FPV Flying, Where gamers go to die, reality.

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StarlandLed 5-Pack 6.6FT/2 Meter Plaster-in Recessed Slim LED Aluminum Channel with Flange for LED Strip, Aluminium LED Profile with Clip-in Diffuser and End Caps
Had a look at the Mud LEDs, they might be bright, but so are tape LEDs that you can cut to length every 3 LEDs and you can make a shallow channel for them in foam by dragging a hot screwdriver across it and come in 5V and 12V any color RGB flavors. You can also buy meter length stips of tape for cheap, but rolls don't cost much either. I've got lots of LEDs around and have some small strips and others on the way.

I've also got a 30 watt COB and matching 12VDC driver for it kicking around, I've got two I believe, maybe three. I might get put it on the RC rescue boat as a forward facing flood light in a waterproof housing. I'll need to get creative about the housing and will cruise the local junkyard for something appropriate and cool! I would also need to run it off another battery and not the propulsion system one either, it draws an amp if I remember, so length of operation depends on battery capacity.

I used to give the boys at the scrap yard, a bag of really good pot every friday and chat em up, even had milk bones for the junkyard dogs. Many tongues were hanging out when they saw me coming and not all of them were dogs... I usually get what I want pretty quick and things are set aside for the next visit, I pay as usual by the pound for scrap at the office. I got a lot of heat sinks there for LED grow lights and other assorted electrical and electronic equipment of an unusual nature. Including 30 LED streetlights, for free, after I salvaged the electronics and returned the 20 lb aluminum caracas. About 80% worked fine and had zero hours, I didn't even need to fix any drivers, though I've got a few that need it in a box. These quality 5000K led panels made excellent veg lights that I'm currently using, I mount them on 3"x1" rectangular aluminum tubes and blow air through the tubes with a 3" computer fan, works great and free too, except for the tubing and that was a couple of bucks a foot.

 

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The benefits of junkyard cruising, a bag or two of pot and a friendly chat...
I got lots of other quality things too from these street lights, aside from LED panels and drivers, stainless steel screws and waterproof bulkhead connectors were among the haul. It took about 20 minutes to strip each light using a power screwdriver and after I set up a procedure. At first I bought a couple of lamps then returned the carcasses for slightly more than I paid for them, a talk with the manager led to a deposit and then just take them. They were difficult for them to strip and were only interested in the cleaned aluminum housings, I wasn't, win, win.

Nostalgia, past adventures and an illustration of cost saving, applies to all shop projects, use junk when you can. You can 3D print an air scooping cooling duct for your model plane, or you can just cut a plastic spoon in half and glue the fucking thing on!

A Bountiful Harvest of Parts
I finished stripping the street lamps and cleaned up a bit. Here are a few pictures of some of the parts I acquired from 11 scrap 50 & 100Watt LED street lamps. The haul of things included 5000K LED arrays on 1.5 mm aluminum panels, drivers, pounds of very useful screws, electrical connectors and components like surge suppressors. A couple of the large LED panels have damaged LEDs, one has 1 with a chip out of it and the other has a couple of fairly mashed ones. I'll play with the one with the damaged chips to see how hard the LEDs are to remove. One 100 watt driver is OK and one 50 watt driver caught fire and I figure it's a write off, lots of good components on it though. I'll have to have a look at the other drivers and see if I can repair some of them.



Below was the later result, along with lights given away to my circle of friends. Here are a couple of veg light designs, the tube type works best and is most flexible in application. Check your junk yard, problematic street lights are pitched in the rubbish by the pole monkeys, new or used, there appears to be no provision to repair them.

 

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The results, 2 different designs of veg lights using 3"x1" rectangular aluminum cooling tubes with fans. I use water cooled cob arrays in the veg room, mostly made of junk, I could buy first class, but think of less fortunate people, besides I'm a tight ass! The drain table is an old door with cushion flooring on it and strapping on the sides. The light on the tripod was built with leftovers and a heavy piece of aluminum structural channel and covered with custom bent aluminum flashing from the building supplier

 

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Back to flying
FPV DRONE vs ROLLERCOASTER - CINEMATIC

 

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MENGA - My Year - Cinematic FPV Racing Drone

 

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FPV Drone Dances With RC Airplane || Cinematic FPV

 

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Where the rubber meets the road, many events like this use professional drone pilots to capture unique perspectives that are live streamed to TVs around the world. Here is Johnny FPV filming drift racing cars.

 

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If you were to do things like fly around manned hot air balloons in Canada with an FPV drone, they would crucify you and you would not get special permission either! Johnny can't fly in Canada, so don't expect any Canadian videos unless he does a smash and grab across the border! A licensed pilot could not even legally stand beside him and "guide" him, some beaurocrat doesn't like drones and wants to cover their ass at the expense of others. Some people are trying to change this, but until then, same rules as pot apply, fuck em, but don't get stupid and don't be dangerous to others.
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Johnny FPV x Beautiful Destinations - Turkey

 

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This looks like fun as well as being overwhelmingly beautiful.
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Switzerland with an FPV Drone | Ultimate Long Range 2

 

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With a handle like snowman, where do you think this guy spends his time? A bit of high speed vibration coming down the mountain in slow mo, this is unstabilized footage.
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Long Range FPV heaven in the Swiss Alps - Crossfire and TrueRC Power

 

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Wanna make videos like above? Here is the aircraft you will need, with a Gopro 7 or above there is image stabilization in the camera, for some older Gopros, there is reelsteadygo post production software that uses gyro info stored on the video recording media. Image stabilization is a must for most cinematic work. This is just big enough to carry a gopro and can get into tight spots, so if you are into videography learn to fly, first. Before you put an expensive gopro on it, get good enough to shoot something worthwhile and not destroy an expensive camera. You can also use a simulator to get reasonably good and it is recommended and cheaper than the school of hard knocks. Velocidrone is around $20 or $30 to download (free version too)and a transmitter or even a cheap USB controller of the same 2 stick style can be used, but they are almost as expensive as real transmitters. Also get extra props and ducts!

Here is how to build a cinequad on the cheap, a typical build video, parts are in the Youtube description.
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How to build a GoPro Cinewhoop for $175

 

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Got another 6, better quality 9 gm servos in the mail today from Bango along with a couple of servo testers that cost a couple of bucks each. I'm preparing for winter and future projects and builds using foam board this winter and the slow boat from china takes time, so ya gotta plan ahead and even buy extra for spares. It's not like I can nip down to the hobby store and pay through the nose, that option doesn't exist, though Amazon does for a lot of things you might want in a rush. If you want to build planes an quads, it pays to have spares and such kicking around, its that or wait more than a month in some cases. Prices are generally pretty cheap on the lower end of the spectrum at least and even quality stuff can be stupid cheap compared to the prices of things a few years ago. 6 quality servos and two testers only cost around $20 CDN and complete propulsion systems, motor, esc, and props are around $20 too. Foam board and hot glue sticks, color tape, adhesives and other useful items are sold at the local dollar store.

Right now I got two huge burst blisters on my right foot that makes getting footwear on problematic (spilled hot grease on bare foot) and it will keep me grounded for awhile too. If you lose a plane or quad you must search for it and retrieve it, or it gets expensive and litters too. Right now I'm hobbling around the house only and have a neighbor running essential errands for me. I need to get a retriever, maybe someone should breed and sell quad dogs, labs would be a good starting point, he'd watch it like a hawk, then on command go get where ever it was! Obviously this is a failure of imagination on my part, but I do have 2 cats already and they ain't much use for finding quads, but I love em nonetheless. Maybe I could pay a kid...

 

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Sorry to hear about the burn and blisters.

Can never go wrong grabbing affordable consumables from China, in advance for future projects. Can be frustrating having to wait for things to arrive, and paying extra for locally sourced items can be hard on the budget.

 

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Sorry to hear about the burn and blisters.

Can never go wrong grabbing affordable consumables from China, in advance for future projects. Can be frustrating having to wait for things to arrive, and paying extra for locally sourced items can be hard on the budget.

Yep, if ya see something you like online, make a list and shop early, buy spares too. Things are pretty cheap, so stocking spares is not too painful for many things. I'm really just getting into planes and still learning much about the many challenges and I like the idea of building foam board builds too. It's a cheap interesting thing to do with your hands and brain. I emphasize the low cost of the components for this reason, this is an interesting thing to do for those into crafts, or DIY stuff and ya test fly the result. If the foam I chose can do the job even with with weight saving doubling reinforcement ( I would make cutouts to save weight on the inside sheet of foam for the fuse for example) I can get away real cheap for the airframe. Sometimes it might be cheaper to buy a plane these days, if ya can't make it from dollar store foam board, bare kits are dirt cheap too.

This applies to my planes and drones, I have lots of spare props for instance and backup cheap battery & servo testes, 9 gm servos are pretty standard for my builds and all the planes I have use them, so ya can't go wrong with having a few extra. TIP Try to make all your models or as many as you can use the same capacity and cell count as you can, receivers and batteries move from model to craft and sometimes to quads too.

Components are cheap and receivers can be plugged in with dupont connectors and transferred from model to model. I prefer the term craft though for planes, as in FPV plane, these are not models of scaled down human aircraft, they are designed for scale and FPV, they are a new technology with a new attitude. This is seat of your pants flying like in the pioneer days of aviation when people flew low and slow, there is not much point in going high altitude with FPV, not much to see and no sense of speed. Under 400 feet is where the action is, as long as you can get a signal at range and 4 G and starlink might address this. Proximity flying gives that sense of speed, the lower the faster and blowing through gaps and other challenges is is something everybody does with FPV.

5 years down the road your FPV plane could be miles away at treetop level powered by much higher capacity batteries, controlled via starlink, or 4G service and the low latency FPV digital video image would be 1080p or better, steamed onto your computer monitor, your cellphone, or into your DJI digital FPV goggles, that might be bluetoothed from your phone to the goggles, your controller might be hooked up to the phone too via USB.

Shit happens and things change, technology evolves, people want to have fun and challenges, the struggle continues...

 

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That experimental airlines fellow on youtube has a lot of good ideas for foamboard construction. The concept of interchangeable or reuseable elements like wings appeals to me. Think he runs through 3 fuselage options/configurations for his Synapse wing. Also go through ideas for folding or two part wings suitable for take down for storage or travel.

 

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That experimental airlines fellow on youtube has a lot of good ideas for foamboard construction. The concept of interchangeable or reuseable elements like wings appeals to me. Think he runs through 3 fuselage options/configurations for his Synapse wing. Also go through ideas for folding or two part wings suitable for take down for storage or travel.

I've seen some of his videos in the past, he is on my list and I will most definitely check him out. I like to watch several different styles of building and absorb good and appropriate ideas from each. I'm gonna build a hot wire cutter and figure that might be a way of cutting parts well, like a jigsaw, but a sharp hobby knife and a little developed skill works well too for foam board at least. If figure I can have a lot of fun with foam board and I've seen some cheap classic laser cut balsa kits online that might be nice to try too someday, a biplane or something covered in mylar perhaps. A motor/prop, an esc, a few servos and I'm in business as usual, though I may cry when I smash it into a million pieces!

 

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That experimental airlines fellow on youtube has a lot of good ideas for foamboard construction. The concept of interchangeable or reuseable elements like wings appeals to me. Think he runs through 3 fuselage options/configurations for his Synapse wing. Also go through ideas for folding or two part wings suitable for take down for storage or travel.

The foam board I'm using is Elmer's brand from the dollar store, is 5 mm with the paper and adhesive, so I'll lose a fraction of a millimeter when I take it off, shouldn't be a concern. I should get it in the tub and see about taking the paper off at least one sheet though and playing around with its physical properties to get an idea of what I'm dealing with and can get away with structurally. I notice in the seaplane build he made no effort to cut out circles and lighten the interior bulkheads, the edges of those openings can be reinforced with gel foam safe CA glue too, etc I got the foam board (I hope) and parts on the way or arrived and I'm, laid up and housebound, got a big tube of glue too. Might be time to get wet in the tub and have some fun, I've got to organise my office/ model shop upstairs, I have another regular workshop in the basement. I often nip over and make comments on RIU from the other desk and there is a computer there too, used mostly for things like betaflight etc.

I've also got a cheap set of digital calipers on the way, but I don't expect to be sending them to the quality department for annual calibration checks, I'm not ISO9000 at home and my needs are not great or even very small.

 

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That experimental airlines fellow on youtube has a lot of good ideas for foamboard construction. The concept of interchangeable or reuseable elements like wings appeals to me. Think he runs through 3 fuselage options/configurations for his Synapse wing. Also go through ideas for folding or two part wings suitable for take down for storage or travel.

There are so many entertainment, build and instruction videos these days it makes it easy to learn at home and cheap stuff from China helps too. In the old days you had to join a club, suck someone's arse and sit at the masters knee. Everything has changed these days, broadened and deepened some like Matt can teach you a lot and give you a lot of laughs doing it, better than most telly IMHO. I tend to favor the brits, aussies and new zealanders, asians too for plane stuff, mostly American quad pilots with swiss and norwegians too. Build videos are where ya find them. For plane stuff, educational stuff, painless360, Sir Andrew Newton (would be a good choice), Uncle Bruce and a few others. I like the straight up reviews, Matt can have affiliate links, but he buys his own shit and give the straight shit.

You don't need to join a formal club, small informal ones are best and seem to be the way to go, you can harness the power of a group to find spots and get permission or rent semi permanent places, that's my plan, that and flying off and over water too. Flying with others is fun and people always trade or sell unused stuff for a bargain including planes, keep it small tight and as informal as you can, it might even have a legal "front" club for the education of youth and members children and as a place to recruit new members of both clubs, but such matters as long range are not discussed there. A classic conspiracy if there ever was one! I'm pretty sure this is how things are operating right now in the UK and here too, guess I'll have to get on facebook or facefuck or whatever.

 

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For those who want to geek out and have a deeper understanding of things like flight control computers and such that started out as arduinos and raspberry Pi micro computers, here is a learning channel that some might find interesting. You don't need to know any of this to enjoy FPV though, just for the geeks and those pushing the edge of the possible.
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Raspberry Pi Cameras - The BIG Picture

 

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Cricket, one of the great American pilots with a creative style, he's an artist of the air. Most pilots would rather lose a drone than a Gopro!
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LONGEST REVERSE DIVE EVER (FPV FREESTYLE)