with about 100 meters in between them. But it wasn't about racing, freestyling, or other fancy moves. This was all about getting in the air, moving around a bit, and getting back on the ground in a condition that another flight could be undertaken with the same aircraft. Preferably without too much repairs 😉 Pre-Flight foto, just in case (I learned to do that, the hard way...) By now, the 4S battery I had ordered was in. This not only added 3.7V to the nominal voltage, bringing it up to 14.8, but also knocked off 60 grams off of the weight. That should mean a whole lot of extra punch! It's a Turnigy 1300 mAh High Discharge (45C constant, 90C peak) version. Before doing anything, I wanted to do a range test with my transmitter / receiver combination. Since I had not used this combo before, I wanted to be sure I could get across the 300m of the longest side of the...

GearBest sponsored my BFight 210  en  LS-800D  for a review, and asked if I would be interested in reviewing more. That got me reading about on their site, looking for the small print. I also came across their regular terms and conditions. And I must say, they look better than I am used to from other Chinese webshops. So I wanted to put down a couple of words on some specifics of buying at GearBest. For those new to, or hesitant about, shopping at Chinese online stores, here's what a typical order process looks like. Shopping Browsing the webshop is dangerous! There's just too many wannahaves in there 😃 All kidding aside, a simple search will get you far more direct to your desired product, without the distraction of all those others. There it becomes interesting. Read well what the description mentions, and what options are selected. As GearBest ships all over the world, all things that plug into a wall outlet will have a variant for the various plug sh...

Warning: Looooong article ahead (but luckily with loads of pictures) Time to put some power to this BFight 210! But not straight away a battery. First, I'll power up the flightcontroller board through the USB connection, to check out the settings in Betaflight. It's important to have the receiver set up correctly, as well as modes, ans (most of all) the failsafe options. It comes with an OMNIBUS F3 controller, pre-configured with Betaflight 3.1.7. Or at least, mine did. If you are reading this well after I published, chances are that Betaflight 3.2 or later is on yours, but at the time of this writing, 3.2 was only just out. I'll probably re-flash to 3.2 in due time, but first, I want to find out what this little quad has to offer straight out of the box. So here's some screenshots of what my Betaflight 3.1.7 configuration looked like, after setting only a few essentials: I did not change anything on the Ports tab. UART3 was set to be the receiver, and t...

When you buy your stuff in China, there are a couple of things you know for sure, and a couple of things you never know. You know that it will take long to arrive. But you never know how long exactly. That is as annoying as it is a treat! Of course, if you want to have something, waiting for it to arrive some 3 to even 6 weeks is long. But it is always a pleasant surprise when your package arrives. It's like getting a present every time a package arrives 😃 This time, my package is even more a present than all packages before... I was asked by GearBest to review some RC stuff for them. And now, there was this present for me at the local postal service office... It's a BFight 210 FPV quadcopter, and since I don't have any FPV equipment yet, it came with budget type goggles: LS-800D. As you can see, it came in this plastic bag, as most of the larger things sent from China seem to be. Inside the bag: a box, and anothe bag... The secondary bag contains th...

After waiting for all parts to arrive, and repairing the plane to the best of my limited ability, it was now time to maiden the repaired Tundra. I must admit that I was a little nervous about flying her in the same location she ended up in a tree, the last time I flew her. Therefor, I decided to start off with only a take-off, and directly land straight out. Just to see if she needed major trim adjustments before flying properly. And that seemed to be the case. Major roll and yaw to the right, directly upon take off. Left main gear came loose first, and the righthand wing tip almost touched the ground before I could intervene. I dialed in roll trim to the left, as well as rudder trim to the left (yaw will induce roll too), and tried again a couple of times. Take-off, land, taxi back, adjust trims, repeat until flyable. Once I thought I could compensate for deviations by steering the plane, I dared to fly a corner before landing. With the number of landings, my confidence grew...

Pfff... I got my Tundra back from sitting in a tree for ten days! Storms, rain, sunshine, and more rain, ... we've seen it all in those days. Now it was time to make a plan for repairs. What needed to be done, and what materials would I need to get her up and flying again... First of all, the battery had died, obviously, from being connected all the time. A LiPo battery that is discharged that deep, won't be easily brought back to life. And if that should ever work, then it is still questionnable if the remaining capacity is worth keeping the battery. Putting in another battery (after removing the propeller!) revealed that the ESC and motor were still fully functional. Same for the servos that move the ailerons, horizontal stabilizer, and rudder. Unfortunately, the flaps switch did not move anything; those servos were completely unresponsive. The rudder, including the plastic piece that holds the rear wheel, was completely separated from the fuselage. In the right-hand hor...

After two crashes that required some minor repairs, and with only 7 minutes of actual flying time on the clock, I could finally fly my Tundra again after exchanging the propeller for a plastic one (as opposed to the original Carbon fiber version). There were still 10 days left of my summer vacation, so I had good hopes to be able to learn to fly some more in the following week-and-a-half. I limit myself to early mornings, and evenings just before sunset for two reasons: there's hardly any wind, and hardly any people around. After a couple of slow circuits with flaps 1, my confidence grew. I decided to try one with flaps 0. It all looked pretty much like I was in control. The plane flew a lot faster, but I keept altitude and directional control. Or at least, so I thought... When on base leg, ready to turn final, I suddenly lost sight of my plane! It had dissappeared behind trees i thought it would be in front of. So all i could do is level my wings as best i could (withou...

With my background in aviation, I was interested in flying airplanes too. While looking around for something Nice and easy to fly, I stumbled upon the Durafly Tundra. I knew I had to have one right away! A STOL plane with large Tundra tires, and flaps would be ideal to fly at the clearing next to the camping. A slow flyer of significant size (1300mm wingspan), so that it would still be well visible at a few hundred meters away. At a price of less than €200, it would be within my range in a couple of months of saving. But then I saw an add for a second-hand one, with 4 batteries included, for €170. Apparently, I responded just in time, because the next day i could go pick it up! This guy had started building it, but it had sat on his bench for almost half a year without any progress already, so he had decided to sell it. So it was practically new, a touch cheaper, and it came with 4 batteries 😃 I had to learn to fly, of course, so I knew I was going to crash a couple of times. I did no...