Hi.I have an Arducopter that flys great but i want to build a plane next.
I want to be able to fly for 1 Hour, so i am thinking 2X 5000mah batteries. I also want to put my FatShark attitude FPV kit onboard aswell as the APM 2.6, ESC and Motor. I have never flown a plane before but this wont be an issue after a few crashes. I want a plane that is popular and easy to get spare parts for.
What plane will hold all this kit ?
Replies
it depends how you like to fly fpv
you could go for something like a skywalker if you want slow agile flying with massive payloads and isn't to hard for the fixed wing beginner you a admited to being
or you could go the route i went and bought a windrider scout bee with 2 x 2200 (nice and cheap) It wild be harder to fly but will be harder to use and it gives around 45 minute flight times and trust me it will take along time before you do over a ten minute flight when starting out but everyone is different
my 2 cents before I shut my gob
don't waste money on big batteries unless you have to
don't put more money in a plane than you are prepared to lose
First of all you don't buy a Ferrari to learn how to drive. Justin Beiber maybe, but not the regular person. Start with a simulator for a day or two, then get a plane that is easy to fly, cheap and easily fixable like a Bixler 1.1. And a glue gun. No extra stuff except maybe an Orange stabilizer. Now you have about $80 in the whole plane. After you can fly (and land) that for a few days with out bringing out the glue gun add some FPV equipment and your APM 2.6. It has room for all that. Not so much the 5000 battery. Learn how to get all that working together to fly planned missions and then you can buy the big plane and start over. It really boils down to the money. If you have the funds you could start at the top but all the money in the world won't buy the time you need to learn how to fly. Learning to fly with an extra $500-1000 of FPV and APM equipment on the plane adds a level of stress you don't need at first. You would get a lot of cool crash video though!
Good luck and have FUN!
To second that, I master multicopters + APM and I a now moving to planes. I can tell you I purchased a 20 dollars indoor plane, and crash at every single session although it is going better every time. Glue gun is becoming my favorite toy...
we worked backwards from your approach. we wanted to build and fly a quadcopter with an apm 2.6 (really pixhawk but couldn't wait). we decided to use a plane that we had in hand already to get some experience with the apm 2.6 before putting it on a quad and flying it that way. we used a calypso glider and it was a dream to fly. being a glider it has a very low wing loading and it only "nibbled" at the batteries so getting an hour would not have used anywhere the amount of battery you mention. it also depends on how hard you fly it - it's like a car.... if you drive a car like a racer you will burn up the fuel quickly - if you drive it like someone who lives in calif with an extra $0.75 a gallon goling to the state government you get really good use of your fuel. the only drawback of the calypso is that it has a fairly small cockpit for all the equipment and when we decided to add fpv capabilities it was just too tight. we now have a finwing penguin we are switching to which from everything we have read (and people we know who have them) it is also a very well handling vehicle. it also has a HUGE equipment bay with many camera options. just my 2 cents worth.
dennis