Category: DIY

  • Mini Flying Wing: MiniWing v2

    Miniquads are fun, right? After all, there is a reasons most uf us flies 210-250 quadcopters. If so, small flying wings should be fun too! I tried that already in late 2015 and failed miserably! My design did not survived maiden flight. Well, things like that happens from time to time, so few months ago,…

  • Project Dualcopter – worklog #2

    3 weeks after my first post on Project Dualcopter, it's time for small update. The plan was to install servos and control surfaces. Instead, I've done: Basic electrical wiring for motors and ESCs. They have power now and are ready to be connected to flight controller To level shelf (above propellers) designed to hold flight…

  • Project Dualcopter – worklog #1

    Flying season 2016 is slowly coming to an end on northern hemisphere. That means less time spent on an airfield and more time spent behind a desk. For this autumn I've found a very interesting, small project: Dualcopter. Dualcopter is an UAV with two coaxial contra-rotating propellers and 2 control surfaces driven by servos. Lift…

  • Marabou Stork: FPV airplane maiden flight

    For the last few week I’ve been little busy building my next fixed wing UAV: “Marabou Stork” Depron/Carbon/3D Printed airplane with pusher prop build for FPV. It’s improved version of “Red Cruiser” model from last year. It’s equipped with KFm-2 wing, Turnigy D2826-6 2200KV motor, APC-E 7×4″ propeller, 2700mAh Lipo battery, FPV setup with MinimOSD…

  • How to cut Depron

    Depron is an amazing material. Light, cheap, waterproof, easy to process and quite durable. Almost everything in RC world can be made from Depron. All one needs is imagination, glue and proper knife. Like I mentioned few times before, I’m cheap, so at the beginning of my adventure with Depron, I was choosing cheap modeling…

  • Beitian BN-880 GPS 3D Printed Case

    Beitian BN-880 (I’ve bought mine from Banggood) is an excellent, cheap and accurate Ublox NEO-M8N GPS module. I’m using it for last few months and I’m very happy with it. But is has one serious flaw: there are no cases/enclosures for it. So, in most applications it is naked. I’ve decided to fix that and…

  • HC-12 433MHz RF serial module range test

    As I mentioned in my first post about HC-12 433MHz radio modules, I’ve put my interest in them for telemetry purposes. While S.Port telemetry I’m using in FrSky Taranis radio might have higher range than HC-12, it is closed environment. Since $10 for a pair of HC-12 is not much, I’ve decided for more open…

  • Improving cheap radio range

    Radio range of my first drone, UDI 829A was pretty pathetic. OK, it was (still is, I only have to finally replace motors) pretty indestructible, quite stable and reasonably priced. But effective radio range as quite short. More less 50 meters. Above that limit strange things started to happen. The reason was pretty simple. Just…

  • How to flash firmware to ESP-01 ESP8266 WiFi module

    One can think that internet know everything about everything. Yesterday I’ve learned the hard way that is does not. It took me better part of evening to find a working way to flash firmware, any firmware, to cheap ESP-01 ESP8266 WiFi modules. There are many tutorials, most of them were just wrong in my case.…