"it is 5 mm indeed: "A pixel is suitable for displaying units of half a centimeter width". 5mm is still very good resolution.

Assuming shutter speed is probably 1/10000 s at best, they must have used some kind of optical stabilization to compensate…"

"Good point about capacity. Can we hope most of the participants will have means to measure the actual energy spent? That would completely remove the battery from the equation. APM does actually have sensors for that. 

I can't see why I can't…"

"Well, I don't really see any problem in the first key thing. 

There are not too many things to measure:
- flight time (any watch, 1 minute precision is ok)
- weight (most of us know how much our gear weights)
- CG

All other relevant specs are…"

"Does (custom) carbon-covered and very overloaded commercial foamie count?"

"I tend to agree with MarcS. While ability to take vibration-free photos is good, stopping-and-starting engine doesn't seem to me the optimal power-consumption scheme.
 
Unless you intend to use termals as source of power, constant-running engine on…"

"Cool. I've been thinking about high-aspect ratio UAV of about 4m myself, that's why I'm so curious about this generator/starter stuff.
 
Good luck to you guys, I'll keep watching.
 
PS: How much does current UAV weight? What flying weight is planned…"

"So you will have separate generator and starter?"

"Nice work. Care to share any details on how you did that? 
 
Have you considered using the starter as electric generator for on-board equipment or battery charging? That would extend the flight time even more."

"That's cool, but I don't want to learn _all_ that microcontroller things. Life id too short (-:"

"That would be kinda strange to do everything from scratch.

Long-range telemetry is must-have for me, since i'm going to fly quite far. And I'm probably going to crash there eventually, so would be nice to catch the last-known position to ease the…"

"Even now, every school kid can build single UAV just like I can (sure, without some basic knowledge some of them at some point will re-invent multi-section flaps etc, but generally it is already available to school kids)

Swarms are mostly about…"

"T.D, I'm sure it can be used for anything, I'm just not sure why it should cost that much. It's a cheap chip, cable and connectors."

"When autopilots will be available for $99 I'll go to building auto-coordinating swarms of drones. Hope they'll not enslave the humanity."

"Thanks Chris, you are probably right. I discarded cheaper MTK because of my previous bad experience with this chipset (on the ground only, thoug). Is this U-Blox as good as it costs, or is it just the same as MTK one?

I chose 868 Xbee mostly…"

"Actually, I'm going for something with wings, not quad, but generally you're right.

The only problem is this is starter kit, one of the cheapest options. And cheap aluminium bike costs only $300 (-:

I'm planning to shift to something bigger and…"