GPS Guided Model Airplane Update 10-3-2002
| I have been test flying the airplane in recent
weeks when I have not been studying for tests or preparing another Senior
Telemaster for an Endurance competition at a local club. The airplane has
been outfitted with an YS .63 four-stroke, the definite advantage of the
YS is the reliability of the pressurized fuel system to use the fuel to
the very last drop.
The video system was installed into my old trainer airplane that has served more purposes than any airplane should be forced to suffer. It has been my original trainer, spent a season as my Sunday airplane, I did my first experiments with a cheap digital camera posted here Aerial Photos with this airplane, it had 68 ounces of fuel shoved into last year for the endurance competition (staying up almost two hours and using only 1/2 of the fuel), testing platform for my 2.4ghz ATV system, and is now outfitted with a drop box for small parachute men and small water-balloons. As I said this airplane needs put out to pasture. Getting to the video system I purchased some components off of e-bay, other components were bought commercially. There is the nice camera, I tried a cheaper CMOS camera first and found you could not be cheap with the camera. My initial videos have a nice strobe-o-scope effect from the propeller. I purchased a nice Sony CCD camera from an online source. The transmitter was purchased from www.matco.com along with a small amplifier. The use of the amplifier put me into the power range requiring my amateur radio license. A nice 5db gain omni-directional antenna was purchased from www.signull.com. The receiver and the patch antenna used with it were also from Matco. I found a cheap 2'x3' parabolic dish antenna on Ebay from a wireless internet provider. I have tested with it but have yet to use it. Also purchased from Ebay was a California Amplifier, In-line pre-amp used at the receiving end of the signal. Within the next few days I will put the new 2.4 ghz video system into the Telemaster for some further testing and our OctoberFest is next Sunday. Video from my trainer was featured at the beginning of our Coles County Classic 2002 video tape. Below are some video clips I imported into the computer, these were made using my old camera and a cheap rubber duck transmitting antenna. |
Editing of some video clips is completed, they are not small but well worth the download time. (I would right-click on these and use the "save target as", save them to your computer and then view them for people with lower speed connections)
images/divedown.mpg (5 meg, dive from high altitude)
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images/flameout.mpg