Multirotor, multicopter and quadcopter discussion - The Drone thread

Flukester · 15 Oct 2013 at 11:17

SteveOBHave said:
I hate to be a party pooper but I think you should remove the references to altitude. You should not legally be over 400feet indicated with Any RC aircraft.

All of you should read up on this http://www.fpvuk.org/fpv-law/

It's very important as the legal aspects of this hobby will become more and more relevant and you really want to be on the right side of the law.

Coming from a full sized aviation background, do not underestimate the potential for these things to cause damage to full sized aircraft regardless of what that tool Trappy from Team Black Sheep says - if you've ever seen the mess that a bird does to an aircraft then you'd have second thoughts about taking risks.

Just as an example - I've seen the hole (about the size of a football) in the side of a fighter plane after a bird got ingested, made it's way through the engine and got thrown out the side of the fuselage. Having a quad or a foamy which is significantly more solid than a bird, contains a highly flammable/explosive LiPo on board at an altitude that 'could' potentially end up in a flightpath is not a place where any of you want to be.

Please be careful guys, TBS is NOT an example of where you want to be at with your FPV.

I know about the 400ft limit, but is the law above sea level or the land below ?, makes a lot of difference.

If above sea level I wasn't far over, and I couldn't confirm this until I got down and read the altimeter.

The weird thing is though, the 400ft limit means nothing when you see low flying small aircraft buzzing around at what looks like below that ?

Cuchulain · 15 Oct 2013 at 11:18

SteveOBHave said:
I hate to be a party pooper but I think you should remove the references to altitude. You should not legally be over 400feet indicated with Any RC aircraft.

All of you should read up on this http://www.fpvuk.org/fpv-law/

It's very important as the legal aspects of this hobby will become more and more relevant and you really want to be on the right side of the law.

Coming from a full sized aviation background, do not underestimate the potential for these things to cause damage to full sized aircraft regardless of what that tool Trappy from Team Black Sheep says - if you've ever seen the mess that a bird does to an aircraft then you'd have second thoughts about taking risks.

Just as an example - I've seen the hole (about the size of a football) in the side of a fighter plane after a bird got ingested, made it's way through the engine and got thrown out the side of the fuselage. Having a quad or a foamy which is significantly more solid than a bird, contains a highly flammable/explosive LiPo on board at an altitude that 'could' potentially end up in a flightpath is not a place where any of you want to be.

Please be careful guys, TBS is NOT an example of where you want to be at with your FPV.

Just to add to this one and I'm sure most of us are guilty of it, you should NOT be flying in residential areas and you SHOULD have BMFA insurance. Easiest thing to do is join your local flying club, most of them offer insurance as part of the yearly fee.

Cuchulain · 15 Oct 2013 at 11:20

Flukester said:
I know about the 400ft limit, but is the law above sea level or the land below ?, makes a lot of difference.

If above sea level I wasn't far over, and I couldn't confirm this until I got down and read the altimeter.

The weird thing is though, the 400ft limit means nothing when you see low flying small aircraft buzzing around at what looks like below that ?

Highly doubtful they're flying below 500ft unless the aircraft was in trouble or they had authority from the CAA.

Col_M · 15 Oct 2013 at 11:23

rhysduck said:
Sorry I meant if there was anyway for FPV'ers to exceed the 400ft mark legally. IE applying for some kind of special license?

Honestly, why would you want to? I have only been flying FPV for ~4 months and in this time I've probably spent <5% of my time above 10m, it's far more fun to fly low and fast. I tried flying "high" when I first started as like everyone you think it's great to be able to do so but once you've been up there and had a look around there's really not much else to do.

Flukester · 15 Oct 2013 at 11:25

Cuchulain said:
Highly doubtful they're flying below 500ft unless the aircraft was in trouble or they had authority from the CAA.

Whenever I hear a plane I bring quad down from any kind of altitude.

I think there will be a accident at some point though as everyone is buying quads / drones etc... just a matter of time though.

Flukester · 15 Oct 2013 at 11:27

Col_M said:
Honestly, why would you want to? I have only been flying FPV for ~4 months and in this time I've probably spent <5% of my time above 10m, it's far more fun to fly low and fast. I tried flying "high" when I first started as like everyone you think it's great to be able to do so but once you've been up there and had a look around there's really not much else to do.

<10m isn't going to get any nice photos though... tbh 400ft is all you need for a nice snap of surroundings. It depends I guess on if you are buzzing around for FPV kicks or trying to do photography.. I prefer the photography than the actual flying aspect, so sitting down in front of computer afterwards is just as much fun.

Flukester · 15 Oct 2013 at 11:32

I took this one from quite low at weekend, certainly within any limits.. though people kept coming from beach to see what was going on :\

SteveOBHave · 15 Oct 2013 at 11:33

Flukester said:
I know about the 400ft limit, but is the law above sea level or the land below ?, makes a lot of difference.

If above sea level I wasn't far over, and I couldn't confirm this until I got down and read the altimeter.

The weird thing is though, the 400ft limit means nothing when you see low flying small aircraft buzzing around at what looks like below that ?

It's above the ground - the same as aircraft have to operate.

150m is close on 500ft.

SteveOBHave · 15 Oct 2013 at 11:36

Flukester said:
I took this one from quite low at weekend, certainly within any limits.. though people kept coming from beach to see what was going on :\

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/73603922/highcliffe_castle.jpg[IMG][/QUOTE]

That's the risk with flying these things, they create a 'lot' of interest - I tend to fly at empty playing fields but the moment kids are around the planes with the big cutty whirly bits go straight onto the ground. Well all know how unpredictable these are if you get your tuning wrong, lose orientation or break a prop - they change direction crazy quick.

Flukester · 15 Oct 2013 at 11:38

Yep, the hardest part of the hobby is finding quiet places... even a lone dog walker will make a be line for you and scare bejebus outta ya when mid FPV lol

I was assaulted by a dog last week, heard a distant panting sound, next thing I'm almost knocked over by some dog / horse crossbreed

SteveOBHave · 15 Oct 2013 at 11:41

Flukester said:
... knocked over by some dog / horse crossbreed

LOL yeah - I've had dogs chase my planes all over a park until I ran out of juice... luckily they didn't know what to make of it once it was on the ground. But yeah, having some fatties on your face makes you pretty vulnerable.

rhysduck · 15 Oct 2013 at 11:47

SteveOBHave said:
LOL yeah - I've had dogs chase my planes all over a park until I ran out of juice... luckily they didn't know what to make of it once it was on the ground. But yeah, having some fatties on your face makes you pretty vulnerable.

Always love flying the electric planes on the beach in the summer and having my mate's Lab chase them like **** about a metre off the ground, not bothered in the slightest if I "land"

Col_M · 15 Oct 2013 at 11:48

Flukester said:
<10m isn't going to get any nice photos though... tbh 400ft is all you need for a nice snap of surroundings. It depends I guess on if you are buzzing around for FPV kicks or trying to do photography.. I prefer the photography than the actual flying aspect, so sitting down in front of computer afterwards is just as much fun.

No that's fair enough

I like my photography too but I tend to keep the two hobbies separate so I can actually appreciate the stills aspect and the requirement for altitude. However there are a lot of very dull flight videos on YouTube of people pootling about at great height, I'm trying to get some more low flying proximity people into the hobby so we have more interesting videos to watch

PinkFloyd · 15 Oct 2013 at 14:04

Yeah dogs running at me / after the quad is really distracting. One of the times I've crashed was due to having to jump out of the way of some chav's rottweiler running at me :/ Tend to just land and let the props spin right down with any dogs nearbye now.

petridish · 15 Oct 2013 at 15:55

Nice shots flukester! Are the early morning ones of the edge of Ringwood? (I live a few minutes down the road and thought I recognised it)

doofer · 15 Oct 2013 at 17:05

This is about as high as I'm comfortable with, no idea how high it is but I think it's well under 400ft, guessing around 120-150ft, I get in a right old flap when it gets this high and have to land it straight away to calm down for a while heheh

Any dogs start chasing it get led in to the pond...

And some bits arrived this morning

One super fast (5 days :eek:

) delivery from China! But it was sent with the instructions (In Chinese..) for something else! So had some head scratching building it, but got there in the end, quite impressed with it for the money, not sure whether to keep it on the F450 or put it on my Dead Cat hybrid.

And these:

Just waiting on the 3.5" screen to arrive, my 7" screen is way too big to try and even modify into fitting so will keep that as a spare and actually choose a FPV system, I want to use the Mobius as the FPV and the flight camera, don't want a GoPro as I know too many people who've had problems with them and I really think they are very overpriced for what they are.

I was all set to order an Ardupilot 2.5 too but now there's a new one coming out soon from them so I think I'll hang on for a while and see what's what with the new one before making a decision.

Flukester · 15 Oct 2013 at 17:37

petridish said:
Nice shots flukester! Are the early morning ones of the edge of Ringwood? (I live a few minutes down the road and thought I recognised it)

Hey, yep on ind est on crow arch lane. Small world

Col_M · 15 Oct 2013 at 17:41

doofer said:
I was all set to order an Ardupilot 2.5 too but now there's a new one coming out soon from them so I think I'll hang on for a while and see what's what with the new one before making a decision.

Indeed, the Pixhawk sounds fantastic and I'm looking forward to it. The APM is starting to run out of memory for the code so when the programmers have more space to play with it will be interesting to see what they can do.

Saying that though they are doing a great job within the limitations, the 3.1.0 firmware is going to have autotune where the multi hovers and tunes the PIDs itself, even in the beta version people are saying it works well in most cases. It may take a little while for the Pixhawk to mature and iron out the bugs, the APM code is very mature and polished, probably the best all round controller available right now. The good thing is you can't go wrong waiting for the Pixhawk or getting an APM, either way you'll have a fantastic controller.

rhysduck · 15 Oct 2013 at 19:19

Awesome pictures fair play guys!

Where do you guys get your props from?

I'm after some 10x4.7 SF (or RD) props but GiantShark and HobbyKing (UK) have none

Edit: They're for my tri

quickshot89 · 15 Oct 2013 at 19:49

So the husban x4 sounds like a bee on crack, but its hilarious to try and fly