I had a fly-away a few weeks ago. Been pretty bumbed out about it and have been avoiding everything RC related since the fly away. I'm finally starting to get out of the funk now. Here's what I lost: Carbon Core 950 Hex Hoverfly Pro sunnysky 2814 motors futaba rx on the hex 3 axis Cinestar gimbal 3 axis radian stabilizer spektrum sat on the Radians. Go pro 2 5.8 tx/rx I was really close to getting the Radian's dialed in and was making some more adjustments, where it then shot up and away. I'm pretty sure it was my fault because of how I installed the futaba receiver. I think when I turned the hex, the signal may have gotten shadowed and it went into fail safe mode. Of course, I had forgot to set the failsafe settings on the rx when I installed it. I was approx 100ft away. It looked like it was on its way down fast, but once it went below the tree line, I lost sight of it. I've searched for days/hours and posted over 90 flyers. No luck so far. No excuses but my own damn fault. Been having too many woulda coulda shoulda thoughts. I'm located in Renton, WA. Just wanted to put this out there in case parts of it start showing up for sale.
Ohhhh......that's a very sad story indeed, Wing. I can understand why you were completely bummed out by this. If it's not too soon to contemplate the future, you might want to consider something like this from Walston Retrieval Systems. I have one on both my Cinestars just in case. Sorry to hear of the loss, though.... Andy.
Thanks Andy, I researched the walston system a while ago. Also saw a lot of GPS transmitters, but required a ham license to purchase. All these things were already on the "to buy" list. Eventually, I'll start a new build. I built my rig over the course of a year. In this hobby, the nickel and diming are hundreds per part. Still pretty heart broken about it. It's always tough to stomach a loss in the thousands, especially since it could've been prevented if I had some sort of "retrieval" system.
Hi Wing: I can see why you would be heartbroken. That's a lot of cash that just flew away -- not to mention the time that you put into the build. So it seems like a very natural reaction to the loss. Depressing. By the way, this is an alternative beacon. A lot less spendy. The last message on this thread is from the guy who builds them -- he describes how you can create a more directional antenna for the GPRS receiver that you used to pick up the beacon's signal. Next time around, assuming you get that far, if you use Mikrokopter Flight Control and Navigational Control with GPS electronics, they have an automatic "come home" feature that, if the receiver loses contact with the transmitter for a predetermined length of time, the system takes the copter up/down to a preset specific altitude and then flies it back to the "home" position (where you last started the motors and had a valid GPS fix) and then descends at a predetermined rate. Hang in there. Andy.
I'll definitely take a look at that beacon. Seems like a cheap alternative for my smaller rigs. I originally had the naza w/gps on my big rig, and knowing that it would come home in event of a fail safe situation, was nice. I had it all setup with spektrum at the time and had all the failsafe setup correctly. I then slowly started upgrading. Once I switched to the hoverfly pro, it flew much smoother. Then I upgraded to a futaba 8fg for the frequency hopping. Of course this is when I got a little too excited and installed everything without thinking everything through. The next step was to get the GPS add-on for the hoverfly, too bad I didn't make it that far. One of the reason I didn't go with MK, was because the amount of configuration it seemed to need to get it to fly just right. This industry is moving fast, so it'll be interesting to see what the next "best" thing will be. Thanks for the info Andy, feels a little better talking about it. Wing
Hi guys I think I can of some help here. This is what I use, http://www.amazon.com/Sourcingbay-V...ef=sr_1_2?s=gps&ie=UTF8&qid=1352430346&sr=1-2 I unbox it; change the antenna; the batt; and if something goes on just send a message by cell and receive the GPS position Of course you will need a Phone system working..... ps How do you make the link to be hided behind a single word? ex. put the word track and once you click would go to the link above
How much does that tracker weigh, Caju? The Ralston transmitter weighs about, oh, 5 grams....the batteries last for 100 hours, and the line of sight range is 90 miles -- obviously the ground range is lower -- but it's basically one of those Tx that you see people tracking wild animals with. That said, the Tracker you're talking about looks pretty interesting (provided there is, as you say, cell phone coverage).... Andy.
Hey Andy, original 44grams. without cap and antena mod and bat goes to 22grams all for under 60 us...only limit is the phone system that even in Brazil is not bad, atvleast wasn.t untill the companies started to simply drop calls from diferent ones. you can program lots of tasks to it so it example it can be sending position every 30 secs or so. The system you sugested it is awsome just a bit out of my pocket range. Also the best tool still fail safe.....
It still looks like a pretty good system and 44 g is not too heavy if it means you have a chance of finding the aircraft. The other option is the telemetry from the Graupner MX-20 -- if I'm not mistaken the transmitter stores the GPS coordinates -- I need to look into that and verify that that is really true, though. Andy.
Sorry to hear about that. Reminds me to at least put my address and phone number "reward if found" on mine. Have you considered trying to find someone or hire someone with an fpv setup to search for it from the air? Ironically, it might be the best way to find it.
There is, of course, the inverse problem, that if the bird has caused a large crater in something that should not have a large crater in it, then perhaps not finding it (and not having a name, address, and the phone number of your lawyer on it) might be the best thing..... This will change when we can get commercial general liability insurance, of course. Andy.