Just found these guys, made right here in Oregon (Bend): http://xproheli.com Seems like pretty standard stuff other than the aluminum frame.
I guess everyone who gets into this hobby ends up getting an education in flying complicated systems no matter who you are..... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lRIBJytqrI At least the GoPro might have made it.....
Oh my. That would ruin your whole day. Not sure about using aluminum for the whole quad frame. They just don't want to CNC carbon fiber and ruin their mill. I think someone should make Quadcopter frames like these guys make RC Truck chassis: Source: http://www.vantageracing.com/site/home.html
That second video - Can't think of a better place to get multipath than looking down into that canyon from the top. Yikes! Looks like they've poured a lot of money into this thing. It's going to be a hard row to hoe. ...Tiger
Tiger - Do you think it was multipath that caused it to shoot off in one direction? If it was multipath, how would one resolve it specifically for canyon flying? The reason I ask is because I intend to fly down into Hellgate and I sure don't want to experience what they did.
No, multipath would be the video signal and loss of pilot ability to see. Any multipath on the control signal would cause loss of packets at the Rx and thus send it into fail safe, fail safe on specktrum would be throttle shut down and all other control froze at thier last command. For a multi rotor without self leveling I think control surface fail safes would be pointless, but if you had a self leveling with GPS hold controller then you would want JR or Futaba (or most any of the LRS systems) that have programmable fail safe on each channel. DJI for example does this, with total loss of Rx input the thing will return the cyclic to the center position, this is read by the flight computer and just like my co pilot the computer now knows to level the aircraft instantly, it also begins the GPS hold position, and also the throttle would fail safe at exactly a preset 50%, this tells the computer to elevation hold based on Baro sensor for a set amount of time, for a gasser it is 5 minutes. So you then have 5 minutes to pack your ground station, drive closer to the frozen heli in the sky, regain control and land, otherwise it will reduce collective and descend into ??? For a non stabilized quad with a spektrum....... forward flight at the time of loss would be a continued forward flight with no throttle to the ground, a heli would glide sort of, a quad would brick......... The bummer thing about my setup is that if my heli was in strong forward flight with some right aleron roll and I lost control signal, the cyclic channels fail safe at there last command, would not center and my co pilot would do nothing as it rolled over and plummetted to the ground with forward flight continuing. Now to combat multipath on the video, use a cloverleaf/skew planar, reflected signal would be 30db down........
Thank you for the detailed explanation Pelagic Pilot. Of course I have a Spektrum transmitter. I was looking at the long range system Golden Child posted, Dragon something, and it interfaces with Futaba and JR radios but no mention of Spektrum transmitters. Are the Spektrum products just missing that connector inside them, or is there more to it?
