Marius' learning to fly - "video diary"

[stokke]

Any reason why you went with the full size RX rather than two Sats on the Ikon Marius?

So you noticed that, eh? Yes, I've been having reliability issues with the sats on the 500 lately. First I had problems with the throttle going on and off repeatedly whilst in flight (that's always nice....), and after troubleshooting the obvious things like ESC, throttle-lead, motor and batteries I found that if I replaced one of the two sats, everything was back to normal. Not two weeks after I changed the first sat I got the same symptoms again, this time I tried to fix it while at the field - resulting in me disconnecting the culprit sat - which fixed the problem, but caused a crash due to a brown out. With that crash I just had enough with the sats and re-wired with a separate RX to be sure (I trust the standard RX's to be more reliable than sat's, don't ask me why).

I will be using two sats with the Agile - even though I'm slightly concerned it can happen again, I take comfort in that I never had any problems with sat's on the Gobby.

 

[Lee]

Got sats on my Warp (1) and on my Gobbler (2)
I have the 2 sats on the goblin at 90º. So far so good

 

[stokke]

So I place two orders on the same day/time: One from Power Hobby in US, one from Canomod in Vietnam.

The US store takes six days to even ship my order, then the ridiculous US Postal Service takes over... Granted, the package will be stranded at Norwegian customs, but that steals one day at most.

The US side:

Put stuff in envelope
Send stuff
Small envelope travel via airplane to Norway

The Vietnam side:

Get canopy
Paint canopy
Drying and finishing process
Package carefully in medium sized box (700 sized canopy)
Send box through 5 different countries via airplane

__

Canopy arrived yesterday. Tiny parts from the US arrived today. What the FUDGE!?! In a way you could say the Vietnamese actually MADE the product AND DELIVERED before the US...

END RANT

 

[pvolcko]

Unless the price was right I'd start looking for an alternate supplier in the US. I've only every run into that kind of delay to shipping with Hobby King. RC Buddy, HElidirect, AMain, Gonitro all ship fast.

 

[Lee]

I don't know if you saw my post in my Goblin 570 thread, but my servos from the US took 1.5 months!!!! to get to me in Spain.
I'm not blaming the shop as they did there job, but anything that is of value from the US to Europe, gets caught in customs, and you pay through the nose for it.
Stuff from Asia i.e. My Goblin and all the other parts I ordered, more than $1000 worth, from RC711, arrived in a week. No customs duty.
I will never buy from the States again,unless its for something I really need and its below the Customs duty limit.

 

[murankar]

Nothing against the postal services but its just the opposite for me when i order from fasuno . Whats even nicer is the $25 shipping bill for the canopy. Now i do like the custom lettering that is free but its not worth paying that much for shipping and still have to wait over a week. Keep in mind any international orders are going to take a bit longer, then add in the fact that customs is going to rap you both with time and in some cases money. Its all part of the game.

Sent from my LG-E980 using Forum Runner

 

[stokke]

The asian suppliers have almost never failed me, the exeption being during the chinese new year (and they usually inform about this during thei new year). Even EMS from the US can take much longer than the rest of the world. US shops will seldom or never write down content value, which sucks big time in Norway due to 25% tax.

 

[murankar]

Its the joys of living outside of the US. You get better delivery from everywhere but the US and the US gets its best deliveries from the US only. I dont think i have had to pay a customs tax at customs. Count your blessings on the shipping wars.

Sent from my LG-E980 using Forum Runner

 

[stokke]

This post is a bit late, as I did in fact maiden the Agile last weekend, but better late than never I guess.

My fleet ATM.

Maiden. It's a bit dark and hard to see, but I dared not do anything fancy - so not much to see really.


I have some vibrations that I'm currently looking into (suspect it's got something to do with the TT). There is also a proper voltage drop on the RX while in flight, but I'm not too worried (6.3 volts), might replace some of the servo extension wires later on to be safe. I'm not nearly as afraid of this model as I was the Goblin (that thing is scary) in spite of this being a larger model. The Agile feels very stable in the air, but the collective needs fine tuning and I might up the head speed a bit (now I'm using 1900 and 2100).

All in all I think I'm gonna like this model very much, but will need some time to get her dialed in.

____

I've been through some camera set-up's over the past two years, and now I'm giving another one a try

With this thing I'm able to correct the angle and placement of the camera before filming (which annoyed me a lot with all the previous set-up's). Also, the camera itself doesn't weigh much, so I hope I don't feel it sitting on my head as much (that's the hope anyways).

Here's my first video with it (it's having trouble with the exposure because I'm standing in a large shade, but I'm hoping this won't be an issue in the middle of the day).

 

[Sparse]

nice madien, in time I hope to get a bigger heli.

 

[Slobberdog]

Nice Marius, the agile looks wicked, the new video camera looks great quality to it was nice and crisp, do you have a link to it so I can take a look need a camera myself,

 

[Lee]

Nice Marius. Looks solid in the air.
If thats epoxy squeezing out of the torque tube ends in your build thread, I start by removing that excess.
I'm sure thats adding some vibe by putting the TT out of balance.
Maybe adjust the positioning of the TT bearings. But i guess you can't now they are epoxied in

 

[Derek]

Very sweet maiden, Marius! Very cool helicopter!

 

[stokke]

nice madien, in time I hope to get a bigger heli.

Thanks man! Yeah, it's something else with these big mamas

Nice Marius, the agile looks wicked, the new video camera looks great quality to it was nice and crisp, do you have a link to it so I can take a look need a camera myself,

Thanks, Kev I'm really satisfied with the video quality, but I think I'm gonna play around with the white balance and exposure settings a bit - pretty sure I can make it behave a bit better. I bought it off eBay, here. The shipping was really fast; took just 10 days

Nice Marius. Looks solid in the air.
If thats epoxy squeezing out of the torque tube ends in your build thread, I start by removing that excess.
I'm sure thats adding some vibe by putting the TT out of balance.
Maybe adjust the positioning of the TT bearings. But i guess you can't now they are epoxied in

I'll look into it. Thanks, Lee!

Very sweet maiden, Marius! Very cool helicopter!

Thank you, Derek

 

[Blackwarrior]

hi Marius, ive been looking though your progress on this thread from July 12 to present day, 2 years and youve gone from basic hovers to an absolute awesome pilot, i salute you... fantastic skills.. you deserve a lot of respect man..

as a novice id like to follow your footsteps and progression through your learning curve, so im going to start a similar diary thread (if you dont mind) and progress my learning skills with everyone on the forum as i know i will get help and tips along the way.

thanks

 

[danhampson]

Re: Marius' learning to fly - "video diary"

Have you got a link for the camera Marius. I like the idea of being able to get everything in frame without having to take the camera off your head to check.

Nice maiden mate she's looking good.

- - - Updated - - -

Sorry mate I've just seen the link above

 

[stokke]

Over 30000 views Then again, it probably the longest vid thread on here LOL

I had some trouble with the recorder I got, so I had to ship it back. Today the replacement arrived, so I'm finally able to post new videos.

Here's a flight from today. My T-rex 500. Freestyle mostly, with orientation transitions, some funnels and tic tocs.


One with the Agile. This was not the best flight of the day with the Agile, but the other video I recorded wasn't as good as this one video quality vise. A little nervous on this one as it was the first flight of the day with the Agile, some transitioning between orientations here as well, funnels and tic tocs.


I really love the Agile. Pretty forgiving apposed to the Goblin in my opinion - but still very agile and powerful. I'm getting along with it now, getting more comfortable every flight. I recently upped the head speed to 2150 which feels very nice.

There's more videos from todays flight on my channel.

Thanks for watching

 

[Graham Lawrie]

Nice one Marius great flying and great video good quality

 

[Lee]

Nice Marius,
I haven't flown my Helis in early a month :0

 

[stokke]

Nice one Marius great flying and great video good quality

Thank you, Graham

Nice Marius,
I haven't flown my Helis in early a month :0

Thanks, Lee. You'd better get out there or you'll get rusty!