This year my friends and I stared a local FPV drone racing series. Nothing serious, just a couple of guys meeting once in a while and measuring times over the track. 100% amateur thing. After the second race, I’ve realized that I do not have a drone designed for racing: more than 400g without a battery! That is just too heavy for any kind of competitive racing. The solution was simple: I need a good racing machine. Much, much lighter than the current one.
As a result, Mach 1 was born
Hands up, who gets antenna gain? Like why 2dBd is better than 3dBi and why 8dBi might not be a good choice after all? This whole antenna gain topic might be quite confusing. Not only there are 2 units dBi and dBd (since blame marketing for that!) but also one must realize that antenna does not really have a gain like an amplifier or transistor. If 100mW will be put into antenna it will never radiate more than a 100mW. Truth to be told, it will always radiate less than that!
In this episode, we will have a nice chat about decibels. Why we use decibels, what is the difference between dB, dBm, dBd and other similar things.
I’m done with coaxial dualcopters. It’s a dead end of evolution: loud, not efficient, hard to tune, hard to fly. If you still want to make one, here is my 3D printed dualcopter on Thingiverse. Maybe you will have more luck than me…
This is my 7-inch version of TBS Source One quadcopter frame. So far, so good, Source One is really tough and stiff frame so all the problems with resonance and oscillations in flight should be over. And looks like they are over.
It might sound like a good old V8 engine but flies smooth. And after all, that was my ultimate goal. So let’s say “bye, bye” to wobbly-wobbly iFlight XL7 v2 and say “hello” to 7-inch Source One! 6mm thick arms are the way to go!
The correct length of 868/915MHz antennas used by FrSky R9 and TBS Crossfire is:
From time to time FrSky has a big problem with cutting their antennas to a correct length. Good thing, you can make your own TBS Crossfire RX antennas for cheap!
Everybody knows that electric motor KV is a number of RPM per 1V of the supply voltage. Right? Yeah… too bad it's a lie. Not very big lie, but a lie after all. KV is number of RPMs when Back EMF generates 1V on the motor coils. Almost the same, but "almost" makes all the difference.
Do you know that there is a YouTube channel with awesome, drone and FPV related video? Why don't you give it a try?
