Skywalker 1900

[FPVSteve]

You know something else which is a PITA?

Just reading the instructions as it's just arrived ...

"Return Mode - The plane will maintain the current altitude and return home automatically. Pay attention to the power during flight and avoid loss of speed".

So basically if I lose control at 2,000ft it will come home.. at 2,000ft.

That could be a bad day.... wish it would descend to say, 200 ft so I could actually see it and take control :laugh:

Starting to have reservations!

[Brucey]

Also, loose control at 20ft.... I'd ditch that unit, seems flawed. Buy cheap buy twice and all that.
Build it without rth until you can buy something worth while. Just my option of course.

[CurryKitten]

To be fair, many APs would struggle at 20ft as even with a prescribed RTH altitude they won't suddenly go vertical to get there.  It depends on why you'd need RTH - I had exactly the situation you wouldn't want where I lost my FPV camera and had to bring it in LOS.  At something like 220m, my wing looked like a dot - my RTH altitude on Storm was 100m but it would have taken a fair while to descend.

So if it's just a case of loss of control signal of course, you'd get control back way before it reached you (at least you should) so you should be able to carry on FPVing it.  I'm presuming you can get it back out of RTH ?

[FPVSteve]

Well.... primarily my goal for RTH is to re-orient myself if I get lost... I don't plan on losing control and with FrSky I should be good for 2km radius anyway.

We'll see, I'll give it a chance - it's only foam at stake.

[AdamG]

Well.... primarily my goal for RTH is to re-orient myself if I get lost... I don't plan on losing control and with FrSky I should be good for 2km radius anyway.

We'll see, I'll give it a chance - it's only foam at stake.

Its all the gear in the foam i'd be worried about :laugh: My skywalker has an up in the air value of over £1,000... but the foam was only £99 :laugh:

[FPVSteve]

Yea but you usually get the gear back, the foam is disposable :)

[AdamG]

Yea but you usually get the gear back, the foam is disposable :)

Yeah hopefully. My worst nightmare would be to just lose all power while at high altitude and far from home. Would be a complete nightmare trying to guess where it came down... especially now i know how well the 1900 glides on zero throttle :o as long as my video feed works until i hit the ground i think it wouldn't be too bad :laugh:

[iPeel]

Yeah hopefully. My worst nightmare would be to just lose all power while at high altitude and far from home. Would be a complete nightmare trying to guess where it came down... especially now i know how well the 1900 glides on zero throttle :o as long as my video feed works until i hit the ground i think it wouldn't be too bad :laugh:

This is what goes in all my long range stuff now: http://www.multirotorsuperstore.com/brotronics-powertowerrx-for-openlrsng.html

It conditions a lightweight 1s battery and in the event of a crash that ends up losing the flight battery it can still use its own battery to power the PMR beacon, meaning I can find my stuff using a cheapo' kid's walkie-talkie.

[FPVSteve]

Not really had time to make much progress, but I have at least done the following.

First I taped up the underside of the fuselage so that it can be wiped clean, although the plan for this airframe is to put some undercarriage on it anyway - I still figured it was a good idea in order to preserve the cleanliness of the plane as I hate it when they get covered in mud and all you can do is smudge it into the foam.



Next, I cut an access door into the side of the fuselage, using a little plastic handle as the door. No need for magnets as I simply made a hotglue hinge on the front-most edge, so airflow will keep it closed (and friction).



I did however add some more plastic bits on the inside of the door to ensure it couldn't be closed too far.



Next up was to line the inside of the fuselage with more tape, and then put some self-adhesive velcro (rough side) into the plane ready to accept the leccy bits.



I only did it halfway though because I plan to glue a plywood battery tray into the nose with velcro straps to keep my batteries in place properly. I figure that although the plane won't be doing any aerobatics, it'd be slightly disastrous if the batteries move so it needs to be  something a bit more substantial than just batteries velcroed into the fuselage.



I've also placed an airhole in the side of the fuselage to allow airflow into the ESC bay under the wings to keep things cool. I'll put an airscoop on here in due course. I also bevelled the trailing edge of this, so that the airflow is a bit smoother than just hitting a flat surface inside the scoop, this way it should reduce what little drag the scoop will cause.

[MarkLincs]

Make sure the air being scooped in has an escape route ;)

[FPVSteve]

Make sure the air being scooped in has an escape route ;)

There is a large hole under the motor which will accommodate the wires (and also let air escape).

[iPeel]

If the vent hole is a T shape on its side with the bottom bit of the T facing forward then it will draw the air in without needing a scoop. I forget what the proper name for these are.

One of the 1000 or so FliteTest videos went into it once, around the time of the FT3D I think.

Edit: It's called a NACA duct - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NACA_duct

Linked because embedding doesn't let you jump to a time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rfcFKKDUxU&t=11m15s

[FPVSteve]

That's interesting actually ... bit late for me now though as I've already cut it :(

[Loopdreams]

Reading that wikipedia article it seems like they need to be just right in order to create the vortices which make it work.  Probably just cutting a hole which looks a bit the same would do nothing.

[krikey]

Looking forward to seeing the maiden, Steve.