My R/C gear (the electic gear)

During the time I have been active in this hobby I have bought some various "electric" equipment. When I started to think about this, after listening to the RCPowers audio course, I can see that I have not been that focused. If I should start this hobby today I would focus to buy equipment that I can reuse in (almost) all my setups. Looking at my small "collection" I now see that I only have two items that are identical, two 3s 1550 lipos. Well OK, I actually only have one kind of servos, HXT900's.
Motor:

• Turnigy 28-26 1650kv
• Turnigy 28-36 2350kv
• Brushed motor included with the Easy Star (don't know brand or size)
• 2212-6 2200kv (looks exactly like turnigy but no name)

ESC's:

• HobbyWing Pentium18A
• HobbyWing Pentium 30A
• Brushed included with Easy Star (don't know name or size)
• 20A (looks exactly like turnigy but no name) 

Lipo:

• LM Fast charge 2S 1300 20C
• LM Loong 2S 1300 25C
• LM Loong 3S 1300 25C
• Gravity 3S 1550 30-40C

Transmitter:

• Spektrum DX6i
• E-sky (included with Lama v3 heli)

Receiver:

• AR6100 (included with the DX6i transmitter)
• OrangeRX 6 channel DSM2 receiver (works great with the DX6i)
• Corona 4 channel synthetic receiver (works great with the transmitter included with Lama v3)

Servo:

• HXT 900

Lessons learned: Be more focused when buying RC equipment in the future. This would save me money and I will always have spare parts if something breaks.

/MidnightSunRC

Bought the ultimate RC course

I went and bought the RC Powers ultimate RC course yesterday (you can find it here: RC Powers). I bought the master version where you get almost three hours of material and four (4!) of their pdf plans as a bonus. After looking/listening through the first few modules I really see that this is a good thing to buy. Even though I would say that the biggest audience for this course are the RC hobby beginners I would also say that this is a gem for those that has been into the RC hobby for a while. Actually, I really believe that I would have saved quite a lot of money if I had had the opportunity to buy this when I first started.

I think I will come back later with a small review of this course when I have listened through all the included material but just because of the good deal together with those bonus pdf plans I would already now recommend a buy.

Blade mSR throttle problem

Solution to my problem here!


Ok so my Blade msr has started to have a bad behaviour. I am flying around in a normal way on a fully charged battery, nothing fancy, and suddenly the throttle locks and I can't do anything. After a few seconds (maybe 5?) the throttle goes down to zero like the battery is dead. I have no idea what the problem might be but I suspect that it might be the 4-in-1 that is dying on me.
Has anyone had the same problem? Are there any solutions?
Cheers

Camera with OSD for rc planes - TX61 from RC-Tech

WOW, look at this! Camera with OSD for rc planes
This is what I want. The only drawback that I can see is that it uses the 2,4GHz band so you can't use your 2,4GHz radio to fly with.
Here is a link to a clip on YouTube where they are using this equipment: YouTube clip
I will get back with later posts on this topic because I find this as a "next step" with this hobby.
/MidnightSunRC

Blade msr advanced settings

The E-Flite Blade msr is a fun experience for both the beginner who want to try the challenge with a r/c heli and for the more advanced pilots who want a small and fun heli to relax with during the dark winter months, or at least I believe so. To clarify my current position on the beginner-advanced-scale I have an overweight to the beginner side. That much said I am now about to show how to set up the Blade msr in "advanced" mode.The heli comes with the "beginner" settings as default. This setting is shown as "A" above. The two different possible settings achieved through switching the lower rotor head links (connected at "A" in the picture above) between the two sets of swashplate control balls. There are one set with shorter shafts and one set with longer shafts. The ones with the longer shafts are used for the advanced settings. When I switched between the two settings I used a small flat screwdriver to pull the links from the swashplate control balls. Then gently attached them on the swashplate control balls with the longer shafts - "B" in the above picture. The first link is the trickiest to attach. Just be gentle and patient and you will work this out.

After finishing this adjustment you have set the heli in the more aggressive advanced setup and you will find your heli much more responsive on pitch and roll.

After I made these adjustments to get my heli into "advanced" mode I experienced that the heli started to wobble when hovering. It was as if it wasn't as stable any more, although I didn't do any input. I didn't like this behaviour so I switched back to the "beginner" mode and I am happy with that. Try it out and see which setting suites you the best! Maybe the swashplate calibration tool could have solved this?

(This procedure is also explained in the Blade msr manual on page 33)

/MidnightSunRC

Useful Blade msr link

Here is a useful troubleshooting guide posted at helifreak.com by the nick briangp:

Unofficial Blade msr Troubleshooting Guide

/MidnightSunRC

Easy Star crash

Noooo, I crashed my Easy Star! The body broke at the end of the "cockpit". This was what happened. I turned on my DX6i and made sure that I had selected the right model. Then I plugged in the battery and waited until binding finished. Throttled up and threw the airplane into the air. Now I applied some elevator to gain som hight, but here is where the error occurred. When I applied up elevator the plane went straight down into the ground. What was wrong. Well obviously for some reason my servos were reversed. But I had used this model before with this radio! What was wrong? Then I remembered that when I added the Blade msr to the DX6i I accidentally started to edit my Easy Star. During the excitement to get the Blade msr into the air I didn't make sure that I had the Easy Star model setup correctly in the transmitter again.

Lesson learned: Always check that your servos are moving as intended before flying your aircraft!

As a note the Easy Star will be easy to fix with some hot glue and toothpicks.

/MidnightSunRC