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After seeing this Youtube


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25PmqM24HEk


I decided to make some improvements to my carbon fibre prop mould. Getting the hub out after curing was always a problem so I decided to make a tapered shaft and inserts around the front.  Also using a printed shaft instead of turned aluminium has simplfyed the process.
Just lay or forged up the the first prop in it , so hopefully the epoxy will be hard enough to open it up at the field tomorrow after our club AGM to show all . Hope it works.

srl

The Aust Govt includes any remotely piloted plane in its definition of a drone:
"Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) or Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS), commonly known as
drones"

It looks like "remote ID" is coming to Australia:

https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/sites/...tation.pdf

They have it in the US and RC'ers do not generally like it.

Interested people are invited to comment on the discussion paper.

"We invite feedback by Friday 28 July 2023, 17:00 AEST via
www.infrastructure.gov.au/have-your-say or
drones@infrastructure.gov.au.
The discussion paper has been developed by the Department of
Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications
and the Arts, following targeted engagement with other government
agencies and industry"

hmm looks like I am going to have to read the thing...

This flight log is from the Slick, a 90cm span 3d plane, with a matek R24 P6 rx and a Radiomaster T16 tx with an elrs internal module. All the flight data appears in one plot because I adjust each data item. Measurements are taken every 0.5 sec. The main things of interest are the blue RSS (receiver signal strength), running between -30 and -45 (which means -60 and -90, a normal range), the red receiver quality (RQly) running at 100% except for a few dips below 90%, and the pink receiver signal to noise (RSNR). 

At 50 sec into the flight, multiple events occur:
- a blender manoeuvre enters its vertical dive and spin
- the throttle (THR) at 50 sec went from full throttle (10) to zero (-15) which caused the plane to flip from vertical climb to vertical dive
- the RSNR fell to 0 for less than half a second
- the transmitter power (TPWR) briefly increased from 10 mw to 25 mw
-the RQly fell to 84% and the RSS dipped slightly below -90.

The TPWR increased because the elrs was set to "dynamic power" whereby if the rx perceives a signal problem, it increases the tx signal power from 10 mw to 25 mw as happened here, or 50 mw or 100 mw if 25 does not do the job. The decision to boost tx power is based on the RQly (the same as valid frame rate) which measures the percentage of packets of data that are valid, and also the RSNR.
https://www.expresslrs.org/software/dyna...mit-power/

It appears the main cause of the TPWR jump was the transient drop of RSNR to zero, at a critical point in the blender. The RQly and RSS also fell, but not to an abnormal level.
Why did the RSNR fall? I have several planes using R24 P6 rxs, and I only get significant RSNR falls when doing the blender manoeuvre, and only in around 20% of flights. One theory is my use of a sudden cut from full- to zero throttle to flip the plane (from vertical climb to vertical dive) causes a transient interference. A fall in rx voltage is ruled out as a cause.

The tx power jump demonstrates the elrs doing its job to maintain a safe signal, and no control loss was experienced. Matek rxs require the user to solder the pwm  pins to the rx circuit board, and in future I am likely to move to Radiomaster elrs rxs. I was a bit disappointed with the RM ER5A rx, and I hope the soon-to-arrive RM ER6 series of pwm rxs will be an improvement.

Following on from my two successful KMart 'Big Foam Glider' conversions to powered RC planes, srl suggested an unpowered one to be air launched or towed.

I was considering a 2S battery with a BEC (I have a couple of Matek micro BECs that weigh in the order of a gram or so each) however srl suggested that a 1S battery may be sufficient.

So I took some old toy drone 500mAh 1S LiPos and plumbed them into my receiver (Matek R24-P6) along with a servo, and they worked! The receiver communicated fine and controlled the servo, even at a not-quite-charged 3.7V.

The KMart foam gliders include a big steel bolt in the nose that weighs 32g, removing that and replacing it with a battery (15g), receiver (4g) and servo (15g) would result in a very light plane. I'll add another servo or two for aileron control and a few carbon spars in appropriate locations, and the whole thing should be dramatically lighter than my powered conversions. I may even get some more 4.3g servos to use instead.

Radiomaster has released a bunch of new PWM receivers with some enticing features.

https://www.radiomasterrc.com/collection...-receivers

I might have to grab one for my next plane

Lipos have been hard to find for over 2 years now. My experience was the best ones were Turnigy graphene, but when these were unobtainable I moved to Dualsky and also tried other brands. Zeee lipos are sold from a Sydney location and arrive within a few days of ordering. So far I have purchased 2 Zeee 1300 mah graphene lipos rated 120C for a very low price, to my surprise they are the best 1300 mah lipos I use (I have flown around 8 sessions with them). They produce higher sustained power than the competition and do not have voltage sag. Dualsky lipos are generally disappointing but Dualsky 1300 mah are an exception, they are good however they are quite not as good as the Zeee.

My Edge 3d plane has a single band R9 900mhz rx, that I use with a frsky tandem tx. It has a 3S lipo. Measurements were taken at 0.5 sec intervals, and with frsky logging the RSSI is a percentage.

At 207 sec the valid frame rate fell to 64%, one measurement only, with a level below 70 considered an incident. The RSSI remained above 70%. I looked for any anomaly in the power supply. With frsky logging you can simultaneously monitor 3 lipo cells. At 207 sec there is nothing happening, the rx voltage remains at 5.0v for the entire flight, and the lipo cells are all together, in the expected range.

I conclude there is no problem here, the R9 rx has been without a glitch for many months, and others have found R9 rxs, either ACCST or ACCESS,  work great at PRCAC.

I want to log the rx voltage on my planes with elrs rxs, but so far I can only monitor either the lipo voltage, or the rx voltage, but not both. I use the lipo voltage for deciding when to land, and am reluctant to give it up. So I need to find a way to monitor lipo and rx voltage simultaneously, and I do not want to add a flight controller to achieve this.

In light of the RF signal issues some people have reported at McCoy field, I had a look at the telemetry logs of my last couple of flights there.

I'm using ELRS at the 100Hz packet rate, using 10mW transmitter power (this is the lowest TX power setting on my internal ELRS module on my TX16S transmitter)

ExpressLRS recommends a minimum signal sensitivity limit of -108dBm for 100Hz.

In my flights there (including flying at the same time as Stephen with his ELRS system) my telemetry reported RSSI level (1RSS, as I have a single antenna ELRS receiver) never got below -85dBm. This is the RSSI level reported by the receiver. I also log TRSS, which is the telemetry RSSI reported by the transmitter, but it's also not anywhere close to the minimum.

The other measured value i looked at was LQI - Link Quality Indicator) which represents the proportion of messages cleanly received. This got down to a minimum of 94% on one flight, but generally was in the 97-100% range. At 100Hz packet rate, a packet or two missing every now and then is not an issue.

   

Long story short: In my experience, ELRS appears to be unaffected by any interference or link quality issues at McCoy park.

I'm using Aerofly RC7 as my simulator-of-choice. It is a bit old but it runs well and looks good on my not-a-gaming-PC and works with my TX16S using a USB cable.

What does everyone else use?

I note also that Aerofly offers a multiplayer mode, so if anyone else has it and wants to fly around at stupid-o'clock, let me know!

I'm looking for inspiration as to the best way to safely store planes. I have a handful of foamies up to 1.5m wingspan, and some balsa/film ones bigger than that (up to a 2m bird of time glider as pictured)

At the moment they're precariously stacked on shelves or leaning against walls, and they're in the way and consequently in danger of getting damaged or knocked over.

I've considered shelving in the garage, but it's pretty dusty in there so I'd need to make covers, and in summer it can get over 50° in there so I'm also concerned about heat damage.

I've seen some instances where people hang planes on the wall. What's the best way of doing that in a non-destructive way?  (to the wall and to the plane)

Any ideas? I want more planes but I'm held back by storage at the moment.