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Was in the Army from 1972 - 1975; was a radar repair guy.... Always wanted to get a Heathkit but never did... One of my many regrets...

Practice evasive maneuvers - is there a Top Gun school for drone pilots?

You didn't mention what kind of flight controller you are using. I am only familiar with the APM F.C./autopilot and can't offer advise on others, but I suspect that all must go through a similar set of calibrations. For mine, I have to the the following: Accel/IMU - which side is up, down...

I have built several multicopters and there is something about building your own that is great. But you have to be very careful about the building process, especially soldering - I've crashed a couple of times due to losing power from a bad solder connection. A recent devastating crash is still...

A footnote: I just returned from a trip to Singapore to visit my son, his wife and their brand new baby. Anyway, while there, I ordered an FPV camera and video transmitter from Amazon - want to try out the FPV experience using the Elev-8. The components arrived before I did, and this morning...

Success! I bought an unused APM 2.6 from a neighbor, installed the firmware and went though the configurations - it works! I can arm and disarm at will.

I remember watching this video back when I first started using APMs. Unfortunately, it is no help - I'm in Stabilize mode, I've successfully completed the radio calibration as stated previously, and the APM has to be communicating with the radio, otherwise it would not know that I'm trying to...

I have an APM 2.6 controller on a quadcopter that I recently rebuilt. It has flown successfully a couple of times, but arming the motors is a hit or miss affair. Several times, the motors fail to arm, so I removed the props, brought it into my home, powered it up and established a telemetry link...

The following video pretty much covers what I posted here but also has video of two test flights:

I will try to get some video this morning - will fly a waypoint mission and use a camera mounted on a tripod. BTW, I managed to find some thrust data on the Tarot 4002 620KV motor - specs are hard to come by but a Russian guy ran a test on YouTube: Here is the thrust/current curve along with...

I had success today! I had to replace flight controllers and a balky engine (#3), but after all the APM configurations, I was ablle to get it to arm, fire up the motors and disarm. So I installed the propellers and took it out to a nearby parking lot. It armed after getting GPS lock and I took...

2 and 3/8 inches measured center to center => 60.325 mm

February 21 Status: I had to open up the bottom chassis plate to reposition the APM power module in order to get more slack to the leads going to the APM itself. I also had to get more slack to the wires going to the #3 motor. All that done, I leveled the motors and tightened up the mounting...

I could not get video from the aircraft. After a fair amount of troubleshooting, I decided that the vtx was bad and so I ordered another - a 600 mW unit (I wanted more range anyway). When it arrived and I wired it up, I still could not get video. The Feiyu-tech gimbal is made to minimize loose...

February 18 Update: The remaining wire I needed arrived yesterday and I was able to complete routing power through the booms to the motors. But there's not much space in the chassis. I had to pretty much take everything apart in the chassis and try to put it back together - here is the...

Good job, Mike.

I ordered a 7" Eachine diversity receiver/monitor from Amazon as well as a small GoPro attachment that has a thumbscrew for mounting the monitor to my Spektrum transmitter using a GoPro mount: I am looking forward to trying it out!

Not really much info here, but my impressions: Setting aside whether the quad was in a restricted area, the drone pilot should have been aware of the presence of the helicopter and take steps not to be in near proximity. We don't know how close it actually was, but if the instructor felt...

Thanks! I just went through the procedure for fixing the gimbal roll adjustment - won't know for sure if I fixed it until I fly it, but seems to be okay holding the aircraft and moving it about by hand.

I thought that I'd document the build process I went through with my Tarot quadcopter. Yes, this is the one that I had trouble getting the landing gear to retract, as well as using the AR8010T receiver. All issues have been resolved except for one minor problem: I need to calibrate the roll...