LM317T Voltage Regulator with Pass Transistor

This is a quick hop around the park for the Peace Drone XR. I had hoped to have a 30-minute duration FPV flier, but it turns out this plane flies quite a bit differently when heavily loaded. With 6600mAh worth of battery, FPV gear, OSD, landing gear, and upgraded motor, it tops 2000g AUW. This necessitates flying relatively fast to hold level flight and takes away from the stable, locked-in feel I enjoyed with previous, lighter versions of the Peace Drone. I think I will re-designate this a medium-range hand-launched FPV plane and get the weight back down to 1600g. I have a continuing struggle with landing gear. As much as I try to avoid them I felt this plane was a little too heavy to hand-launch, so I forced myself to make it even more heavy with landing gear.....and they still broke........twice! The Lawmate 2.4GHz video transmitter is a great unit but demands very smooth power. I tried 4 BECs, all combination of filters, ferrite chokes, and capacitors, even made a linear voltage regulator from scratch. None worked well. The $20 voltage regulator from New Generation Hobbies did the trick! The Nova OSD has a nice display, easy setup, and seems to work well. However the stabilization and return-to-home functions are notoriously unreliable, as it turns out. The RTH also demands the servos be physically installed in the aircraft in a certain orientation in order to work, and it's not the intuitive mirror-image orientation I used for the PD elevons. Not a hard fix, but I ...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Nm0xajl6MI&hl=en

Here is another FPV flight with my sub-micro (AUW 50g) setup. This time I tested a 350 mAh battery. It gives me roughly 5 mins flight time. It is ok because it seems that range of my 10mW video transmitter is roughly 50 meters - maybe a little bit more if there are no obstacles between the heli and the base station. There is a 10 mW 5.8GHz video transmitter & 1g PAL video camera with a wide eye lens in my heli. I try to save veight using an one lipo setup and a 0.6g 5.0V Polulu voltage regulator for filtering interference from the motor & ESC. Receiver's antenna is an omi-directional 5 dBi whip. Here is a link to my setup: helifreak.com www.rcgroups.com



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtL2kqQhEfA&hl=en

Andrew Merlino and his Compas 7 HV out just warming up for a day of practice. I am still getting used to this new camera and hope to stabilize the recordings soon. Here is his setup: Motor: Scorpion 4525-520 LE ESC: Castle Creations 160HV2 FBL System: BeastX Cyclic Servos: JR 8717 HV Tail Servo: Futaba BLS 251 Main Blades (brand and size): Edge 693 Tail Blades (brand and size): Edge 105 Main Battery (brand, capacity, C rating): Thunder Power, 5000MAh, 65C Transmitter: Futaba 8FG Receiver: Futaba 6208SB Receiver Battery (if used): Thunder Power 2100Mah, 2S BEC or voltage regulator (if used, brand and model): none



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGYCERrWG8w&hl=en

I modded the airplane so that the X-Port can power the video camera. The camera now weighs much less (without batteries) and so it can go much higher. I also upgraded the battery to an 8 cell. This is the highest I have flown with this airplane. It took about 8 minutes to go as high as it did and then took 8 minutes to glide back down to the ground. A few times the engine cut out because it was getting out of range. The camera lost power about 30 seconds before I landed. On the way up I flew with some hawks that you can see if you watch closely. I think about 5 of them were circling because of the farming work going on near by stirring up the mice :-). I got up high enough to see the Columbia and Snake (if you look closely) rivers. I used a 5v linear voltage regulator from an old hub, a floppy power connector from an old pc power supply, and a dc plug from an old portable cd player to make the power adapter for the camera. Next I am going to add a magnetic fish-eye lens to the camera.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOudxeNXhu8&hl=en

Trex 700 Nitro. Ely.Q voltage regulator flight test. Pilot: Evaldas Cerniauskas. www.evaldas-rc.com



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFrXw3GeVio&hl=en

I modded the airplane so that the X-Port can power the video camera. The camera now weighs much less (without batteries) and so it can go much higher. I also upgraded the battery to an 8 cell. This is the highest I have flown with this airplane. It took about 8 minutes to go as high as it did and then took 8 minutes to glide back down to the ground. A few times the engine cut out because it was getting out of range. The camera lost power about 30 seconds before I landed. On the way up I flew with some hawks that you can see if you watch closely. I think about 5 of them were circling because of the farming work going on near by stirring up the mice :-). I got up high enough to see the Columbia and Snake (if you look closely) rivers. I used a 5v linear voltage regulator from an old hub, a floppy power connector from an old pc power supply, and a dc plug from an old portable cd player to make the power adapter for the camera. Next I am going to add a magnetic fish-eye lens to the camera.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44U-73Gdv4I&hl=en

A short test flight of ParkZone Vapor FPV setup. This setup consists of a stock Vapor, 10mW 2.4GHz video/audio transmitter (no microphone onboard), a B&W camera and 5V step-up voltage regulator to power the camera. The aircraft appeared to be tail heavy so there's some fine tuning left before the first real FPV flight.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ohJvYdeh7M&hl=en

The first flight on my brand new 49 inch plane the micro rcsuperhero rage. It weighs about 10 ounces and at the moment only has elevons on the feet. Requires two 9g servoes and a blue wonder motor or equivalent. If you would like a kit please contact me at gregtanouslasering@yahoo.com and visit my website at www.rcsuperhero.com.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWOfo41RpW0&hl=en

Seagull Decathlon 40 - OS Four Stroke 70 Surpass II, Hitec 325's on all surfaces, HS-645 on Rudder, Spektrum AR6200, Lipo Rhyno 1050 mAh 3s 11.1v, Castle Creation voltage Regulator- regulated at 5.1v, Cool Power 15% Heli Fuel After 4 month of flying the Escapade and Avistar - I finally had the courage to fly the Decathlon. Wow, what a blast!! Floats in for a landing very Nicely. Ground control is another story.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZhtgBYOZ-k&hl=en

I modded the airplane so that the X-Port can power the video camera. The camera now weighs much less (without batteries) and so it can go much higher. I also upgraded the battery to an 8 cell. This is the highest I have flown with this airplane. It took about 8 minutes to go as high as it did and then took 8 minutes to glide back down to the ground. A few times the engine cut out because it was getting out of range. The camera lost power about 30 seconds before I landed. On the way up I flew with some hawks that you can see if you watch closely. I think about 5 of them were circling because of the farming work going on near by stirring up the mice :-). I got up high enough to see the Columbia and Snake (if you look closely) rivers. I used a 5v linear voltage regulator from an old hub, a floppy power connector from an old pc power supply, and a dc plug from an old portable cd player to make the power adapter for the camera. Next I am going to add a magnetic fish-eye lens to the camera.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOudxeNXhu8&hl=en