Space for brief anecdotes, occurences, and general feedback!!??

Flying yesterday, and while I was up and about there was a huge earth shaking thump, and my spotter remarked quite forcefully that he was a trifle surprised by what he'd seen!   

I flew the quad over and looked, and then later we walked over for a closer inspection.

A large mature Oak on the close bordering tree line had split off roughly a third of itself, which had fallen to ground from 4-5 metres height. Not a dead branch, a very large section of the tree that was fully leafed up. 

Externally the tree looked normal, but it was visually badly rotted internally and the main trunk was more a tube than a solid wood structure. Maybe the recent drought saw it off, but it must have been very iffy for a while.

Makes you wonder, how many of our club members flying fixed wing had climbed it and maybe others like it to recover a model in the past?............   

Be CAREFUL out there!


Anyway, a good ten packs were used by each of us, with only the two of us around, in at times a 15mph plus gusty breeze. All my flying on the bind n fly GEPRC Mk5 DJI/ELRS.

I do rate that model! (so much that I'm building another for HDZero)

I flew yesterday, Saturday, a couple of days last week. I am trying to maximise flights at the minute. I went back down to Matlock bando yesterday after failing to do a roof powerloop on Saturday, but once again thwarted by random teenagers, this time a group of five huddled together, no idea what they were doing, but didn't stick around either. Came back 30 mins later, set up and it started raining. Bailed out to the quarry I like to fly at and flew six 3S and one 2S packs over about an hour. The session was just general flying, bits of acro, bits of just flying around, some more practice on the half matty / reverse split-s that I'm trying to learn at the minute, although I actually nailed a pretty decent attempt on my first go.

In some ways what i want is what you have. The places I fly don't have trees in a usable format. i would love to fly in parks and places where I can practice tricks that ideally require trees.

Oaks tend to rot on the inside and the tree compartmentalises the rot and eventually you get a failure. It happens a fair bit. If you intend to climb trees you should ideally be looking for signs it might not be wise.

What sort of tree is it and what diseases affect it?
Tap the trunk with a wooden mallet in a couple of places, does it sound hollow?
Are the roots exposed?
What does the canopy look like?
Is the soil compacted around the base of the tree?
How tall is the tree and is the foilage spread across the entire height of the tree or just say the top?
Are there any dead branches in the canopy and if there is, how many and how thick are the branches?
Are there any fungi on the tree or fruiting bodies on the ground around the tree?

Using those sorts of questions you can ascertain with some accuracy whether the tree is diseased and how safe it is to climb and whether it needs to be dismantled. Some conditions require immediate dismantling. Honey fungus being one of them.

Right now the two main things you find with oaks are Acute Oak Decline and the Oak Processionary Moth. But you can get also get various bacterial and fungal infections that cause general problems. It's possible that oak is on its' way out, but you would need to get an Arb to look at it to 100% confirm it.

bicycle-whoop-days inhere, finding natural born tracks and extend them by two gates. whoopracing is such a fun, from the tighter spaces the fights are dramatic, midairs regular :-)
under the trees the temps are comfortable, to fly bigger stuff would bring us to go later evening for flight - whoops are bot just for the winter :-)

I also like bicycling/hiking and whooping. Sometimes the bike let's you go where parking a car would bring trouble.
It's been heavy rain here, so I've mostly flown whoops indoors while I prep and tinkering with the rest of the fleet for the inevitable break in the rain.

I flew yesterday. Obliterated a 1606 motor. Then I spent an hour or so crawling around on my roof looking in my gutters for a 1s 75mm whoop, only to find it later on the ground.

Fun times, minus the whole roof thing.

A rarity today, we actually had two spotters available, so the two of us with quads did some formation "def not racing, honest" circuits.

I was a good boy initially following buddy to get some shots, but then again, the lure was too much and I had at least a third throttle left available, so why not use some of it?

Spotters? What are they.

Wish I had someone to fly with. No one around here seems to fly and all the ones I know only fly on occasional weekends. I like to fly (when it's ok weather), at least 3-4 times per week for an hour or so.

If I had a buddy to fly with I could fly in parks and make use of the FPVUK Article 16 Op Auth. For now I don't fly in parks, but know of some people that do.

But at the same time I don't do clubs, per se.

If I had access to a field like that, I would be building stuff that flew at 160mph. And I would be flying it a lot.

Last time I flew at my buddies house I took about a 30 foot drop on my Quadmula O3 DJI frame launching it into the bottom of a tree branch. I knew better than to use the TPU stack "nuts" that came with the frame but they held up perfect across MANY flights and several crashes so I left them. But in a drop two of them popped off so the FC wasn't secure. I cinched down the stack with a large zip tie which confirmed it flew fine so I shifted over to my backup quad a Pirat sloop 5" with a Runcam Orange on it. Ran a couple packs on it and then I clipped a branch near the top of this tree on this flight but it plunged safely into the back of the bando yard with tall grass.



Then a couple of flights later I smacked nice and hard right into a tree which made the Runcam TPU mount slip out of 3 of the screws and was dangling by just one. Other than two props, the quad still flew the rest of the pack and another.



Generally leaning on always disarming I think has saved me a ton time not having to do repairs these last two years.

Yup. About to smack a tree? Disarm. Can’t pull out? Disarm.

I have yet to kill an esc, although I’ve killed plenty of motors from bent shafts and deformed bells.

Wet today here, no complaints we REALLY need the rain ALL day, but it looks like its stopping to a drizzle when we want decent quantity.  Flew yesterday for an hour till the very minimal drizzle (not forecasted and very localised) got stronger and vision was less than ideal. Then buddy had a huge glitch which we put down to wet electrics.  We don't use conformal due the aggro of modding, etc once done, and its usually never an issue as we'd not want to continue or even start if it was bad enough to need it.  We don't fly around lakes, and the rare puddle does not induce fear, maybe it should, but it doesn't.

Re: "If I had access to a field like that, I would be building stuff that flew at 160mph. And I would be flying it a lot. "

I went through the "gotta be faster" trend more than 30 years ago for a decade plus with fixed wing, inc hand winding and epoxy potting inrunner motors on flying wings.  I also have Dynamic Soaring speed gliders, the model type of one holding the world speed record for a Foamie at 245mph (JW 60). Mine's not been that fast, but has managed 190mph, not bad for a lump of foam and no motor and limited by UK sites!

The fastest power wing based on but modded a lot from a Flying Wings "Slipstream" (sadly no longer made) got retired as such after I decided we'd lose the field if I continued, not only is such a motor ripping a toothprick prop at 50,000 plus rpm across the Trailing Edge inherently extremely noisy, but I was getting a triple echo off the tree line in front bouncing off the tree line behind....... and back!     Mind you it was doing the longest in boundary distance in well under two seconds, and needing two circuits gliding to slow enough for landing.............. .   It now has a much more torque producing motor with low revving high pitch prop, and FPV, but isn't used much.

I have four various pylon racers, they at least are quiet enough being tractor props, but TBH exceed the safe speed for the site. None have been flown for over a year now.

Same with scale planes, got a Martin Marauder, Westland Lysander, and a Gloster Meteor, all built, equipped and ready to fly, but not flown.  Quads are SO much easier to transport and use.

Lazy?  Possibly. Having more fun? Definitely!

Sevro, usually I avoid music in Videos, I turn it off, but your "Fugue" video music was more my scene than most, but what please?

(29-Jun-2023, 06:49 AM)BadRaven Wrote: Sevro, usually I avoid music in Videos, I turn it off, but your "Fugue" video music was more my scene than most, but what please?

Fugue by Baroness, they're more of a rock band so not sure if that's a good representation of what they sound like. 

I sorta flew my Dolphin, but something went wrong and I waded through a cornfield instead. Forgot my HDMI cable, and loiter mode decided to freak out while I went for it.


Starting to think I'm better at hot gluing than I am flying planes.
Edit: So I keep watching it, and I came to realize that the motor must've fried midair. Prior to banking, it was reading really high amperage for the throttle, and then it suddenly fell off a cliff despite having a fairly high throttle reading yet. Seems like the motor resistance went high, proceeded to cook, and then drew nothing because it was dead. Finally a crash I don't have to take credit for!

(29-Jun-2023, 06:45 AM)BadRaven Wrote: Wet today here, no complaints we REALLY need the rain ALL day, but it looks like its stopping to a drizzle when we want decent quantity.  Flew yesterday for an hour till the very minimal drizzle (not forecasted and very localised) got stronger and vision was less than ideal. Then buddy had a huge glitch which we put down to wet electrics.  We don't use conformal due the aggro of modding, etc once done, and its usually never an issue as we'd not want to continue or even start if it was bad enough to need it.  We don't fly around lakes, and the rare puddle does not induce fear, maybe it should, but it doesn't.

Re: "If I had access to a field like that, I would be building stuff that flew at 160mph. And I would be flying it a lot. "

I went through the "gotta be faster" trend more than 30 years ago for a decade plus with fixed wing, inc hand winding and epoxy potting inrunner motors on flying wings.  I also have Dynamic Soaring speed gliders, the model type of one holding the world speed record for a Foamie at 245mph (JW 60). Mine's not been that fast, but has managed 190mph, not bad for a lump of foam and no motor and limited by UK sites!

The fastest power wing based on but modded a lot from a Flying Wings "Slipstream" (sadly no longer made) got retired as such after I decided we'd lose the field if I continued, not only is such a motor ripping a toothprick prop at 50,000 plus rpm across the Trailing Edge inherently extremely noisy, but I was getting a triple echo off the tree line in front bouncing off the tree line behind....... and back!     Mind you it was doing the longest in boundary distance in well under two seconds, and needing two circuits gliding to slow enough for landing.............. .   It now has a much more torque producing motor with low revving high pitch prop, and FPV, but isn't used much.

I have four various pylon racers, they at least are quiet enough being tractor props, but TBH exceed the safe speed for the site. None have been flown for over a year now.

Same with scale planes, got a Martin Marauder, Westland Lysander, and a Gloster Meteor, all built, equipped and ready to fly, but not flown.  Quads are SO much easier to transport and use.

Lazy?  Possibly. Having more fun? Definitely!

Yes, there are very few places I would consider flying a fast quad at.  I can think of 3-4 off the top of my head that are long enough and wide enough for that sort of speed.  I hope to build something next year that will break the 100mph barrier, but true 150+ speedruns aren't useful I guess.  Most I know that do them use the smallest 6S Lipo and basically do a fast run and then slowly come back, land, new lipo, back off for another run.  For now I am stuck at 3S level, so my top speed is, not very fast.