RC Zone

Was practicing flips over the trees and almost hit the ground as I did not punch up in time, then went round for another go, but decided to rather fly through the branches of the tree, only to hit a branch, a bit of which broke off and got stuck in the quad in the view of the camera, then bounced and recovered!

That moment you realise the plane is going to hit you before it hits the ground when making a landing! And it seems that the screw holding the aileron pushrod in place had fallen off as well, so glad that only became apparent once it was on the ground!

I have been wanting to build the FT 3D for a long while now, but decided to wait until I had put in some stick time on the simulator, especially after having tried a few times and realised it is not as easy as it looks. To my surprise, when I got my son off the computer to put in some stick time, he said he had been flying the 3D planes for a while now and was flying them decently and, turns out, better than me. So, I decided to go ahead and build the FT 3D. This is the maiden of the FT 3D with a 920kv motor on 4S with about 970g of thrust. Considering the FT 3D comes in at about 780g, this is not a great power to mass ratio for a 3D flier, but good enough for beginners like we are!

Practicing some different moves and am getting better at yaw spins. Now I need to get more confident in doing them closer to the ground and then mix in some other moves to create a flow.

My son now has his own quad and RC kit and so we have been flying together. But, that comes with the risk of close calls and even hitting each other. When this one happened, it felt like he had just flown over my shoulder from the FPV view I had of it. I said that we almost hit and he was not even aware how close we had come to crashing. The second part of the video shows his perspective and you can see why he did not realise how close it was and did not even see me. I slowed his part down, but when watched at normal speed, you hardly notice my quad.

My son, who now has his own freestyle quad, who I was also teaching to fly, has now become the teacher. He has been encouraging me to practice the lawnmower but sometimes you can get too low. Low looks really cool, but too low results in static on the video!

Been working on the freestyle quad and getting it nicely tuned, ready for some sky ripping flying, but also some plane chasing. So, as our first test of plane chasing, I got the Single Arrow out, which I now realise I have not shown yet, with me piloting the Arrow and my son flying the quad. My son's freestyle skills are now better than mine and I have given him the quad and will later build one for myself, so it was the obvious option to let him chase me.

Been continuing to fly the Invader and work on good control and building muscle memory. I find it easy to fly counter clock wise, but not so much clock wise, so have started to practice more risky clock wise flying. Things did not always go well, but the Invader takes these ground impacts well.

I have been flying the Invader and practicing closer flying, control of the Invader with both left and right hand turns and height control. Was doing knife edge type circles to work on getting them consistent both in height and circle roundness. Also did a few loops, with throttle control at the top and bottom of the loop, and trying to get the loops as vertical as possible, round as possible and in the same place in the sky. I keep hitting the power lines, so was practicing the knife edge fly by under the lines, not to close to the ground or lines. I am also keeping the speed down for now because, for me at least, the faster I go the more I get things wrong and crash, so will work on getting better at slower speeds before moving to faster. Basically I am just practicing visuals and muscles so that I am not thinking about flying, just doing it.

Sometimes launches and landings go well or not so well!

Perfect funny moment as my son thinks he is filming the Invader only to realise he is following a bird.

My brother gave me this small wing called the Invader. It is a nice flier and can be flown in close quarters or some way out. As I took off, the Ricer quad, which my son has been learning to fly, and the Invader almost hit each other! My concentration was not fully on what I was doing and I hit the power line! No damage I could see, just the 'walk of shame'.

Instead of trying to master tricks before I have built up normal flight muscle memory. I have been doing some powerline surfing to practice direction and height control to build the muscle memory up. Music: Lucid Dreaming by FSM Team feat < e s c p >

Auto launch with the FT Goblin. This is my third build of the Goblin and my first attempt to build a foamboard plane but laminating it instead of painting. Weight wise, the laminate is basically the same added weight as painting. When I paint I usually have three layers of color and two layers of clear coat. The laminate then works out to be a few grams heavier.

Auto launch with the FT Explorer. This is my second build of the Explorer and considering how well building the Goblin with laminating went, I decided to scrap the current Explorer and build a new one and laminate it as well. I weighed the original and the new laminated build and the difference was 12 grams. Considering I put in a wood spar and winglets, 12g extra was well worth it. The laminate also makes the build much stronger and it will weather well also. The painted foamboard gets damaged over time, paint comes off, the edges get rough. I am expecting the laminated planes to last way longer and stand up better to those bad landings that happen.

This was a cruise near to the local wind farm on a rather windy and gusty day. I was also trying a new tune for the rudder, so that also seems to have affected the stability, but considering it was windy and gusty, I will need another flight to confirm it is was wind or tune.

This is my new build plane which is replacing the FT Spear wing as my main FPV plane. The build was done over a period of a month, so this counts as my slowest build yet. All the electronics have been moved from the Spear to the Explorer. I was amazed at how well it balanced on the CG straight off and I have not had to move the tail section at all to get the balance right. I have been learning with each build and with this one I did a much better job with the painting and think it came out really nicely. First flight was meant to be a quick maiden, done in manual mode before trying the stabilized modes. That did not happen! This is the most nervous I have been for a maiden and that was not helped with the fact that the wind was blowing way harder than I like for a maiden. I made the decision to risk using auto launch rather than the risk of manually trying to handle the launch. It worked out well, which I was expecting as the setup was basically carried over from the Spear with a few adjustments for the plane setup. iNav performed flawlessly and I was really impressed with the way the plane climbed out, despite being 200g heavier than the Spear which puts the power to weight ratio at close to 1:1 for the Explorer.

Was glad to get a flight in before getting grounded again due to the weather. Pushed myself a little more by getting closer to the ground and also POI circling...with a crash....or two! The people in the video are my family, should anyone think I was endangering the public. Music: Wasting Time by Sapajou & Yorgo H

After being grounded for a few days due to a fried PDB (Power Distribution Board) and some work to put a new one in I decided to aim for the trees. I don't think it went too badly....until the end! Music: Network Adapters by Glitch

I started off with a very high expo of 80% (I know crazy huh) but found that I was not able to control the quad very well. Changed the expo down to 30% and what a difference that has made. I was now even able to do a point of interest circle round, which I was really struggling to do before this. Music: Incandescent Soul by Electronic Senses

This is the second flight in Acro mode. Quick check of the tuning for prop wash and I need to do some more to the tuning to get that more locked in. I slowed the roll and pitch rates down and was able to do an Acro 360 roll, a slow roll, a 270 and drop and finally a 180 and drop. I now need to practice turns and getting smoother on the free styling.

Just finished this ricer drone which is my first attempt at some performance flying. Been doing some tuning and it is getting close. This was my first attempt at flying in Acro mode and I should never have attempted a roll at this early stage!! No major damage, just some mud to clean out of two motors and two slightly bent props. Music: Dark Side Of Our Past by MaxKoMusic

Been wanting to do this for a long time and finally got the chance. The wind was blowing harder than I normally fly in, so flight is rather bumpy, but was nice to finally do a flight over the snow covered fields. Song: God Is An Astronaut by Snowfall

It would help if I had checked the rudder direction properly before doing the maiden of the FT Mini Scout!

My son did not throw hard enough, so the wind caught the trainer and it came round to say hello.