Be Excellent To Each Other

Thanks, man. I'm starting to be able to relax and just enjoy flying it now I've got a bit of faith in the thing.

You can tell. It does amuse me to see you standing there and staring off in the distance when you buzz past yourself.

It's pretty freaky when you hear it coming at you and then getting close, then really close. You know you aren't going to fly into yourself because you can see yourself stood there and know you're a few feet clear but there's still a bit of your brain telling you that you might be about to get hit.

Amazing. I'd love to have one to dick about with... maybe in a few years when the kids are grown up and I'm bored of spending time with the wife.

It's actually not really a very time-consuming hobby. The weather sees to that.

I'll drop that chopper off for you to fix up for me then

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but it's a giant version of something that flies better when it is much smaller, the contra-rotating blades and rear prop for pitch control combine to create something which will not cope with any kind of a breeze, but it's also too big to fly in the house. I think they make them that big so that people think are getting a "proper" one for cheaps. It might be a bit of a laugh for a while, though.

I think it's a bit beyond that.

The crane isn't that bad, though.

Oooof!

Yeah, seeing as it was given away I think it must have been fairly cheap. I'm not expecting air wolf

I can just fly it at the nitro boys on Sunday.

Get your camera ready.

I'm down in Bristol this weekend. If you want something to fly that is fairly cheap, tiny enough to fly in the house but will cope with the outdoors then these little baby quadcopters are amazing:

http://www.stevewebb.co.uk/index.php?pi ... &area=HELI

I've enough to play with for now, but I'll probably grab one of those at some point.

No. You should get one right now. I guarantee that you won't be able to put it down.

My wife is going to kill me....

Have you broke her heels?

Did she walk in as you emptied yourself into her sister's face?

Seppuku?

Just took my buggy out for a quick spin. Not sure if its the new battery or the correct bearing to wheel ratio but it seemed a bit quicker than last time. The car park was really frosty so even though it was flat (apart from the couple of drop kerbs) it was fun blasting about and sliding all over the place. Love it

Just charging the helicopter now so might take it out tomorrow

Mind boggled by looking into motor upgrades / ESC's / LiPos...

Seems I can either do a modest motor upgrade for cheaps with the ESC / battery I have or strip everything out to go bat shit mental (which would also include upgrading gearing and pinion so not to strip the 'soft' alu bits in mine).

From seeing what other folks have done with their DT-02 buggies I think I'll probably do a modest motor upgrade (soonish) and maybe look into going brushless motor once I've knackered it. ...and once I feel confident that doing so won't make it into an off road rocket that will crash and burn on it's first outing.

It's all fun though reading up on this stuff though.

Also I need this:


http://www.tamiya.com/english/products/ ... /index.htm

Are there any helicopters that would be good for 6 year olds? Very easy to control?

One of those little Quadrocopters would probably be best. Like what MarkG did make The Vision buy.

Link a few posts back.

Here you go: http://www.stevewebb.co.uk/index.php?pi ... &area=HELI

I love that you know I'm not reading a few posts.

I love that you love that.

Just yoinked one of those teensy quadcopters for myself, just found them a slight bit cheaper from here:

http://www.kingslynnmodelshop.co.uk/Hel ... _info.html

Kissyfur, I'm not sure that there are really any RC helis that are very kid proof. They are all inherently quite fragile however these little quads are tougher just due to their tiny mass, most crashes won't break anything. I'd get some spare props, though.

It was more the ease of control I was concerned about. I've had some RC copters that have required a lot of input just to stay still. I'd like something that they can go "up, down, left, right" without too much supervision.

For that, I was quite impressed with one of those cheapo helicopters that Dealextreme sell that uses an iPhone for control. It was essentially the same helicopter I had, but whereas with mine the 'proper' controller is so damned twitchy, it's hard to get it to do anything reliably, the app version would actually hover in place quite happily without any intervention.

Yeeeeeah, I don't own a smartphone of any description, and won't be. Maybe I should?

Quadcopters do that really well. That little quad has 3 gyros, 3 accelerometers and a computer all keeping it still until you tell it otherwise. You don't so much fly them as tell them where to go.

Mark. Any idea what the flight time is on that quadcopter you bought is? I couldn't see it mentioned on the listing.

Excellent - I'll order one. Thank you!

Went out with Zardoz before and our RC cars. I tried mine with MOAR POWER, it's too much power for it to handle really. It was going ridiculously fast for the tiny thing that it is, and then I turned before slowing down enough and it just flipped and bounced along the road smashing up the body shell and yanking a pin out of one of the wishbones. So I've taken a some parts from elsewhere on the car that looked less important and mended the suspension. Also stiffened up all the shocks (though I've really no idea if this is the correct thing to do but it seemed a bit better) and given it a few test runs. All ready to give the nitro boys what for tomorrow morning.

Yeah it got silly fast with that huge battery

Our kid fancies popping out tomorrow to see the cars. He's pretty keen on getting one himself I think.

Shame that bolt worked loose on mine with no screwdriver between us.

That chopper is spectacularly shite too.

Heh. To be fair to the thing it was never going to go well in that wind.

Gnnngh, there's a quadcopter called the DJI Phantom that comes with a GoPro mount underneath it. It's calling to me

Are there any cheaper quadcopters that are powerful enough that they could lift a GoPro without any hassle or balancing issues?

Yeah.

Buy all the bits Mark listed.

Gah, I can't be expected to build these things myself!

Totally forgot about that posted list. Bums.

The DJI Phantom is a good machine but the problem is that if you crash it then it might be expensive. If you can build your own then you're all set.

Have a look at the TBS discovery too.

TBS Discovery looks good. Cheaper than the Phantom, but with presumably easily replaceable bits if you screw up?

The amount of soldering and stuff in that video does put me off somewhat though - I can handle soldering, but some of those contacts look really small.

You can just buy a clone of the discovery and all that list if parts I posted.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Locust-Four-a ... 23225099c7

You'd also need to buy radio gear, a cheap but good option might be a Turnigy 9x with a Frsky module. Use 4 cell batteries and you'd have a good basic quad that could easily outperform the Phantom in terms of speed and power.

What you wouldn't have is all the autopilot functions which the Phantom has. Most people seem to use those features as training wheels, but I guess it can be useful if you lose signal or orientation to have it just fly back and land, although I can't say that not having that is something which bothers me. If do you want it then swap the KK2 board in that list of parts for a Naza with GPS, spendy though. It's mostly why the Phantom is so pricey. There are other options to get all that stuff (MultiWii etc.) but more involved to set up.

If you want to fly it FPV like mine then you'd also need all the transmission gear and goggles, another £200 or so.

It's still something that is quite involved, but it's really not that hard. It's all a bit of a rabbit hole once you get started, though, so many options. If the task of researching and building it all seems more like an obstacle than an actual enjoyable thing in itself then the Phantom is not a bad option I guess.

Did you order the bits to fix your buggy or go for that 1:10 you saw, Mark?

Ordered some spare snap pins earlier.

And a steel 17t pinion to replace the Alu one that supposed to be too soft...

for the brushless motor and new ESC I've just ordered

Nah I just ordered the spare bits, just the front and rear shock towers when I looked at it. It cost 80p, but they're in China so it'll take a while.

That's cheap enough, did you buy a spare set too?

My motor/ESC combo is from Hong Kong, so it'll be a while before they're here too.

Yeah, anywhere between a week and four weeks is generally what I've found.

Didn't bother buying extra bits because it would probably be something else that breaks next time.

I still haven't ordered that Quadracopter... I should though, shouldn't I?

Yeah. Even cheaper from the last link I posted too.

I want my new bits now.

Gave that helicopter back yesterday, Mark. Couldn't be arsed with it, sooner get one of those Quadrocopters if anything.

Just a bit of a bump for Mark.

Sorry didn't see that. The little tiny one? "Above nine minutes" and about half an hour to charge from what I can gather, not got mine yet but I've read a fair bit about them. My proper one is about the same but I have a timer set for six minutes to be on the really safe side.