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Hello DIY Drone community,

I would like to reintroduce myself.  I would first like to say that I am absolutely amazed at what so many people have accomplished in the last four years I have been away from drones.  I was invited into the open source community at the time and did not really understand what it was or why it would be so amazing.  It is one of the few regrets that I have.  I started back in 2006 getting into drones.  I built a few telemasters, gliders, and many single rotor helicopters.  I used ardi boards and even purchased an original rvosd and an original attopilot.  These are still in my parts bin.  I was even one of the early members of this forum. (In fact, I am hoping that administration can help me to merge and old account from here.)  I actually was building an interesting aerial media business.  In 2008, I was a presenter at the International Air Law Symposium at Southern Methodist University.  A branch of my company was beginning to assist in aircraft accident investigations with FAA, aviation industry and plaintiff council.  It was really going well.  However, fourth quarter '08 hit and everyone stopped spending money.  Especially on something different like civilian UAV's.  I made it through most of '09 with a few dwindling contracts but little money for maintenance much less innovation.  It seemed to be the wrong timing.  I worked in a different direction.

Fast forward to summer '13 and I had a renewed inspiration in RC.  I started to read about helicopters again.  I started flirting with hobby sites.  I started to really get into looking at multirotors.  The part that finally was a kick in the guts was the AR Drone from Parrot.  I could not believe what this toy was capable of doing.  A toy!!  I spent tens upon tens of thousands of dollars on UAV's.  I used $3000 stabilizers on helicopters, $1500 infrared FC's on planes, all to no avail of something as stable and easy to control as the AR Drone.  Back in 2008-2009 people were starting to experiment with them and some had them flying primitively it seemed but the only game in town was Draganflyer out of Canada.  They had it down and they wanted paid.  I don't blame them but I had already spent too much down a dead end direction.  So here we are in third quarter 2013.  I am now looking at multicopters big time..  I would go out to my storage and see all my old uav's and rc stuff.  It would just bum me out.  It is close to Thanksgiving and finally pull the trigger.  I bought a DJI Phantom 2 Vision.  Am I glad that I did.  OMG.  It does have its limits but it is an incredibly capable multicopter for the price.  I am not pitching for them but wow!!  It has lead me back here and am I excited!!  I purchased an ecilop frame and I will be taking my time putting parts together for it.  But my plane.  I want to talk about what I want to do.  Now when I go to my shed I have been way thrilled at what I still have.

As I am thinking about purchasing updated things I wanted to examine what I still have.  I wanted to see if everything I had is obsolete.  Surprising, I still have quite a few things that I can still use. (The benefits of many crashes I guess)  I still have lots of servos.  A complete diversity 900 mhz video system.  I even found an original attopilot with ir stabilization unused and a RVOSD V1 undused.  Is that a kick in the pants? haha  I found the parts to completely rebuild my TREX 600 with flybar and enough parts to build a second one.  I even have a front mount gimbal and underslung mount for the helicopters.  My batteries is a different story.  They are mostly bad and none but some rx packs that are worthy for ground testing only.  But I have two 1010C chargers with balancers and an E-station BC6 with balancers.  That is awesome.  I really could not believe all that I found.  I am not going to complete the list for sake of trying to not get too boring in this blog.