New Fiberglass FPV plane from Hobby King

[Captain351]

New Fiberglass FPV plane from Hobby King:

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbycity/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=15236

Looks decent but If your supposed to put your camera behind the clear canopy I'm not sure how well that would work. I would worry about distortion from the curved plastic!

[RCModelReviews]

It's good to see that *this* HK FPV plane has just a little dihedral and more vertical stabilizer area than the EPP one. It should handle *much* better.

However, unless you're going to be flying over acres of uninhabited farmland or wasteland, I'm not so keen on the idea of a hard fiberglass fuselage. If you hit someone or something, this model will do a *lot* more damage to the said person/object than the EPP version will -- and that could be bad for the hobby and bad for your wallet.

Personally, I'm not a fan of foamies -- but when it comes to FPV, I think it's a sensible safety factor to make the plane out of a material that's light and easily deformed (ie: foam).

Also, don't take HK's recommendation of a 9g servo for the steerable noseleg too seriously. Such a servo would be trashed on the first hard landing. Much better to use a medium to standard-sized metal geared servo which is more able to take the abuse.

I'm also not a fan of the general layout that HK is using for their FPV models. You still have a lot of side-area in the fuselage and much of that's a head of the CG. Once I'm done with the reviews of "store-bought" FPV airframes, I'll be making my own to see if I can do better.

[Allan Warner]

Perhaps something along the lines of this http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1325273
Available from Poland at this shop http://abc-rc.pl/p/63/1573/model-ursus- ... mery-.html
There have been other build threads and some YouTube vids.
Next batch available end of January. Got mine on pre order for delivery to the UK.
Regards, Allan.

[sap1975]

Hi There

Not to hog your thread but since it's a reply to Bruce's post i do hope it's alright.

A quick thought about you doing you own design for an FPV plane once you're done with the commercially available ones.

I'm currently working with a French guy called JC (by the way i'm form Denmark) on exactly that. Now... neither one of us have all that much experience building these things but we have gathered quite a bit of "data" from asking around different forums as to what would be required to make a good FPV plane and from what i can tell about 90% of the requirements or wishes if you will are actually covered by the Borjet MAJA. Except that it's a 250$ plane not 60$.

Anyways we went out of our way to not simply copy it which turns out to be hard when it actually seems to be a pretty sound design.

The basic idea of the JACS500E which we currently call it is to use a MAJA style fuselage with an interchangeable pod for carrying any wing's you fancy to use.

My point being. If you could use some input or assistance in drawing up sketches we would be happy to help out.

I have attached a couple of pictures of the latest drawn up design. (this has changed a bit in the meantime)

Cheers
/Stig.

[dutch jones]

hey guys new to the forums so not sure how to get around yet, question thou,

with the transmitter of the video gear could you hide it inside a fiberglass canopy or if that distorts it so a balsa wing inside the ribbing?

also i havnt been able to find any info of what the limits are on 900mhz, 5.8mhz and suck in the way of how high mW you can go before you need a ham licence

thanks guys

[Allan Warner]

Dont know about Oz but in the UK only legally allowed 10mW@2.4gHz and 25mW@5.8gHz from an aerial platform. No other aerial video frequecies allowed. A full 'Ham' ticket allows up to 400W on both frequencies but NOT transmitted from an aerial platform.

[RCModelReviews]

Don't be too worried about those low power levels -- you'd be surprised how far you can go with them.

Given that my 200mW 5.8GHz system reaches around 2Kms with the right setup, a 25mW one should give you at least 300m (which is a surprisingly long way) and, if you use a decent patch antenna with (say) 9dB of gain, you'd be back out at 2Kms again.