'S T U F F'
Concerning the etheriality of 'stuff'
More...
The sum of the parts..
I have to tell you, that this is one fiddly critter, solid, but fiddly. That said, it's probably because I've been spoilt so far with the usual DJI Flamewheel products that are generally thrown together in a couple of hours, very much a case of throw it together, then throw it in the air. Nothing wrong with that of course, I had great success with my 450, and 550 (hex), but felt it was time to move on to pastures new, hence the gravitation toward the foldable platform.
The day began well enough (after the rhubarb harvest of course) by a contemplation of the build so far, and also how the heck was I going to get the two halves together? It looked easy in the IRC instructions, although I think they are also a work in progress, as I spotted a mistake with their Naza GPS setup in the Naza assistant (X should be a -ve value).
upper...
lower..
If you're expecting loads of images depicting the operation, forget it! It was one of those things, half an hour of postulating and prevaricating, then it was all done, quick as a flash, pretty painlessly actually!
As I surveyed my handiwork, I realised that I'd left the gimbal servo cable disconnected :-( One of those sinking moments!
Not a problem, once I'd realised that the connection is made to the front (F2) of the Naza FC, it was a simple case of 6 or so hex bolts and the from bulkhead pops out.
Chunky.
As you can see, she's chunky, with plenty of useful nooks and crannies to stick stuff
Actually, the fitting the two halves together, which was the job I was dreading (due to the lack of space in the FC compartment to fit the Naza v2 & all the wires etc) was relatively easy to accomplish, it was the setting up of the Taranis that got me a head-scratching..
I've had the Taranis about 2 months or so now, well, it seemed a good idea at the time!
So I've got the gist of how it all works from here:
https://code.google.com/p/opentx/wiki/OpenTx_FrSky_EN
And a good work it is too. The only thing is with me, whilst I can read a manual as well as the next fellow, I prefer to be shown stuff. Although, I did manage to crack the installation of the Companion 9x, and associated drivers, but it was a fiddle, another smoke & mirrors operation, accomplished under cover of darkness. Actually, I have it on my iMac, can't rememeber if I bothered with it on the PC or not (probably not).
Background....
So, enter one Dennis Baldwin to the rescue.
I have to say, there are a good number of Taranis tutorials on the net. Lets just say, they are not all equal, and leave it at that.
Dennis however, has captured the essence of what I was attempting to acheive, namely to start from a blank canvas so to speak, and gradually build the 'eeprom-model' to the end degree.
The only thing I did differently to him, was to use channel 5 for my flight modes instead of 7.
I now have a decent working Taranis, with eZuhf module. Dennis has obviously spent a lot of time 'under the hood' of the Taranis, lets face it, he probably picks stuff up quicker than me! I thought the trick with the 'replace' (creating the failsafe mix) was genius, virtually had me applauding..
5.8 ghz Tx insitu. I'm using a step up transformer here, 5>12v, which also makes a convenient solder pad for the -ve connections to the iOSD mini. :-)
I'm a fan of the iOSD, it's minimal, but seems to give me most of the info I need when flying these things, voltage, height, direction, flight mode, air speed, direction to home, plus a new indicator, 'azimuth', which could be used to locate a lost model, based on the asimuth reading when it dissapears (degrees from north disecting home point).
THe only thing I'd like to see being added would perhaps be mAh used, oh, and perhaps flight duration as well.
As I mentioned in my blog, the maiden went extremely well, and all the hard work/expense proved to be worth it after all. Even the failsafe/RTH was tested, albeit in an unscheduled way, as I must have lost Rx signal from the UHF, which was dissapointing, but maybe not too surprising as I was very low, and behind some HT wires, also as I'm using the UK legal 100 Mw Fware, range is never going to be brilliant, but as I lost visual as well, (using 5.8) I guess that's pretty academic anyhow, is it not?
Ground zero
A little 'up' time
Less bovver with a hover..
Back at base, I set about making several mods, just niggly stuff really. I had not managed to secure the fpv flight cam from swivelling in its mount, so super glue was used to firm it up. It was amazingly difficult to fly her with the cam tilted at about 20 degrees!
Next up was the UHF Rx, which kept popping off it's servo tape mount due to the dipole making contact with the deck. I drilled two holes to feed a chunky cable tie through to hold it securely in place.
Then, I swapped out the 5.8 Vrx antenna for a longer one I had on my CX4, this, along with a similar cable tie mod, makes the Vtx nicely secure, with the antenna skew being raked out and away from the body, underneath.
Oh yes, I must calibrate the GPS too! (the fabled 'Naza dance').
Nothing exciting I'm afraid, just another confidence building flight. She flies pretty well, and the video is of a reasonable quality. I need to revise the gopro mounting arrangements, as it's a little crude at the moment. Hovering gives very stable footage indeed, (as you can see in the clip on the left) and the basic servo gimbal goes some way to eliminate that nausea inducing tilting that you get with no gimbal at all. I don't mind the banking, as it just gives a more pilot's eye view, as oposed to the 'on wire' results of the H3-2D.
The weigh-in.
For those who like such things, as you can see, with a 4000 mAh Zippy Compact lipo stuffed inside like a Christmas turkey, it weighs a tad over 1.4 kg. I note that IRC weighed theirs in at 1.4, so it's good to see I've not overdone it on the weight aspect. Of course the GoPro Hero 3 adds an extra 75g.
Size wise, the folded frame takes up 135mm (height) X 290mm (length) X 240mm width.
Final tweaks...
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I decided to alter a couple of things. Firstly, I really didn't like the way that I'm getting failsafe triggered at distances of no more than a hundred metres or so, albeit either close to the ground, or down in a dip. I felt I should investigate a little more.
I didn't like the way that the UHF Rx antenna was positioned at the front, so I moved rx, lock stock & barrel to the rear, on top, and repositioned the antenna, so I have one pointing up, with the other diversity channel horizontal. This puts it away from the gimbal servo, so (I hope!) less prone to interference. We'll see!
Secondly, the rear leg 'grommits' make the lipo fit a little too snug (with the velcro I have on my lipo's) so I moved them forward slightly, and held them on with superglue. Now the battery (4000 mAh) is about right. Just hope it doesn't expand too much in flight, as it'll be 'Houston, we have a problem'!
I have also reflashed the Tx & Rx with the extreme hopping firmware, so we'll see if that makes things more reliable!
Oh yes, I've also ordered a new Diamond SRH-771 40cm Tx dipole antenna from Radio World
