Eurofighter FPV build

[Zeeflyboy]

Still no sign of the EZUHf which makes me a sad boy. Ive been using my diversity rx today to do some setup and if i get impatient i may have to modify the plane to make the diversity fit - im going on holiday at the end of next week, so if it doesnt fly before then it wont fly until towards the end of july!

So anyway, while running through setup ive been getting pissed off at my eagletree kit. The throttle initialisation problem is still there (although perhaps this isn't eagletree directly but more how my kontronik deals with it... It'll initialise directly from the ezuhf but not from the osd pro... Not a problem really I guess, just means I need to run a wire to the ezuhf directly for throttle and forgo any RTH or throttle based ability of the OSD.

But then while running through setup, I have the g force meter jumping up and down from 0.9 to 1.5 just sat on the ground and the AHI jumps up and down too. This wasnt happening before, and nothing has changed in the setup so im a bit stumped. Nothing has got rid of it so far, including stripping it all back to basics... My airspeed also jumps from zero to 5mph sitting inside in the still air, but it was doing that before. Perhaps this is standard.

So anyway, I'm saying **** it - i'm getting the rvosd 5. Sander is going to laugh his arse off....

Since I don't need the guardian ahi or g-force (or indeed anything except the elevon mixing and ppm decoding of the osd pro) for basic 3rd person flight I can still maiden LOS as is, so won't need to delay for the rvosd.

EDIT - just done some testing... Fully glassed she now weighs a porky 2.9kg including the slightly heavier gens ace packs. I just gave them a full throttle run though (i've  run just the signal wire back to the EZUHF) and they perform much better than the more expensive and almost double C rated flightpower packs... it maintains a good 1:1 thrust ratio even at 2.9kg and it doesn't drop off quickly like the flightpowers (which struggled to maintain 1:1 after a few seconds - even before glassing and adding the wing spars). Thrust vectoring at full throttle has a huge amount of control authority, which is nice! After a good run at full pelt the packs are just barely warm too, the flightpowers were hot despite being rated at 45C vs 25C of the gens ace. That'll teach me... Stick with what you know! Perhaps the flightpowers can find a less demanding home in my quad now that I'm changing that over to 4S...


Double edit - batteries nice and firmly installed, CG seems spot on the recommended point, all controls working as expected... and I installed the diversity rx.

Could it be time for a maiden? I need a drink...

[Zeeflyboy]

I just flew it, and I'm buzzzzzzzzing!

There's good news and there's bad news, but overall I would say I'm a happy choppy - I'll expand later when I'm back!

[SouthPawPaul]

Congratulations.

Looking forward to the video if you took one :)

[Zeeflyboy]

I want to laugh and I want to cry...

Right, just got back from the field....

So, what happened? The launcher worked perfectly! As it happens I actually pulled up to much expecting to need a bit of up elevator but it didn't need it.... and as such it didn't look very tidy. Next launch I will not pull up much at all methinks (yes, that's right, there will be a next launch!). Anyway, despite my error it got up on step easily and didn't need so much as a spot of trim.

It flies wonderfully, even at 2.9kg. So stable it's ridiculous, fantastic slow speed stability and some great manoeuvrability from as much as I pushed it during the maiden...

So what went wrong?

Two things....

First, I only have a 34mb corrupt file on my video recorder. This makes me want to cry.... can anyone help me recover it? It seems my recorder took a dump for some reason during the flight (don't know why, worked fine with my quad and it records through static so should have been fine....). At 34mb it seems fairly early on but maybe there's some footage on there if it can be rescued. I do have some iPhone video of the flight and I'll edit that down into a quick video for you guys, but no cockpit view I'm afraid :(

Second bit of bad news, I had an enormous field to land in, and in this field there was a very thin electric fence that I hadn't seen in the setting sun. Of course, as according the law of the sod, upon landing my euro hit a fence post with the wing. It's like drowning in a puddle in the desert...  :censored: .

So, my wing is a bit :censored: up. It held up very well in general, no damage to the spars and it's only a section of the leading edge that needs to be fixed. I think I'll be able to strip back the glass just around the area, repair the foam and then glass over the top again. If not, I'll buy a new wing and cut out the affected section for a cut and shut job (easier than re-doing spars, wing servos, lights etc).

I'm confident that I'll get it looking as good as new (almost at least!), but in the mean time I'm going to make a temporary repair so I can get up in the air again asap and try to get a flight recording again.

Give me a bit of time to cut down the video and I'll post it here later.

[FPVSteve]

Awesome stuff - seriously though, hope you get it fixed, it's always stupid things that spoil an otherwise successful outing.

Well done for having the balls to fire her skywards :)

[SouthPawPaul]

the vlc player is pretty good at playing video files that won't play in others.

http://www.videolan.org/index.html

[Zeeflyboy]

you're right, vlc does play it but it cuts out before launch.... TITS!!!!

[FPVSteve]

excess g-force?

[Zeeflyboy]

no, it happens before I even pick it up to put it on the ramp - the recorder just cuts.

Anyway, here's the maiden - I suggest 720p and full screen!

Commentary from my mate Seb! lol... It flew beautifully, bags of power and stable at both high and low speed. Shame about the wing!


Eurofighter Maiden

[FPVSteve]

Man that thing looks sweeeeeeet.

Looks like you're gonna have to be flat out though for FPV, otherwise you'll be looking skyward due to the high alpha....

[Zeeflyboy]

Yeah it's a disadvantage of the delta wings.. they do fly at a fairly high alpha.

That said, the majority of those passes were at about 60% throttle and it's fairly flat, it's only when you slow right down that the nose picks up a lot. That is one reason why I have pan/tilt though! When I slow down I'll just tilt down the camera. It would have been nice to see the viewpoint

[skyscraper]

Wow. That looks cool! Very impressive. Looks pretty quick too.

Nice One.

Looking forward to the fpv view now!

regards
Andy

[Coyote]

Oh yes ! Finally some air time :) It looks fantastic, really nice :)

It seemed to catch the top of the launcher for just that split second, my heart would have fluttered about then lol

[Zeeflyboy]

yeah it's funny lol...

if you watch it in super slow motion the launcher flexes downwards during the pull which makes the euro nose up to quite a high attitude. Then just as the sled hits the launcher flexes upwards and taps the bum up correcting the attitude to a more reasonable level.

Then my ill advised back elevator kicks in and nearly stalls the thing lol. Thank goodness for ridiculous amounts of thrust.

EDIT - just checked over my plane and realised I never fitted the wing retainer screws... The wings were being held on by the spars and magnets alone. Holy crap that was lucky!

[FPVSteve]

lol.... after all that preparation :o

You need a checklist!