Thread: What did you learn today?

Originally Posted by eskimo

do they really make them with GPS...your a cheat......hahahaha

Yes.

I dont think they have one with a fridge yet......but it wont be long!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2itwFJCgFQ


It starts out a little slow. Granted there is a little more needed than your off the shelf quad.


Stuart

Originally Posted by eskimo

thats cheating Simon...lol

do they really make them with GPS...your a cheat......hahahaha

Mate I you not. The technology is so available and cheap that it's amazing what you can set up for a few hundred $.
People fly these things unmanned with long range video transmitters for up 50Km. They have head up display in the screen showing compass heading, horizon, lat/long position, battery power left land speed, altitude etc. etc. Many have a home function so that if they get lost or can't recognise any landmarks to get back home, they push a dedicated button on the remote and it finds it's own way home. You can also pre-program in way points and it will fly to them and back again without controlling it. If you are interested, do a youtube search for FPV (first person view) plane or quad copter. Hundreds of them, some showing spectacular footage in high def.

This or course is just a basic unit and so all manual flying. BTW, I found it! Was in the street where I believed it must have "landed" and found it within 5 minutes. I think it must have landed in the backyard of a property and the owner put it on the naturestrip. Not a scratch on it! I estimate about 400M from home. In hind site I did the right thing by cutting the power otherwise it would have ended up on French Is. Well, maybe not that far but it would have certainly been lost forever….

Best part is, now I get to play with it while my son is at school. If I happen to loose it again then I'll just tell him I never found it!

Simon

Originally Posted by Stustoys

Yes.

I dont think they have one with a fridge yet......but it wont be long!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2itwFJCgFQ


It starts out a little slow. Granted there is a little more needed than your off the shelf quad.


Stuart

Ta Stuart

Originally Posted by simonl

Mate I you not. The technology is so available and cheap that it's amazing what you can set up for a few hundred $.
People fly these things unmanned with long range video transmitters for up 50Km. They have head up display in the screen showing compass heading, horizon, lat/long position, battery power left land speed, altitude etc. etc. Many have a home function so that if they get lost or can't recognise any landmarks to get back home, they push a dedicated button on the remote and it finds it's own way home. You can also pre-program in way points and it will fly to them and back again without controlling it. If you are interested, do a youtube search for FPV (first person view) plane or quad copter. Hundreds of them, some showing spectacular footage in high def.

This or course is just a basic unit and so all manual flying. BTW, I found it! Was in the street where I believed it must have "landed" and found it within 5 minutes. I think it must have landed in the backyard of a property and the owner put it on the naturestrip. Not a scratch on it! I estimate about 400M from home. In hind site I did the right thing by cutting the power otherwise it would have ended up on French Is. Well, maybe not that far but it would have certainly been lost forever….

Best part is, now I get to play with it while my son is at school. If I happen to loose it again then I'll just tell him I never found it!

Simon

Your still a cheat.....lol

All smoke and mirrors to me....

marvellous as to what they can do...do I need another toy???

I have a small conventional copter. It is not steerable. I got it stuck up in a tree so I shot it down. Just made a hole in the fusilage. The balance rotor broke and is not of the replacable type. I would like to get a quad. I have 40 acres. Maybe I could use it to round up the stock.

Simon, what happens when the copter gets out of range from the transmitter. Same as turning off the power I would think. Video would be good. A mate used to fly model planes decades ago. He put his Pentax SLR in one with a servo actuator to take pictures. This was long before digital cameras and affordable model copters. He also flew ultralights. At one time he used one of these to assist in capturing feral horses in the NT. Acted as a locator. He also told me a story about flying an ultralight near the coast and seeing an excavator working to open the exit from a lake to the sea. He landed in the nearest suitable location and hot footed it over to tell the operator to stop. NOW! Aparently during WW2 this same exit was used as target practice for RAAF bombers. For some reason it was not considered safe to play in.

Be careful your copter does not get captured by the Iranians. I would suggest a self destruct system. A bit like a cyanide pill.

Dean

Originally Posted by Oldneweng

I have a small conventional copter. It is not steerable. I got it stuck up in a tree so I shot it down. Just made a hole in the fusilage. The balance rotor broke and is not of the replacable type. I would like to get a quad. I have 40 acres. Maybe I could use it to round up the stock.

Simon, what happens when the copter gets out of range from the transmitter. Same as turning off the power I would think. Video would be good. A mate used to fly model planes decades ago. He put his Pentax SLR in one with a servo actuator to take pictures. This was long before digital cameras and affordable model copters. He also flew ultralights. At one time he used one of these to assist in capturing feral horses in the NT. Acted as a locator. He also told me a story about flying an ultralight near the coast and seeing an excavator working to open the exit from a lake to the sea. He landed in the nearest suitable location and hot footed it over to tell the operator to stop. NOW! Aparently during WW2 this same exit was used as target practice for RAAF bombers. For some reason it was not considered safe to play in.

Be careful your copter does not get captured by the Iranians. I would suggest a self destruct system. A bit like a cyanide pill.

Dean

Hi Dean, function like out of range default settings differ depending on model and expense. My model plane has a programmable transmitter/reciever & ESC (electronic speed control) It does not have all the bells and whistles as mentioned above but it will power off if it looses transmitter signal. The quad copter is even more basic, my tests indicate a more "old school" response to an out of range transmitter, that being erratic flying. It's quite amusing because even though you have control over direction in all 3 axes and power, it has on board electronic giro's that act autonomously to maintain level and stable flight. So when it gets out of transmitter range, it goes a bit erratic but then the giro's kick in and it self stabilises, even without you having control. If I had not have cut the power when I could, it would have kept flying and maintained stable flight for maybe a few more minutes until it total lost power. While the giro's maintain it's flight stability, they cannot counteract the wind without GPS. It could have ended up anywhere!

When I get my tax back, I plan on purchasing a Bumble Bee quad copter through Hobby king. In it's most basic form it no different to this one but it can be loaded up with high capacity batteries and other payload. Simple extra's like GPS module are a $50+$75 add on. Add a video transmitter and the price starts to climb, add a long range video transmitter and the price goes up again. It'a all good fun but on an average salary, one can start to spread themselves a bit thin with it and metalwork!

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...ame_550mm.html

GPS:
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...acy_V1_01.html

controller
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s..._MAG_BARO.html

Edit: fixed the last link

Cheers,

Simon

Originally Posted by Oldneweng

I got it stuck up in a tree so I shot it down.

Hi Simon

you need one of these quads

I have one and there the most fun you can have with your pants on and tough as nails too

cheers
Harty

thats some neat flying Harty...and it was about time you went under that bridge

sorry not my flying. my flying contains more crashes
the pilot for this vid it the guy that designed and sells the blackout quads have a look at his youtube channel pretty cool stuff

cheers
harty

Last Tuesday I discovered the Chowey reinforced concrete rail bridge which was opened in 1905 on the now unused Biggenden - Gayndah rail line. Biggenden is 120km inland from Hervey Bay.

Anything other than a timber trestle bridge is very unusual for minor creek crossings on the Queensland rail network, so this reinforced concrete structure is very much a novelty up here.

The bottom and sides of the creek are solid rock, which is an ideal foundation for the arch structure. This bridge would have been a great showcase for QR's abilities at a time when the use of reinforced concrete was in its infancy.

You can't always trust what's written down.
I was cutting the pinion profile for Dean's drill press and blithely following the ratio for the dividing head on the sheets I'd printed from Steve Bedair's site in 2008, set up the ratio and managed to cut a 22 1/2 tooth pinion instead of 21. The sheet I had said 1 15/21 and it should have been 1 19/21.
That set me checking all the ratios on the sheet and while none of the other simple ratios are wrong, there is a typo for 22, where H should be 33 not 22. For 24, the ratio is inverted (should be 1 22/33). It looks like every one copies their tables from each other as the other tables I have have these in them too.

Michael

That bridge is a masterpiece of early Australian engineering Bob, I wonder how it would look if it were built by todays designers.

Originally Posted by Techo1

That bridge is a masterpiece of early Australian engineering Bob, I wonder how it would look if it were built by todays designers.

Square!

That bridge is indeed a very nice looking piece of engineering. Compare it to designs of anything today that are "intended to fit in with the surroundings"! Maybe if you are smashed on angel dust!

Dean

Originally Posted by Techo1

That bridge is a masterpiece of early Australian engineering Bob, I wonder how it would look if it were built by todays designers.

I dunno but I could imagine to replicate it, by the time you paid all the consultants and engineers and did all the environmental reports and the OHS reports and the NT (native title) reports you might be looking at a couple of billion dollars....

I do like the look of Victorian architecture, it has an elegance to it not often seen today....

Thanks for the picture...