Right all, so anyone who knows me, knows I've been tricking out my Easy Star of late. I've done an FPV flight and all good, so staring at the plane this evening and all the junk I've amassed over the past year I decided to put some led's in.
I'm only showing one piccy here, but the leds are top and bottom. I took a 1m strip in white and blue, then bored a superficial groove on the underside of the wing and laid in the strip for 500mm. I cut through the wing to the top side and fed the rest of the strip through (up). Since I was going to make a groove, I dug deep enough to fit a carbon rod on the wing for stiffness and then laid the led strip on top of that (both glued in with hot glue, then used fibre tape to cover both sides on both wings.
I generally find leds on planes to be too bright. Face it, if you're gonna do night flying, what you want to see is the plane, not the whole field, so I'm running it on a 2s 800mah lipo. I ran it for half an hour with the battery meter on it and it drained down to about 4.10v per cell, which is nothing in my book. It took about 5 minutes to charge it back up again.
I'm going to add a led strobe via a regulator for the front of the plane for orientation then I'm done. I already have one but it's on the top of my ground station - good for finding location on CCD cameras. I don't think I'll need to do the fuse at all - if I want to see which is the right way around in the air I could just as well bank left or right then see where it's at.
The goal here is to do some night flying eventually FPV, so I'll only use the led's to bring it in for a landing. The way I'm going to approach it is to say fly half an hour before dawn FPV then land after the sun has come up, then increase the dark time slowly until I'm comfortable with it. Should make for good entertainment once winter comes again :)
Please feel free to add your comments / suggestions
Richard
(http://s10.postimage.org/w4s9j7qvp/led_mod.jpg) (http://postimage.org/image/w4s9j7qvp/)
This short video is one of my night fly favourites!
Tandem Nighttime FPV approach and landing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kfw7B7F2NPc#ws)
Cool looking light Richard :)
And I really want to know 1) Was it really that dark in the video and 2) If it was what camera is.that guy using :)
Ian I watched the full one on his channel and the flight starts at dusk, which I think is the safest bet.
This vid is a bit later in the evening and the chap's using an SN555 camera. I tested my SeaWolf Pixem WDR690TVL camera last night and played with settings - quite grainy, but better on Fluorescent setting. Have you tested one of your WDR's at night. Be cool to see what settings you come up with.
Skywalker at nightflight (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiArIQtD3J4#)
Pixim isn't the best - have to play with settings a lot.
The sn555 is pretty good - I use that one on my EZ nightflyer.
Best I've tried is a high spec edge IR enhanced B&W security cam. Designed for night vid. It's only marginally better than the
There is a good thread on RCG covering this subject. Using one of the SC2000 cameras and changing the settings to get the best out of it. I don't have a link, but its worth a read. Cheapest way too...
Thanks Shikra!
It's early days to the point where I'm not going to attempt anything like this for a good while yet, just gain some fpv hours and experience first then who knows? I see almost all of the true night vids are shot at the margins of town's / villages for light and reference. Have you done any remote flights in the styx? Signal propagation should be better at night, is it?
Richard
Word of warning ... put light on the TOP of your wings too (or at least the tail!!), otherwise when you're banking to return home, your LEDs on the lower sides of the wings will become invisible which means you can't see your plane any more.
Hiya Steve
What I did was use 1m strips. At the 500mm mark I pierced through to the top side of the wing and installed them in a trench on top of some badly needed additional carbon rod. I'll add a strobe to the front, but not sure if the tail is needed so in the air it should look like a wing.
Cheers
I didn`t really try, but had the WDR650 out in the dark once, it was better than I thought, although I changed no settings on it to try yield better results at the time. I think Ill have a play and see what I can get out of it.
I have the security camera version of the Seawolf, but it pretty much sucks in daylight so far so I dont hold up much hope at night, but again, Ill try it then go from there
All my plane flights are in the sticks!! Copters in car park - but it was with quite a lot of lighting.
Didn't notice any signal difference at night, but I would expect it to be - background noise is usually lower. Maybe its because I don't do any long range stuff.
Definitely need some lighting for reference - ideally 300+ meters away - for where your camera is looking out.
Landing in pitch black is interesting! GPS alt is not very accurate....
If you can do it from a well lit empty carpark / field or similar it would probably be good.
Be real sure of your area and figure out what the landmarks are.
Even with OSD, make sure you know where the home point is. Also the landing / line up.
RTH / pos hold probably helps!
Its a real adrenaline rush - far more than daytime. Like the first FPV flights again...
I was shaking like a leaf the first time. Maybe it would have been easier if it was a moonlight light and not pitch black first time.
Goggles steam up in winter days.... Be prepared! Wear them for a few minutes to see if OK.
Here's my first ever copter one from 18 months ago. With the lights it's kinda cheating a bit.
TriCopter - FPV Night Flight on Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/16292835)
G
This is my main concern, when I had the WDR out in the dark, it was in an industrial car park with flood lighting within a few hundred meters so plenty of lux for the camera to use. Where I intend to fly it will be more rural with light sources only from local villages prob a km away so the cameras may really struggle to be absolutely useless
That's a great video Shikra! - even picked up a bit of colour from time to time.
I've been fascinated with the night flights (all from the States really) and Ian I think you're right, at height, the best you're going to see is overblown lights - the actual landscape, even horizon is sort of non existent, except where people fly towards city lights or on a full moon. I do like the drama of it and definitely want to try it some day.
Which paragraph in the exemption allows for IFR FPV? Don't answer, it's highly rhetorical :)