Ramblings from The hangar 12/01/2010

So....

what will 2010 bring model wise i wonder? a fat kate moss? no man...not that type of model. i mean the flying type! well these are some of the hot up and coming items to look out for this year

Telemetry Systems
FPV Systems
High Power EDF
Autopilots

Telemetry systems is essentially a system where you can send and receive feedback from your model. sooo if you want to know your current battery voltage in the plane it would show up on your radios lcd screen, or if you wanted to know the fuel level or airspeed etc. it would show up on a screen or be outputed as a verbal instruction.
sound odd? far fetched? not really its here already. the New Hitec Aurora 9 Transmitter has it. also commercially available now are systems to plug into your exisitng radio where you can monitor battery draw, current, power consumption etc. we are edging closer and closer to full instrumentation as in full size aircraft. will it make the hobby more difficult or easier? i dunno. but i reckon its going to add a new dimension to the hobby for those who want to go down that route.

FPV Stands for (First Person Video) this is a system where you pop a camera in the cockpit of your plane, strap it to the wing or watever. hook it up to a transmitter, then on the ground you have a receiver connected up to some sort of monitor. whether it be video glasses or a laptop.
all very nice to "sit" inside the cocpit of your plane and fly but it lends a sense of surrealness to the flight unless you can look around as you would in a real aircraft....BUT WAIT THERES MORE. the latest FPV Systems have a head tracker. this is a device which you would strap to your hat/cap. it then measures the movements of your head and sends them to a pan and tilt device on your camera. so picture this. you strap the head tracker to your cap. swithc on the FPV system. and your looking forward. now turn your head slightly to the left and voila the camera turns and looks out over your left wing. etc etc. this makes the flight quite a bit more realistic. so much so that when some guys where the video glasses for the first time they fall over from disorientation

current costs for a full system is around $700. but you can build your own far cheaper

check out www.fpvvideo.com

High Power EDF(Electric Ducted Fans) are making a splash into the hobby market. with the advent of serious lipo power with high C ratings and high power Brushless motors its becoming more and more practical to have electric jets now instead of nitro ducted fan or turbine motors.
and its not just park flyers im talking about. you can get some serious power from bob violett systems. thrust in the region of 15kg is attainable. still expensive...but its getting cheaper.

Autopilots have been around for a while with mixed success. the old batch of autopilots used a optical sensor to detect the angle of the horizon problem with these was that when it got dark(dawn dusk) they didnt work. and would turn the plane upside down or watever as they could no longer tell the difference between the horizon and the ground. also. the best they could do was to level out an aircraft if it got into problems.

NOW the latest autopilots have also been designed with helis in mind. so much so that a heli poiinted straight at the ground will pull itself out and go into a steady hover if you leave the sticks go. kinda takes the fun out of it but its there to help beginners. cost is around 2k for a autoplitor system.

then the next level up is one step short of a military system. an autopilot whose movements you can plot in a pc and program into a pre defined flight plan. itll take off. go where you tell it. do something or other then come back
all on its own.
guys are using this for aerial photography on larger models.
cost is $5000+ i dont see this becoming viable anytime soon, besides. i dont know many people who would use it anyway. but its interesting to see the new technologies

begs the question though. when does it stop being a hobby and become an obsession?