eric's model flying blog

RC flying is crashing. Flying, Crashing, Repairing, Repeat indefinitely! That's how to best describe this hobby. Simply because that is how it works. It has been really awful weather here in the Netherlands last two months. Especially in the weekends, of course! So I did not get much flying time in, lately. It has been storming, with all sorts of precipitation, combined with temperatures now nearing the freezing point. Those few flights I got in with my  Bfight 210 , however, were very "educational"! I already knew that the receiver range was not much more than 150m, with a clear line of sight. I leaned that the same holds for the video transmission signal. On one occasion, I got a little disoriented, because of the limited periferal view through the goggles. I was flying along at the clearing next to the camping. The one with only two trees. I was sitting under one tree, because I did not want to be too prominently in my flight footage. And I thought I was cruisin...

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...

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...