Comment by Chris Huitema on April 23, 2012 at 3:46am

awesome, i was down there having breakfast on Sunday morning thinking how awesome it would be to fly out there over the river! it really is a beautiful city to look at from south perth.

you beat me to it.

Would like to catch up and compare choppers one day if your interested. I'm building a quad, well its built and flies but im continually changing things to make it better... you know the drill

Hows the thing on indiegogo going?

Comment by Samantha Oborne on April 23, 2012 at 4:10am

Awesome video :)

Developer Comment by R_Lefebvre on April 23, 2012 at 6:13am

Ah, Stand Up Paddling.  Something I will never understand.

Moderator Comment by Hai Tran on April 23, 2012 at 6:28am

@Michael.  It was a Droidworx CX 4 with a GoPro Hero 2 set to 1080p 25fps.  I prefer 720p 50fps but I was using the GoPro for the FPV, so I had to use the slower frame rate.  The camera wasn't on a gimbal.  I just installed a roll/pitch gimbal this evening and went for a quick flight in the underground parking.  With the Sony Nex7 at 1080p 50fps, I was drawing 30A at the hover, up from 20A with the GoPro and no gimbal.

@Chris. One of the girls from work said to me today "I saw a yellow quad Sunday afternoon whilst having coffee at the Boatshed cafe".  Funny because it was me flying it.  If you want to catch up just send me a message.  I normally fly from Whiteman Park or Yokine if I'm just flying copters.

I'm thinking of adding 4 more motors and making it a X8 so I can carry more batteries to compensate for the 50% more battery consumption.  Also its risky caring a $1700 camera without any motor redundancy.

Developer Comment by R_Lefebvre on April 23, 2012 at 8:48am

Did you carry any buoyancy?  Flying over water without having it be able to float...  yeah, that's real risky.

Comment by Andrew Rabbitt on April 23, 2012 at 11:05pm

I thought you were going to whizz across and buzz the bell tower and the latte sippers near the barrack street jetty from that title.

Disappointment...

;)

Moderator Comment by Hai Tran on April 24, 2012 at 12:33am

@Andrew, unlike my Zephyr II which crossed the river in about 1 minute, top speed 180km/hr, it will take me more than 1 minute to get across the river.  Not sure I would have had enough batteries to safely get across and back.

@R_Lefebvre.  You need need to carry buoyancy if you keep your aircraft dry!  It it went in, no amount of floatation is going to stop the avionics, batteries and motors getting wet.  Might as well get my scuba get an fetch the airframe, as I can't see anything else besides the airframe surviving.

Moderator Comment by Hai Tran on May 1, 2012 at 6:16am

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority contacted me today citing concerns about this video, that I appear to be failing to comply with regulations regulation remain clear of people and flying FPV.

I would categorically like to state that, without a laser range finder or evidence to the contrary, in my opinion based upon standing on the shoreline 50m away, that the aircraft was kept 30m away from the paddle boarder and sail boat.  That as part of the Final Cut Pro stabilisation process (as I didn't have a gimbal onboard), digital zooming is used to stabilise the video, which may make it look like I was closer, but still, I'm not the person that posts videos of my chasing a car and landing on the drivers hands, or filming swim suit models from about 3m away.

The second issue was I appear to be flying FPV contrary to the Model Aircraft Association of Australia policy regarding the use of a buddy box.  I can not see in the video what evidence supports that allegation, the aircraft was only 50m away from the shoreline, and therefore easily within visual line of sight.  

But who cares about the MAAA Policy.  MAAA policy has no jurisdiction outside an MAAA flying field.  An who cares if I'm not covered by their insurance policy, I have my own insurance policy that covers both UAV and model aircraft.

Developer Comment by R_Lefebvre on May 1, 2012 at 7:04am

Did CASA make a complaint about you not following MAAA policy, or did you get two seperate complaints.  I agree that trying to reverse-engineer your flight from the footage provided seems a bit silly.  They have no idea what the video zoom was, either optical or electronic.

Flotation:  Unless that river is salt water (impossible?) then I disagree that getting the electronics wet means certain death for them.  This has been discussed here recently, and I've experienced wet electronics myself.  Even high powered stereo amplifiers that got wet, and lived.

That is why I would like to use flotation when flying over water.  Also, even if I possessed SCUBA gear, I don't relish the idea of putting it on and trying to search the bottom of a lake for a small aircraft.  I'd rather just paddle out, pluck it out of the water, and start drying out the electronics ASAP.

I was just curious if you were or weren't using flotation.

Moderator Comment by Hai Tran on May 1, 2012 at 7:10am

@R_Lefebvre   I don't use floatation.  I don't intend on putting it in the drink.

There was just one letter telling me that it appeared that I was breaching CASR 101 and the MAAA MOP.  Which I agree with you is very silly.  Considering MAAA policy has no legal bearing outside an MAAA flying field.

Since when did CASA become the MAAA police?

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