AH-6Z Littlebird Night-Ops build project

[dogzilla]

hmm not convinced. ( I'll go with my instinct ) I'd keep it vertical. As it is half the Omni is looking down underground and ... What happens if the aircraft goes round the backside of the Helical?

It depends what you are trying to achieve.

Horizontal as Zeeflyboy has it gives you perfect reception above and to the sides, whilst the helical shoots forward but with the downside that you lose reception from the rear.

Vertical gives you terrible reception when you are above.

I've tried both through many hours of flying with diversity without a tracker and I prefer horizontal as pictured. It gives me better picture most of the time and I can still fly behind myself no problem.

Using a tracker this is all academic.

[skyscraper]

helicals actually have a very sizable back beam. That said though normally one would angle the thing upwards around 30 degrees and so the back of the helical and the back of the spw would both actually be pointing at the ground (talking without tracking here)

check out this thread if you fancy a read (sircana is the owner of Circular wireless btw if you didn't know) http://fpvlab.com/forums/showthread.php?16395-THE-ULTIMATE-5.8GHz-VIDEO-LINK-(AND-SIMPLER-OPTIONS)-EXPLAINED&highlight=ultimate+video+link

I'm still not convinced. The reason for the Omni is if the tracker goes tits side up and your lucky enough to be in range. In that case you cant rely on the helical or which direction the tracker is pointing. If the tracker is working properly the Omni is redundant. I dont get the argument about not using the tracker? Only reason not to use is if its not working. It dramatically improves the picture.

The best diversity is to have as far as practical a separate redundant system. For practicality ( theoretically you could duplicate the tracker but not the airborne telemetry side and it gets ridiculous) , so for practicality that for me is an Omni set vertical, ideally mounted on the tripod, not on the rotating part of the tracker . Actually TBH I see the Immersion Duo as a long way from ideal on a tracker since both receivers are wired in the same non-redundant box and so unless you have a stupid long antenna, so reducing gain, you are stuck with putting both antennas on the pan tilt part. If I went for diversity I much prefer the Diversity system ( Eagle Eyes?) that looks at the video picture and uses that to switch. It means you can use any combination of receivers.

On the other hand my current scheme, (not yet needed thankfully) is just to switch to the antenna in the Fatsharks if all else fails. That to me is the best form of redundancy,.. cheap compact practical and reliable.


regards
Andy

[Zeeflyboy]

helicals actually have a very sizable back beam. That said though normally one would angle the thing upwards around 30 degrees and so the back of the helical and the back of the spw would both actually be pointing at the ground (talking without tracking here)

check out this thread if you fancy a read (sircana is the owner of Circular wireless btw if you didn't know) http://fpvlab.com/forums/showthread.php?16395-THE-ULTIMATE-5.8GHz-VIDEO-LINK-(AND-SIMPLER-OPTIONS)-EXPLAINED&highlight=ultimate+video+link

I'm still not convinced. The reason for the Omni is if the tracker goes tits side up and your lucky enough to be in range. In that case you cant rely on the helical or which direction the tracker is pointing. If the tracker is working properly the Omni is redundant. I dont get the argument about not using the tracker? Only reason not to use is if its not working. It dramatically improves the picture.

Not all my aircraft have tracking, that's why.

Btw when these trackers go tits up they point up, so the SPW does actually go into the ideal position.

Any given solution will never be the best for all people however. But simply to answer your original question, for my needs no - the SPW is positioned correctly.

[dogzilla]

Immersion is antenna diversity not receiver diversity.

The argument can be said for the Eagle Tree system. You are putting redundant and diverse receivers into the same non-redundant video switcher.

Redundancy is not the be all and end all, it's also about reliability, generally the fewer components that can go wrong results in fewer instances of things going wrong, that's how I view it.

There isn't really a right or wrong way here, it's all a compromise one way or another.

[Zeeflyboy]

Immersion is antenna diversity not receiver diversity.

Actually it is... There are two completely separate receiver modules inside the unit. With a little mod (or supposedly upcoming firmware) you can actually receive on two different channels simultaneously.

Okay, if you pull the power cable out of it then both will die at the same time lol.

There isn't really a right or wrong way here, it's all a compromise one way or another.

True!

[skyscraper]

Immersion is antenna diversity not receiver diversity.

The argument can be said for the Eagle Tree system. You are putting redundant and diverse receivers into the same non-redundant video switcher.

That is true, but it's a few orders simpler than the tracker so I'm guessing the tracker is likely to be what goes wrong, my argument for having the simplest possible system off the tracker. ( Having no tracker is simpler, but a tracker is fun!) 

But apart from that, what I like about it is that you arent locked in to one manufacturer. Because the AV signal is largely standardised the system will work with any combination. Pretty much any receiver 1.2 , 2.4, 5.8 Ghz  outputs a standard signal. You can mix and match any combination of receivers and AV links and it should just work.

regards
Andy

[Zeeflyboy]

So today is a good day. I have "finished" my main fuselage section in terms of the build... Added a few more details since last I showed it, like the forward door hinges (also had to fill the screw holes then rivet over the top on each hinge) and the bottom hole has been covered with a removable panel, naza LED hatch has been fitted properly and it's all been primed now.

I also just recieved my decals from callie-graphics. They aren't particularly complicated but I didn't want to go OTT on the decal front - I want the weathering and detail to speak for itself. Basically the big reg marks go on either side of the dog house, the U.S. Army goes either side of the tail, no steps are for the quad missile launcher. The Larger FPV's are for the tail and the smaller ones the nose and door panels....




And a few pics of the main fuselage now ready for painting. I appreciate a lot of the detail gets lost as the pics are resized but hopefully it's good enough to get a feel for it!











So now I need to paint it...

[Zeeflyboy]

a few more base coats and sanded back, you can see the panels starting to take on a weathered look already, but I'm actually going to try out a technique I have read about called pre-shading. Basically this involves taking an airbrush and spraying some black along the rivet lines and edges of panels etc... once that's done you blow over with a few light coats of paint and in theory it gives you a nice sun bleached sort of look which will be a good starting point for further detailing.

So here's a couple of pics before I start ruining it lol.

[Zeeflyboy]

So here is the pre-shading done. Once it gets a coat or two on top it should produce quite a nice effect (and hopefully not just completely vanish lol, this took quite a while!).

[DaveyLC]

Immersion is antenna diversity not receiver diversity.

Actually it is... There are two completely separate receiver modules inside the unit. With a little mod (or supposedly upcoming firmware) you can actually receive on two different channels simultaneously.

Okay, if you pull the power cable out of it then both will die at the same time lol.

There isn't really a right or wrong way here, it's all a compromise one way or another.

True!

Agreed there are two RX modules..

But what ever you do there is ALWAYS a single point of failure somewhere, even if you have two completely separate RX's with two separate power sources they are still going into one diversity switcher.

And even I you double everything else up there's still one pilot and one transmitter :D

[Zeeflyboy]

Yup! There's always a weak link somewhere!

So I had hoped to show you what the main fuse section looks like after a few top coats over the pre-shading but alas with my immense strength I broke a bit of my air compressor. I've ordered a new part but won;t be able to carry on painting until next week now :(

So stuck without a compressor I did something else instead - got rid of dem man nipples.

First up I finished the arms, put his gloves on (not easy putting gloves on btw lol... really fiddly...) and then gave him a T-shirt.




Then I wrestled for a while to get his camo on. Starting to look more like Juan the man that can.




I also was just chatting with one of my colleagues today showing him pictures of my heli. I mentioned that I like the setup I have with the quad as I can chuck everything in a backpack and cycle up to the mountains to go fly.

When I said "of course it's harder to strap a 7kg heli to your back" he made a very good point...

He suggested I buy a little bike trailer! What a great idea!!! It would also double as a landing pad. After I spent the next 10 minutes laughing at the mental image of a guy cycling towing a helicopter behind him, I decided that's a damn fine idea!

Was looking at something like this (minus the side bars)

[Zeeflyboy]

So just got home and managed to do a few things already.

First up I "fixed" my beta Fatshark Trinity module by replacing an incorrect resistor (it is beta after all!) and now it works with the EzUHF. I simply can't say this enough, it's freaking amazing... I'm only using the 2 axis (for now at least) but it's just so far ahead of the MIG units that it's not even funny! Feels incredibly natural and centres perfectly - I even rapidly shook my head from side to side and up and down for about a minute (felt a bit dizzy so stopped lol) and when I stopped it was still slap bang in the centre.

If you are interested in HT, you need to try one of these out.

In other news I fitted the new expansion chamber to the compressor and managed to give the heli a blow over before running out of paint (more is on the way!). I was happy with how it's coming out so I applied the decals too... this way any weathering I now apply will go over the top of the decals and so they won't look out of place. I quite like the effect of the pre-shading, will be nice to see how it all comes together with the rest of the weathering.






And I stripped down the LCD for the ground station and fitted it to the top plate. Next up I need to design a rack to mount the control pcb and some custom buttons.

[Loopdreams]

Amazing.  Can't wait to see this one finished.

[Zeeflyboy]

cheers!


I've been procrastinating a bit lately and haven't really done much on this build but started doing some stuff on my Rush... To be fair I've been working lots too but I'm sorry, please forgive my sins.

However, I did find the motivation to play with the new paints and varnishes that arrived and here's my progress on that front. The hyper observant might notice the registration has gone walkies - as mentioned I wasn't 100% happy with the placement so I've re-ordered some new decals and removed the old ones in the mean time.

So these were my two main items




What I ended up doing was airbrushing the grime along all the panel lines and crevices then allowing it to just dry for a few minutes. I then took some kitchen towel and buffed the body to remove a lot of it. Took the exhaust pigment and just applied it using a brush... I also put a little silver in places to look like chipped paint.

The photos don't really quite do it justice actually, which is possibly the first time you'll hear me say that. I think in the flesh it's looking really nice and I'm pretty chuffed with how it's coming along!









Out of interest, the satin varnish is absolutely perfect - it's almost completely invisible. Over and around the decals has actually already been given just a light coat of satin varnish to allow the weathering to hold (otherwise it buffs right off the smooth vinyl surface), but you can't even see it once it's dried, it perfectly matches the current flatness of the paint below. I'll be using this satin varnish to finish the whole project off now because ti produces a much nicer finish than the matt.

Need to do some serious tidying today but then try and get some more done. Might start work on fitting the beacon to the tail and detailing that.

[Zeeflyboy]

So did a couple of things today... built up the inner weapons arms mounts and painted them.




and painted the exhaust, plus made this little mounting system for it on the printer. I've made it so that it can accept a 40mm fan too incase I need to increase airflow through the body for cooling.