Eurofighter FPV build

[Pasty]

Flying at speed low down for 5-6mins will feel like forever when you're the pilot, you'll be glad to land for a break :D

[Zeeflyboy]

That's what I'm thinking...

If I want long duration long distance I can always fly one of my others!

[FPVSteve]

It looks fantastic but I really would be papping myself flying this beast lol

[Pasty]

its about confidence and ability steve, if you know you can fly well and you're confident papping yourself is replaced with a small amount of apprehension on the first launch, after that its like flying anything else.... unless you've set it up wrong or built a dog.... then hang onto your hat and ride the rough ride! :)

which in itself can be a fun challenge!

[g.collins]

nice buy with the Futaba 10C, I have one and love it.
:D G

[Zeeflyboy]

I'm a fairly confident sort, but I think the first launch will still get my hands trembling a little lol. It won't be FPV of course, but maiden is always a little nerve wracking!

Never had a Futaba before but the 10C looks good and the price was not too bad! Now that I have more than the 8 channels of my DX8 however I'm half thinking I should have gone with the TS LRS rather than the EZUHF though, since it offers 12 Channels. As it turns out 8 is actually a little on the skinny side! Oh well....

Amazing how quickly the channels add up when FPV-ing!

[Zeeflyboy]

So just a small update tonight...

I made myself a sander style dipole antenna




Installed in place





and with tail fitted... Like this the only visible part is about 5cm or so of the bottom black cable dangling out the bottom of the fuselage. More or less unnoticeable... good for the LOS part of my build objective.





Those of you paying attention may have noticed I ended up going with a servo actuated rudder mod, this is due to deciding I wanted the tail removable as well, which was too much hassle with the route I initially went down. It will ultimately be covered and visual impact should be minimal.


I've been making some progress on the cockpit too... I built myself a curved 4 LED array using some plastic card and some 3mm leds, and modified the inside of the dash to then insert it... This will provide the backlighting for some backlit paper (essentially very thin, white, printable plastic) which will be printed with screens etc and then installed into the dash. This will then allow me to not only have my own screens as before, but also have them light up like real screens. For power I just spliced into one of the servo leads so that I don't have any additional connections to worry about. I've done some tests with the backlit paper and it's looking very promising.... more on this mod soon!








So, that's all for now!

[g.collins]

nice, you wont to get holed of some old googol screens and mount them, then rig a video of a real jet display, on to the tiny screens.
;) G

[Zeeflyboy]

That's a bit beyond me... I did see some nice tiny OLED displays, but they flicker in the cam and I would also need to program custom displays. Maybe one day if I become a clever person!

In the mean time, this is what I've managed tonight - a bit more work on the cockpit... still needs a bit of tidying up and I may re-do a couple of bits but gives a good idea.

What do you think though? I think it came out quite nicely. Hard to get a photo of properly but I've done my best....









and the "camera eye view"

[FPVSteve]

That looks way cool ;D

[Pasty]

that looks great!

[Asomaro]

Very nice work buddy, where did you get the "plastic" printed? Is it a specialist process or can anyone do it?

Cheers,

[Zeeflyboy]

Cheers!

Just using my inkjet... All done at home. I used photoshop to size up and create images for the screens.

The stuff is called backlit paper. It's just a very thin sheet of plastic with an ink absorbing layer on one side... The sort of thing estate agents use when they print out adverts and put them on led light boxes. Generally ridiculously expensive and sold in large quantities, but I found a guy on eBay selling 10 sheets of A4 for about 8 quid. God bless eBay.

[g.collins]

Sweet, lights up great.
:) G

[Zeeflyboy]

Just one more pic of the cockpit, I was curious as to how it would look in broad daylight.

Does actually still show up quite nicely! Certainly a better effect than just having solid printed screens and much more interesting than the blank black screens that were there before. Should provide A nice effect when the dash is in shadow