Flew the Cinestar at a local golf course today, and I did some BTS shots with the GoPro. Ironically, I had to stabilize the GoPro footage from the shots where it was showing the canyon because the camera was in my bag holding the FPV RX, and that bag was blowing around in the wind. Thank goodness for stabilization in software. How ironic is that? Flew three long flights (nearly 10 minutes each) and managed to break my own speed record coming back to land (manually, not CH) after traversing a 380 yard course when I felt like I was a little far away. GPX file says I was briefly doing 45MPH and pulling 2500 watts!
Let me see, 2500 watts at, say, 15 volts. 166 Amps. Impressive. By the way, that's one helluva water trap. It even has waves on it. Andy.
Oops, misspoke on the watts. Here's the GPX summary. But yeah, did hit a pretty fancy number of amps... Again, this was basically having the accelerator to the floor for a few moments, as you can see from the "heat map" thanks to the MKGPXTool. MK Version: FC HW:2.2 SW:2.0a + NC HW:2.0 SW:2.0a Flight date: 8/21/2013 11:22:55 AM Flight time: 11:22:55 AM - 11:30:21 AM (446 secs, 00:07:26) Batt. time : 442 secs, 00:07:22 Elevation(GPS) : 0 145.86 301.91 ft (min/avg/max) Altitude(Barom.): -6.4 155.74 320.21 ft Vertical speed : -20.87 -0.13 10.37 ft/s Max speed : 45.6 mph Max target dist.: 1.0826739 ft Sats : 10 11 13 Voltage : min. 13.2, max. 16 V Current : 0.5 63 166.3 A Wattage : 8 959 2228.42 W Capacity: 7946 mAh Motor1: 0.4 7.1 23.5 A Temp: 72 102 122 °F Motor2: 0.0 10.1 25.4 A Temp: 77 117 136 °F Motor3: 0.2 7.5 21.4 A Temp: 79 118 145 °F Motor4: 0.0 9.9 22.1 A Temp: 72 127 167 °F Motor5: 0.0 7.4 19.5 A Temp: 70 109 147 °F Motor6: 0.0 7.0 19.3 A Temp: 72 106 133 °F Motor7: 0.0 6.1 19.3 A Temp: 68 91 111 °F Motor8: 0.1 6.6 25.4 A Temp: 72 97 117 °F Magnet Field: 101 103 108 % (ok) Magnet Inclination: 54 62 81 deg Errors / warnings: FC-Flag "LowBat" (5) occured 6 times!
I fly with the Cinemizers at the end of my nose so I can still see the copter. In this shot, the Cinemizers helped me frame the shots I wanted, and also helped establish orientation. So, technically, I was not flying FPV. I would describe it as LOS with FPV assistance.
Based on my own experiences, flying LOS requires more bravery if the copter is more than 30 yards/meters away from you -- none of the human senses work accurately beyond that distance. LOS with FPV assistance (augmented by a Smart On Screen display) is far safer because you can see what is going on with the aircraft and its flight control systems. Also with FPV-assistance, you cannot lose aircraft orientation. That doesn't mean I rely on FPV assistance. I have to be prepared to fly the bird home manually, but in those moments before the failure (or extended signal drop-out), my brain has stored a mental model of the aircraft's orientation so I can transition to LOS way more easily. Andy.
My own limit is more like 100 meters, but I'm a lot younger than you, Andy. Cough, cough. (as I mentioned before, math is not one of my core strengths)
Don't kill the messenger, Steve, but: "The findings of the current experiment confirm that stereopsis can provide useful information about relative distance/depth at observation distances as large as 40 m." See Stereoscopic perception of real depths at large distances at http://ww.journalofvision.org/content/10/6/19.full (June 24, 2010). That said, monocular clues appear to have a significant effect on augmenting a sort of synthetic stereopsis -- for example, if you know how big that car/tree/building is, then you can create a pseudo-stereopsis rather than just relying on just the size of the copter to aid in assessing its distance. Bottom line, you might be able to discern relative distances up to 40 meters using stereopsis (binocular vision). That might vary with age and interpupillary distance ('ow far yer eyes are apart! and other monocular clues. But if you're looking up at copter in a featureless sky (or even with clouds), your stereopsis may not be as accurate as you think it is, regardless of your (or my) age! There's another interesting paper, The Role of Binocular Cues in Human Pilot Landing Control at http://mallorea.student.utwente.nl/~jorg/Publications/AIAC13_2008JorgEntzinger.pdf, especially Table 1, which contrasts other papers and the claimed limits of stereopsis. It was published in 2008. Andy.
Thet explain things! It looked like you it was all FPV. I use a small 7" monitor with a cam on boom 1 and my cam op a 9" for the gimbal.
Blame it on Mrs. Google! Before her, I was just ignorant. And, as you know, ignorance is briss. [sic] Andy.
Could you tell me a little about Professional Association of RC Aircraft Pilots Is this something that is working with the FAA to allow Aerial Photograpy? If this is the wrong tread for this point me in the right direction. Thanks E