=== Let's Drone Out — Episode 327 ===
Title: LDO 327 - RC Video Reviews
Recorded: 2021-12-02
Hosts: Stephen "Belrik" Howell, Wayne "CurryKitten" Andrews, Andrew "Frank" Hyams, Jack "Brightontillifly" Nash
Guest(s): John RCVR
Total audience: 2,441
Platforms: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHnwWuH2CPc); SoundCloud (http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/1171805785-letsdroneout-ldo-327-rc-video-reviews.mp3)
=====================================

John is https://www.youtube.com/c/RCVideoReviews

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[0.0] Jack: Hello, and you're listening to Let's Drone Out, a special thank you to our lovely patrons
[6.28] Jack: that help donate so that we can pay the editor to remove the swear words and silly things
[11.36] Jack: we say.
[13.0] Jack: Massive thank you to Carlos Campos, Art Faulkner, Sam Dahmer, Mikey Dredd.
[21.84] Jack: On with the show.
[22.84] Jack: Hello and welcome back to Let's Drone Out.
[57.25] Jack: Tonight you are joined by everyone's favourite curry kitten.
[61.01] Jack: Hello.
[62.01] Jack: Return to home jacket, Steven.
[64.85] Jack: Hello.
[65.85] Jack: Our Lord and Master and Christmas jumper, Fanatic Frank.
[71.05] Jack: Good evening.
[72.05] UNKNOWN: Hello.
[73.05] Jack: My darling wife.
[75.05] Jack: Bonjour.
[76.05] Jack: My mum bought you a present, by the way.
[79.17] Frank: Me?
[80.17] Jack: Yep.
[81.17] Jack: And I've got a Christmas card for you.
[86.25] Jack: John R.C. video reviews.
[88.25] Jack: Hey, guys.
[89.25] John RCVR: Hello.
[90.25] John RCVR: Hello.
[91.25] John RCVR: Welcome.
[92.25] Jack: Thank you.
[93.25] Jack: And I'm broke until I fly.
[94.25] Jack: And, yeah, we're going to start the show.
[98.25] Jack: Steven, do you want to tell us what's going on?
[104.09] Stephen: I didn't invite John on, so I'm not sure that I'm the best one to give the leader.
[108.25] Jack: Jack, do you never read the notes?
[110.25] Jack: Yes.
[111.25] Jack: No.
[112.25] Jack: I don't know where the notes are.
[113.25] Jack: For God's sakes.
[114.25] Jack: I've been in an MRI scan, and I've been ****ing it.
[117.85] Curry: Shut up.
[118.85] Curry: Winging about yourself.
[119.85] Curry: We don't need it.
[120.85] Curry: Jack's ill, and he's still ****ing himself, everybody.
[124.69] Curry: Move on.
[125.69] Curry: Right.
[126.69] Curry: John runs the channel R.C. video reviews.
[132.69] Curry: Jack's just gone to the toilet again, who basically has a channel where he does lots
[138.45] Curry: of flying and some reviewing of stuff and a lot of things with radios and stuff.
[143.29] Curry: And it was pointed out to me by somebody that says, hey, he's flying a cod, and he
[148.37] Curry: was mentioning the tutorials I did about flying Accra, and I thought, this is a guy with impeccable
[154.49] Curry: taste.
[155.49] Curry: You must have him on the show and talk to him.
[158.21] Curry: That is pretty much it.
[159.21] Curry: And John was kind enough to have me on one of his live streams as well.
[162.49] Curry: He does a live stream every Friday.
[164.53] Curry: If you start very late in the UK, you can catch it.
[166.97] Curry: It's on a more reasonable time in the US.
[168.97] Curry: So welcome to John.
[169.97] John RCVR: Thanks, Wayne.
[170.97] John RCVR: Thanks.
[171.97] John RCVR: Glad to be here.
[172.97] John RCVR: I would agree.
[173.97] John RCVR: Those videos were spectacularly good because you go out and find if you're new to the quad
[179.85] John RCVR: of pilotage, there are so many guides out there.
[184.17] John RCVR: But a lot of times, these guys will get up and they'll fling the quads around really
[187.33] John RCVR: fast and they go right into 3D and you're like, wait a minute, I don't even know how
[189.97] John RCVR: to take off yet.
[190.97] John RCVR: And that's what I loved about your videos is you just kind of marked them off into quadrants
[194.81] John RCVR: and said, OK, let's start with the basics.
[196.25] John RCVR: And then we moved on.
[197.25] John RCVR: And it was brilliant.
[198.53] John RCVR: Yeah, I attribute your videos to helping me get off the off the ground pretty quickly
[203.57] John RCVR: without any without any real fanfare, honestly.
[206.49] Curry: Yeah, I am quite slow as well.
[207.93] Curry: That's me working at full pace.
[209.57] Curry: But tell it tell us a little bit more about what your channel is and what you're doing
[214.17] Curry: at the moment. We were talking before and I know you've done an awful lot on EdgeTX,
[219.21] Curry: which is going to make Stephen happy and recently doing quite a lot on helicopters,
[223.73] Curry: which are quite frightening.
[224.85] Curry: And you do quite a lot on planes as well and do some line of sight and FPV and all
[228.29] Curry: sorts. Tell us more.
[229.93] John RCVR: Yeah, so I got started flying a long time ago.
[233.49] John RCVR: I'm back in the 90s and I got out of it for some time and did some on road stuff.
[238.57] John RCVR: But when I got back into it, it took me very little time to go straight into FPV.
[243.41] John RCVR: And when I say FPV, I don't mean these guys.
[246.13] John RCVR: I mean fixed wing long range because I lived out in the deserts of Arizona.
[249.81] John RCVR: And this was before the government and the news had us all being criminals
[254.73] John RCVR: for flying beyond line of sight.
[256.65] John RCVR: And we go out in the desert and we'd fly a thousand feet, two thousand feet and ten,
[262.45] John RCVR: twelve miles away. We built antenna trackers and we would just go out and fly.
[266.09] John RCVR: We'd fly these huge loops.
[267.25] John RCVR: And we didn't think anything of it because I mean, where I lived, you couldn't you
[271.21] John RCVR: couldn't hurt a coyote if you tried to.
[273.93] John RCVR: So that was my first my first real big area of interest when I got into into
[280.25] John RCVR: RC again after being out of it for a couple of years.
[283.09] John RCVR: And, you know, I spent a lot of time with Eagle Tree Vector with DragonLink UHF and
[287.77] John RCVR: one point three gigahertz video.
[289.57] John RCVR: I went out and got a ham license so I could operate the radios legally and had a great
[294.25] John RCVR: time with that. And I still miss it.
[296.25] John RCVR: Some of the footage that I used to get HD footage, it's still you know, those are
[301.57] John RCVR: memories that you have, you know, and I've got pictures from lakes and deserts and
[305.49] John RCVR: rivers and dams and things that you would never see without being in the air.
[309.69] John RCVR: And I just, you know, that's my real true love is the long range FPV.
[314.41] John RCVR: But we really can't do that anymore.
[315.85] John RCVR: And if we do, we can't talk about it.
[317.13] John RCVR: So
[321.53] John RCVR: and we're certainly not supposed to post videos about it.
[323.97] John RCVR: I'm not saying I don't have any.
[325.17] John RCVR: I'm just saying you're not supposed to post it.
[326.53] John RCVR: So because of that, when I moved back to Florida, I moved back home, I wound up
[333.01] John RCVR: flying at a field, an AMA field, which was very foreign to me because I was kind of
[337.81] John RCVR: like a rebel, you know, we just went out to the desert, did our stuff there.
[341.29] John RCVR: But the AMA field, you know, I kind of pushed more into fixed wing and, you know,
[344.73] John RCVR: the local park stuff and sport flying.
[346.61] John RCVR: And, you know, you can do so much of that to a point.
[349.33] John RCVR: And then, you know, the quads, I started paying attention to the quads and I had
[352.69] John RCVR: people ask me on the channel to get into doing quads.
[355.57] John RCVR: And because I love mechanical stuff and I'm a constant consummate tinkerer, you know,
[360.25] John RCVR: I got into quads and my last real nice build was this little badge that I have in
[364.57] John RCVR: front of me.
[365.77] John RCVR: This is a brilliant little frame.
[367.01] John RCVR: It's Norma Tom Badger I got from Race Day Quads and it's got the titanium camera
[371.49] John RCVR: mount, the DJI camera system, a little run cam up there just for tinkering with.
[377.05] John RCVR: But I absolutely love flying these, too.
[379.85] John RCVR: The problem is, you know, when you're running a YouTube channel, you can do the
[383.65] John RCVR: build and talk about the technology.
[385.41] John RCVR: But when it comes to the flight videos where I go, we just go around in a circle,
[389.57] John RCVR: you know, and that's all you can really do.
[390.89] John RCVR: So anyway, that's that on the quads.
[394.17] John RCVR: And then I have I have a group of people in my channel who are absolutely dedicated
[399.77] John RCVR: heli fanatics.
[400.77] John RCVR: And they had been asking me for months and months to get into helicopters.
[404.37] John RCVR: They said, do do helicopter fly helicopter.
[406.77] John RCVR: So I finally started tinkering with helicopters and I just have a blast with these two because
[411.17] John RCVR: they are very mechanical in nature and lots of whirly bits and and, you know, they still
[417.37] John RCVR: use the computer.
[418.37] John RCVR: I'm a tech guy.
[419.37] John RCVR: So, you know, you still got a flight or it's called a fly barless, but it's basically
[423.01] John RCVR: a flight computer handles and mixing and throats fly by wires when it is.
[427.17] John RCVR: So I put a couple of these together and I'm kind of bit with these, but I just have fun
[430.77] John RCVR: with everything.
[431.77] John RCVR: You know, the hobby, I'm a tech guy.
[434.65] John RCVR: I've got a background in radio.
[436.21] John RCVR: I've got background in in network engineering.
[439.81] John RCVR: And as soon as I could get a wrench on a motor when I was a teenager, I did.
[443.53] John RCVR: So to me, the whole hobby just kind of comes together and I love it all.
[447.53] John RCVR: And I'm not really I'm an equal opportunity, equal opportunity adventurous when it comes
[453.61] John RCVR: to flying.
[454.61] John RCVR: I'll try just about anything when it comes to flying.
[456.49] John RCVR: And I can tell you the helicopters, boy, they really absolutely put you to the test.
[461.13] John RCVR: It's been a challenge learning them and I'm still kind of a rookie and I'm not I don't
[465.05] John RCVR: have what I would call advanced skills.
[467.33] John RCVR: But you know, I can get around the field, do a few tricks and I'm still practicing.
[470.81] John RCVR: So that's it.
[471.97] John RCVR: And then the Edge TX stuff.
[474.41] John RCVR: That's how my channel really kind of took off.
[477.45] John RCVR: I started I used to I used to watch Lee at Painless 360 and I'd watch him when I first
[483.53] John RCVR: got into OpenTX with my Taranis.
[486.17] John RCVR: And then I got to that point, you know, tipping point where I played around things so much
[489.29] John RCVR: that I started answering more questions than I asked.
[492.21] John RCVR: And that's when I started doing the videos.
[494.41] John RCVR: And yeah, I've been I've been heavily involved in Edge TX.
[497.81] John RCVR: In fact, I've completely made the conversion out to Edge TX.
[501.29] John RCVR: I no longer have an OpenTX radio.
[503.97] John RCVR: Everything I've got is Edge TX.
[504.97] John RCVR: And I've got a lot of radios to I think I said I tinker.
[509.45] John RCVR: So yeah, I'm always fooling around in Edge.
[511.93] John RCVR: I actually compile my own kernel on a nightly basis.
[514.81] John RCVR: I watch their updates very closely and and I like to I like to see what they're up to.
[519.69] John RCVR: And those guys, they're just brilliant.
[522.13] John RCVR: They're they're very welcoming, very encouraging of ideas and participation.
[526.77] John RCVR: And I'm just really thrilled with what I see going on over here at Edge.
[530.57] John RCVR: Yeah, great group.
[531.57] John RCVR: So they're the new gimbals there is that the metal gimbals on the one on the right?
[535.73] John RCVR: This one?
[536.73] John RCVR: Yeah, the AG01 radio master gimbals.
[538.85] John RCVR: Radio master sent those to me for review.
[540.85] John RCVR: They kind of hooked me up with a lot of a lot of equipment.
[543.89] John RCVR: And yeah, they sent those over for me to do a little review and install them and and talk
[548.21] John RCVR: about how they go.
[550.17] John RCVR: And they're they're good.
[551.41] Stephen: They're nice and different.
[552.41] Stephen: I mean, in terms of the the feel between those and the regular because you've got whole sensors
[557.21] Stephen: already.
[558.21] Stephen: So it's going to be a nice smooth action.
[559.53] Stephen: But obviously, the weight of the metal is going to feel different.
[562.29] John RCVR: Yeah, you know, we've I've had this conversation and discord quite a bit.
[566.17] John RCVR: And the thing about gimbals, I kind of have this argument with gimbals that says, if we
[570.33] John RCVR: stipulate that every one, every modern gimbal in a decent radio these days has four bearings,
[575.01] John RCVR: right?
[576.01] John RCVR: You've got the north, south axis, east, west axis.
[577.85] John RCVR: So if we stipulate they're all riding on bearings, that kind of accounts for the feel.
[581.97] John RCVR: Now, I suppose if you're really good, you might be able to say, well, I can tell the
[585.81] John RCVR: difference in bearings.
[586.81] John RCVR: I can't.
[587.81] John RCVR: I can't tell the difference in bearings.
[589.45] John RCVR: So for me, it's not really about the bearing movement.
[592.95] John RCVR: But what it comes down to is the weight.
[595.17] John RCVR: And I found ways to accommodate for weight if I don't like it by using different springs.
[599.75] John RCVR: So I go out and get for taba springs for taba, make some heavy duty springs.
[603.67] John RCVR: And I did change these springs out from from the stock ones to for taba.
[608.01] John RCVR: And I like the feel with it there.
[609.57] John RCVR: So the weight is very heavy with those for taba springs and and the the bearings obviously
[614.29] John RCVR: are very smooth.
[615.29] John RCVR: So, you know, to me, it's a suit to taste thing.
[617.41] John RCVR: And I think most of what it comes when it comes down to feel like I my my view is that
[622.09] John RCVR: most of it comes down to the spring tension and how much weight you put on those springs.
[626.73] John RCVR: And then of course, you know, there's other things to like the stick length and the centering.
[630.81] John RCVR: They did make some mechanical adjustments to the way these gimbals center.
[634.61] John RCVR: So the old style, it had more of a fine point on center.
[638.73] John RCVR: This one is a little flatter and a little wider.
[640.57] John RCVR: So it does it does tend to center better.
[643.37] John RCVR: And I know on this whole sensor, they also made some adjustments so that you can avoid
[647.01] John RCVR: drift.
[648.01] John RCVR: That was one of the big complaints is the temperature drift.
[650.37] Stephen: So when you say it's flasher and wider, you mean it doesn't like push itself right into
[654.53] Stephen: the center.
[655.53] Stephen: It just loses a little bit of the spring when it gets the center or no, what I'm saying
[660.49] John RCVR: is when it hits center, it locks on center.
[662.87] John RCVR: So it locks.
[663.87] John RCVR: Yeah.
[664.87] John RCVR: Yeah.
[665.87] John RCVR: If you've ever taken a horse radio apart and look at the way they do it, they're very clever
[669.69] John RCVR: mechanism for centering.
[670.89] John RCVR: It's very flat plate and a very wide plate.
[673.27] John RCVR: So when it centers, it locks.
[675.07] John RCVR: And I know that was also one of the complaints.
[677.31] John RCVR: I think what I believe what radio mastered is kind of split the difference.
[681.43] John RCVR: They didn't go with that big wide plate that the horse uses, but they use their own new
[685.79] John RCVR: design and a little bit narrower, but it's not a fine point.
[689.99] John RCVR: It's not like a point resting on a plate and that you rely on that for center.
[694.35] John RCVR: It's just a little bit wider.
[695.87] Stephen: I've wondered if that comes, if that shows up in some freestyle pilots flying because
[700.15] Stephen: a lot of the moves you see, they really just, it's like a turn and then just lock on to
[706.03] Stephen: an attitude.
[707.03] Stephen: And I wondered if the ability to kind of lock onto center much more aggressively would actually
[712.11] Stephen: show up in your footage.
[714.43] John RCVR: I can tell you that it absolutely made a difference in helicopter flying.
[719.19] John RCVR: You have to use rudder.
[720.55] John RCVR: You will.
[721.55] John RCVR: That's one thing you'll learn.
[722.55] John RCVR: If you fly a helicopter, there's no getting away from rudder.
[725.55] John RCVR: You can cheat on and well, as you guys know, in quads, it's the same deal.
[729.19] John RCVR: You got to use rudder and quads as well.
[731.07] John RCVR: But when I got these gimbals, this is my helicopter radio.
[735.01] John RCVR: So I put them in this radio and I can tell you right away that it made a huge difference
[739.75] John RCVR: in keeping the pitch more aligned when I use the rudder.
[745.75] John RCVR: So, or maybe I reverse that.
[747.75] John RCVR: The rudder is more aligned when I use the pitch.
[749.47] John RCVR: So I find myself not drifting on rudder as much because I'm a thumber.
[753.67] John RCVR: And I know a lot of guys that fly, you know, helicopters, they are pinchers.
[757.71] John RCVR: I'll probably work on adapting that at some point, but right now I'm a thumber.
[761.63] John RCVR: So you have that arc and when you are moving that pitch, it's really easy to touch that
[766.51] John RCVR: rudder.
[767.51] John RCVR: So that harder center definitely helps avoid that rudder movement when you're thumbing
[772.11] Stephen: like I am.
[773.11] John RCVR: Yeah.
[774.11] Stephen: Yeah.
[775.11] Stephen: You just sit in a rut almost without breaking that jumping from side to side.
[778.15] John RCVR: Yeah.
[779.15] John RCVR: Keeping the line.
[780.15] John RCVR: Yeah.
[781.15] John RCVR: Same thing with the elevator and aileron as well.
[782.15] John RCVR: So I'm mode two, but you know, if you hear elevator and aileron, it's same concept.
[786.87] John RCVR: You find yourself, if you're trying to just utilize the elevator and you don't want to
[790.91] John RCVR: roll, that centering does help out there.
[792.83] John RCVR: It's a little more locked in.
[794.07] John RCVR: Yeah.
[795.07] Stephen: Yeah.
[796.07] Stephen: I think with freestyle quad pilots, you often see this kind of like turn and bank and then
[800.91] Stephen: lock and it's almost like the footage just kind of snaps into an attitude.
[805.63] Stephen: And before, you know, from moving from one trick to another, you get this kind of locked
[809.71] Stephen: in feeling.
[810.71] Stephen: And I was wondering if that was contributing.
[812.39] John RCVR: Yeah.
[813.39] John RCVR: Yeah.
[814.39] John RCVR: I think so.
[815.39] John RCVR: I think so.
[816.39] John RCVR: I think so, too.
[817.39] John RCVR: If you haven't tried that, it takes a little acclimation to get used to heavier springs.
[820.15] John RCVR: But now when I go back to radios that don't have like these, these gimbals are flysky
[824.07] John RCVR: gimbals.
[825.07] John RCVR: I don't know if you guys are aware of that, but flysky...
[827.27] John RCVR: The MV14 ones?
[828.75] John RCVR: Yeah.
[829.75] John RCVR: Well, PL18.
[830.75] John RCVR: Yeah.
[831.75] John RCVR: The same.
[832.75] John RCVR: They're the same.
[833.75] John RCVR: Yeah.
[834.75] John RCVR: They're the same.
[835.91] John RCVR: So flysky sent me some radios to review and they sent me a spare set of gimbals.
[840.39] John RCVR: And I put these in the TX16S.
[843.87] John RCVR: And with Edge TX, they just completed a firmware auto-detect.
[848.07] John RCVR: So now if you use the flysky gimbals, it will automatically pick that up and they'll work.
[852.11] John RCVR: So these are digital.
[853.11] John RCVR: These are analog.
[854.11] John RCVR: But now you can switch back and forth.
[855.75] John RCVR: And say, you know, same thing that these are a little bit looser.
[859.19] John RCVR: They feel very foreign to me.
[860.95] John RCVR: After flying this one, I picked this up and it feels like somebody else's radio.
[863.99] John RCVR: But you know, it's mine, but I need to find a way to tighten those springs up a little
[868.27] John RCVR: bit.
[869.27] Stephen: People were saying those were very advanced gimbals with some 3D hole sensor or something
[873.71] Stephen: and people were picking apart the minutia and one of them is SPI and the other one's
[877.95] Stephen: a serial connection or something, right?
[880.59] John RCVR: Yeah.
[881.59] John RCVR: There's a ribbon cable that goes in between them and then there's a single digital connection
[885.63] John RCVR: that goes onto the header board on the main board.
[888.07] John RCVR: So the big thing, the big conversation I've had, and you know, I spent a lot of time talking
[894.71] John RCVR: with developers.
[895.71] John RCVR: I spent time talking with RadioMaster.
[897.83] John RCVR: The great big question out there is resolution.
[900.27] John RCVR: So these are, you know, there's this whole thing about resolution.
[903.23] John RCVR: You have to be very careful about the way you position it because these are 4096 gimbals.
[908.51] John RCVR: So are these, by the way.
[910.07] John RCVR: But these are 4096 gimbals.
[912.27] John RCVR: But the problem is you don't get that resolution on the output because the protocol, the air
[916.07] John RCVR: protocol doesn't support 4096.
[917.91] John RCVR: It only supports 2048.
[920.19] John RCVR: So you're going to have stepping.
[921.71] John RCVR: And when I dug into it and tried to really understand what the difference was, what I
[925.71] John RCVR: got from the developers having a very, I don't make your guys' eyes bleed here, but having
[931.35] John RCVR: a very detailed conversation with one of the key developers, Risto, I don't know if
[935.31] John RCVR: you guys follow EdgeTX, but he spent about an hour talking me through it.
[939.67] John RCVR: The bottom line is that there's a lot of math that goes on between the analog finger.
[944.29] John RCVR: This is analog and this is digital.
[946.85] John RCVR: So there's a conversion that goes on between analog and digital.
[950.19] John RCVR: And as the movements of the stick work their way through the inputs, mixes and outputs
[954.43] John RCVR: on the radio, there's math that has a certain degree of precision.
[959.47] John RCVR: So if you have a 4096 gimbal, your math can be more precise as you move through the inputs,
[965.19] John RCVR: mixes and outputs versus a 2048 gimbal, the math is less precise.
[971.43] John RCVR: There's a very complex mathematical process they go through when they move stuff through
[975.87] John RCVR: the radio.
[976.87] John RCVR: But that's the bottom line explanation that I got from the Edge developers.
[980.03] John RCVR: As I said, we can be more precise with the math as we move through on a higher resolution
[984.55] John RCVR: gimbal.
[986.47] John RCVR: Because the protocol only supports 2048, at the end, what you send over the error is only
[991.75] John RCVR: a 2048 resolution.
[993.47] Stephen: They're talking about changing that though, right?
[995.27] Stephen: Yeah.
[996.27] Stephen: It seems rumbling is about moving to 12 bit, which would take it to 4096.
[999.63] John RCVR: Exactly.
[1000.63] John RCVR: Yeah.
[1001.63] John RCVR: And I think there is one protocol out there that does it.
[1003.35] John RCVR: I believe it's a Futaba protocol that does it today.
[1006.95] Stephen: So if you have Futaba, you still have analog noise and stuff though, right?
[1010.07] Stephen: Because ultimately you're just moving a magnet next to the sensor and it's kind of ahoven
[1015.15] Stephen: to whatever environmental effects or other electrical noise inside the radio might be
[1019.83] John RCVR: occurring.
[1020.83] John RCVR: Right.
[1021.83] John RCVR: Yeah.
[1022.83] John RCVR: The mechanics are no different.
[1023.83] John RCVR: It's just a higher resolution and it's a digital format instead of analog.
[1026.59] John RCVR: That's the only difference.
[1029.11] Frank: What's the protocol that's kind of restricting everything at the moment?
[1032.91] Frank: Is this the protocol between the gimbal and the radio or between the radio and the module
[1038.87] Frank: or what's going on there?
[1041.03] John RCVR: It's the error protocol.
[1042.07] John RCVR: So all the Freesky D16, DA, Futaba, all the stuff in the NPM, they all work at 11 bit,
[1050.59] John RCVR: so 2048.
[1052.95] Stephen: Some guys who've been doing custom Express LRS handsets have built stuff that does 12
[1056.99] Stephen: bit end to end, but right now OpenTX doesn't kind of accommodate that, I think.
[1061.79] John RCVR: Yeah.
[1062.79] John RCVR: And the other thing with Express LRS, because that's Laura, which those guys are brilliant
[1067.27] John RCVR: too.
[1068.27] John RCVR: I absolutely love what they're doing.
[1069.27] John RCVR: I mean, it's fascinating watch.
[1070.63] John RCVR: We're in a great state right now watching what's happening with software and hardware,
[1074.43] John RCVR: but the Express LRS stuff, because it's Laura, there's a real requirement to manage the relationship
[1085.15] John RCVR: between bandwidth and power and distance, right?
[1089.39] John RCVR: So what they're doing is they've reduced the bandwidth significantly.
[1092.43] John RCVR: That's what Laura does, is reduces the bandwidth significantly and it trades that bandwidth
[1097.51] John RCVR: for range, even at very low power levels.
[1100.03] John RCVR: If you look at the Express LRS leaderboard, there's guys out there flying 40 kilometers
[1105.03] John RCVR: at 100 milliwatts on 915, which is just amazing.
[1110.19] John RCVR: I remember with DragonLink at 433, we were pushing those at one watt, and the DragonLink
[1115.55] John RCVR: would self adjust just like Crosswire does, but yeah, it's amazing to watch that kind
[1120.59] John RCVR: of work.
[1121.59] John RCVR: So now if you go back to the protocol and say, well, we're going to stuff more information
[1125.47] John RCVR: into a packet, now you might need more bandwidth.
[1128.15] John RCVR: So they're using that bandwidth.
[1130.39] John RCVR: That's a very key feature in how they extract the range in Express LRS.
[1135.71] John RCVR: That's a key.
[1136.71] Stephen: Yeah.
[1137.71] Stephen: And we had this discussion, some guys here saying, when can we use it for our wings?
[1140.47] Stephen: When can we get more than four full range channels?
[1144.51] Stephen: And to do that, you're going to have to sacrifice, like you're saying, sacrifice some of the
[1147.91] Stephen: strengths that you've got by keeping that low bandwidth and give up some of that range
[1152.83] Stephen: in order to get more full range channels effectively.
[1155.43] John RCVR: Well, you know, one of the topics that I've heard of, and I've seen it, I think I'm not
[1159.87] John RCVR: sure if it was Ghost or I don't think it's Tracer, but there's this idea of switch automatically
[1165.03] John RCVR: switching between protocols.
[1166.51] John RCVR: So using something like a normal frequency hopping spectrum protocol for local stuff
[1171.27] John RCVR: and then automatically switching to LoRa if you're at range.
[1174.45] John RCVR: And that might make sense because in the local protocol, you could use the extra channels
[1180.67] John RCVR: for your gear and flaps and things like that.
[1182.75] John RCVR: But then when you take off and put your gear up and your flaps up, you really only need
[1185.83] John RCVR: the four, maybe pan until, but yeah, I agree.
[1189.63] John RCVR: I think there's going to be, I look forward to seeing how they address that.
[1193.55] John RCVR: But you guys know there is a Matek module out there right now that's Express LRS with
[1197.35] John RCVR: PWM output, right?
[1198.35] John RCVR: That's out there.
[1199.35] John RCVR: So yeah, that's really exciting to see that.
[1202.35] Stephen: Not on Matek's website when I last looked, but it was on Aliexpress, which was strange.
[1206.55] John RCVR: Yeah, Matek has it.
[1208.35] Curry: We were talking about it the other day because it still has the problem with the reduced
[1212.79] Curry: resolution above like, so your pan until it will be a little bit.
[1217.39] Stephen: And you better make sure not to map channel five to actual channel five because that's
[1221.79] Stephen: just a binary channel for your arming.
[1224.03] Stephen: So you're not going to get anything useful out of that.
[1226.19] John RCVR: That's right.
[1227.19] John RCVR: Those are the things they have to work through.
[1228.83] John RCVR: And if they can find a way to use an automatic protocol switcher that says we'll use LoRa
[1236.99] John RCVR: for range and one of the common frequency hoppers for local, that's it.
[1241.71] John RCVR: I think game over for the industry because they're amazing.
[1246.63] Stephen: Did you see the guys who were looking at this FrSky tandem system and kind of jealously
[1251.71] Stephen: thinking, oh, maybe we'll have a go at hacking at that.
[1254.03] Stephen: And one guy was trying to figure out how to get 2.4 and 900 running at the same time on
[1259.07] Stephen: both end and toggle between them, rely on one for telemetry and the other for the outbound
[1266.23] Stephen: data and so forth and combine the two.
[1268.51] John RCVR: Yeah.
[1269.51] John RCVR: I mean, you could actually do something like that with one of these radios if you wanted
[1271.99] John RCVR: to get creative because you've got an internal and external module.
[1274.95] John RCVR: So if you had an internal module, for example, that had Express LRS, you could have an internal
[1283.91] John RCVR: running express and an external running express.
[1285.95] John RCVR: And I've actually seen some people tinkering with that, putting an express LRS module in
[1290.75] John RCVR: internal to the radio.
[1292.79] John RCVR: So if that happens, then yeah, you could actually run both simultaneously, two different receivers,
[1298.19] John RCVR: two different transmitters, same radio.
[1300.39] John RCVR: That's a possibility.
[1301.39] Stephen: There's going to have a lot of trouble selling that really expensive, a photographer competitor
[1305.07] Stephen: radio at that point.
[1306.07] John RCVR: Yeah.
[1307.07] Curry: I was just going to say, there's definitely been autopilots in the past that can take
[1311.59] Curry: multiple receivers as well.
[1313.83] Curry: I think, oh, I can't remember who made it now.
[1317.27] Curry: It's like RVUSD or something back in the day because I remember someone having two free
[1322.51] Curry: skies and different polarities in their antennas to get max range and having two RSSIs and
[1328.71] Curry: it would just flip to the right one.
[1331.79] Curry: But you could do the same thing with two separate receivers just running from a single radio,
[1339.11] Curry: two outputs at the same time.
[1340.99] Stephen: I suppose there's nothing technically to stop a flight controller from having two RX inputs.
[1345.95] Stephen: Just have to have some logic in there to manage which one it was listening to.
[1349.19] Curry: The logic say, we'll take it from this one because this has a better signal, not get
[1352.87] Curry: it from both.
[1353.87] Curry: That would be bad.
[1354.87] Stephen: Yeah.
[1355.87] Stephen: Right.
[1356.87] Stephen: Right.
[1357.87] Stephen: Exactly.
[1358.87] Curry: Although I still like the idea of like, let's have two receivers.
[1362.55] Curry: You have aileron and throttle and you have rudder and elevator and let's see if we can
[1367.71] Curry: fly a plane together.
[1368.71] Curry: I think that'd be fun.
[1369.71] Curry: That's always fun.
[1370.71] John RCVR: Yeah.
[1371.71] John RCVR: A friend of mine, when I was in Arizona, we had, there's this, I forgot the name of it.
[1376.07] John RCVR: It's a switcher.
[1377.07] John RCVR: It's a radio switcher.
[1378.07] John RCVR: The idea is it's an inner, it's meant to be a wireless trainer and you hook two receivers
[1382.19] John RCVR: up to it.
[1383.19] John RCVR: We had two fields within a mile of each other and we thought about connecting a dragon link
[1387.11] John RCVR: to both and then getting on FPV and having him sit at one field and launch the plane
[1392.11] John RCVR: and fly FPV over to the other field.
[1394.55] John RCVR: I was going to go sit in my chair with my radio, no airplane, and just sit down, put
[1398.43] John RCVR: my goggles on and start talking to myself while I flew the plane because we know the
[1402.15] John RCVR: guys at the field have been like, what the hell is this guy doing?
[1405.43] John RCVR: There's no airplane.
[1406.43] John RCVR: And then all of a sudden when the airplane came into range and I saw it, I would flip
[1410.63] John RCVR: off the, or he would flip off the, when he saw the field, he'd flip off the master and
[1415.75] John RCVR: switch it over to me.
[1416.75] John RCVR: So I'd have control and I'd bring the plane and land it.
[1419.43] John RCVR: We actually mapped it out and we were going to do it.
[1421.63] John RCVR: I just moved before we could get it done, but we were going to do that.
[1424.31] John RCVR: That would have been fun, but it's just this little device that takes two receivers and
[1428.79] John RCVR: one output.
[1429.79] John RCVR: So, and it's got a channel to let you switch from one to the other.
[1433.15] John RCVR: I have it.
[1434.15] John RCVR: I have it in my stash somewhere.
[1435.91] John RCVR: I'll have to get that thing out with a little bit, but a neat little gadget.
[1439.19] John RCVR: Interesting.
[1440.19] Curry: It was actually my, my friend's idea was to do something more stupid in terms of flying
[1446.07] Curry: a plane together.
[1447.07] Curry: And he comes up with all the stupid ideas.
[1448.67] Curry: So we did things like let's do third person, first person view where like I would follow
[1453.59] Curry: his plane and then he switched to my channels and then he'd fly his plane through my view.
[1458.79] Curry: So it's like line of sight through FPV.
[1462.11] Curry: We did like FPV from a moving car as well and stuff, but he came up with the idea,
[1469.51] Curry: which we never got to because it sounds absolutely too crazy about having two head trackers and
[1475.79] Curry: our head trackers, instead of working on a pantill, one would be throttle and aileron.
[1480.95] Curry: The other would be rudder and elevator.
[1483.95] Curry: And we thought, yeah, we could, we could stand in the field together and we could go like
[1487.67] Curry: this and we can somehow try and fly a plane together.
[1491.05] Curry: We never got there.
[1492.85] Curry: To be fair, I don't think it would have been a very good flight or something that went
[1496.65] Curry: very far because I think we would have crashed terrifically, but that would be fun to try.
[1502.77] John RCVR: That would.
[1503.77] John RCVR: I had a guy come into my channel for a little while.
[1505.89] John RCVR: He was kind of like in and out and he'd stay, he stayed for a couple of weeks and he was
[1509.73] John RCVR: doing FPV using cell towers somehow.
[1513.21] John RCVR: It was our autopilot and I guess he was using the cellular network to be able to control
[1517.21] John RCVR: the craft and he could go pretty, pretty long range with that too.
[1520.45] John RCVR: I never invested too much time into it, mainly because again, we're at the stage right now
[1525.45] John RCVR: in the States, at least where, you know, they're, they're kind of cracking down on that.
[1529.33] John RCVR: So it's just not, not a good area to spend time.
[1532.73] Stephen: Well, they're simultaneously cracking down on it and making it a commercial prospect
[1537.01] Stephen: with like Amazon and others, opening up drone deliveries.
[1540.53] Stephen: And you can bet that they're going to be using things like 5G to, to assist them if it's
[1544.49] Stephen: available.
[1545.49] Stephen: I also heard an interview with Airspeed and Airspeed were making claims that they're partnering
[1550.89] Stephen: with Telstra in Australia, which is one of the 5G providers over there.
[1556.25] John RCVR: Yeah, they, they certainly found the government found a way to really monetize the RF spectrum
[1562.17] John RCVR: for cellular and that those companies pay big dollars to get access to those, those,
[1567.13] John RCVR: you know, bandwidth carve outs.
[1569.81] John RCVR: So it wouldn't, I'm absolutely not surprised to hear that there's a commercial interest
[1574.85] John RCVR: in saying, Hey, what about airspace?
[1576.29] John RCVR: Can we monetize that somehow?
[1577.81] John RCVR: So yeah, I, no doubt my mind.
[1579.73] John RCVR: I don't know what the full strategy is, but you know, you can see based on who they're
[1584.05] John RCVR: asking for comments and who's invited to the table to talk about how they're going to compartmentalize
[1588.93] John RCVR: the sport flying that we do from the commercial aspects.
[1592.89] John RCVR: And it's all the big players.
[1594.33] John RCVR: So no, no surprise that that's going on.
[1597.01] John RCVR: Not at all.
[1598.69] Stephen: Yeah.
[1599.69] Stephen: Just be interesting to figure out how people intend to do flying when they've got, you
[1603.25] Stephen: know, at least 200 milliseconds latency, you know, that when you're in some remote location
[1609.57] Stephen: and you're going from one cell tower to another cell tower down onto the main Metro network,
[1615.09] Stephen: there's just no way you're going to do that with aggressive latency numbers.
[1618.95] Stephen: So be interesting to what happens.
[1620.45] John RCVR: Well, they're going to do, you know, it's probably airline miles.
[1623.01] John RCVR: That's what I used to refer to it.
[1624.17] John RCVR: When I, when I would go fly long range, the idea was we'd sit somewhere and we'd fly
[1628.85] John RCVR: off somewhere and then fly around a little bit and then fly back.
[1633.25] John RCVR: And I always called the, the travel between the two points.
[1636.17] John RCVR: I called those airline miles because all you're doing is just going straight.
[1639.65] John RCVR: You're not, you're not doing too, maybe a little exploring, but that might, we'll see,
[1644.05] John RCVR: we'll see how it unfolds.
[1645.05] John RCVR: But you know, the radio technology too, if we felt what they're doing with Laura, I've
[1647.93] John RCVR: seen absolutely insane ranges with very low power levels too.
[1652.93] John RCVR: These guys aren't even really pushing the power.
[1654.45] John RCVR: So I guess if you were to do like a commercial implementation, Laura, that was authorized
[1658.97] John RCVR: by the powers that be with some high power output, who knows?
[1663.25] Stephen: I mean, who knows how far they could go with, say, so long as you've got kind of an onboard
[1667.29] Stephen: brain that can do active collision avoidance and detection, I suppose it's not too big
[1671.93] Stephen: of a hassle.
[1672.93] Stephen: As long as you're not relying on an operator behind that latency to do your collision avoidance.
[1678.37] John RCVR: Well, funny you mentioned that one of my regulars on my channel.
[1683.45] John RCVR: His name is drone pilot.
[1685.05] John RCVR: He just shared a video flying one of his new, he just got the commercial license down in
[1689.13] John RCVR: Australia and he just posted a video on my discord showing how he had his DJI track him
[1695.05] John RCVR: through a forest.
[1696.05] John RCVR: And he, he basically just walked around through the woods and he tried to get it to get caught
[1700.03] John RCVR: up on the branches and the little hangies, you know, hangy twigs from, from the trees.
[1704.29] John RCVR: And he said it just didn't and, and he, it was a good five minutes.
[1708.49] John RCVR: So I was kind of impressed.
[1709.89] John RCVR: Now that was slow though.
[1711.33] Stephen: Oh, I bet I could hit it with a freestyle quad, though.
[1717.77] Stephen: He just says five inch freestyle and I'll knock that man out of the sky.
[1722.49] John RCVR: Yeah, that was walking pace, walking pace.
[1724.89] John RCVR: But who knows?
[1725.49] John RCVR: You know, maybe, you know, I think that's obviously test bed material, right?
[1728.29] John RCVR: So they, they take what they've got and they say, well, we know how we can dodge things.
[1731.65] John RCVR: Now we've got to make it quick.
[1733.21] John RCVR: So we'll see.
[1734.85] John RCVR: It's fascinating to watch though.
[1736.29] John RCVR: That's for sure.
[1737.33] John RCVR: The technology that we're seeing out in this hobby right now is absolutely fascinating.
[1742.33] Stephen: I'm just wondering what happens when you've got like maybe a say 20 pound payload flying
[1748.17] Stephen: over the residential properties, going to drop a delivery off at someone's house and
[1752.61] Stephen: people are flying at their local field and you know, they've got a couple of, a couple
[1757.57] Stephen: of pounds worth of maybe 90 mile an hour vehicle up in the air, how you enable those two to,
[1764.33] Stephen: to happen at the same time.
[1766.29] Stephen: And, and they're talking about things like having beacons and stuff, but the actual airline
[1770.69] Stephen: pilots seem really against any, anyone else having beacons because they're aware that as soon as
[1775.17] Stephen: this goes into consumer kit, there's going to be a million beacons lit up all over every
[1779.57] Stephen: major, major city and it's going to be impossible to distinguish anything.
[1783.97] John RCVR: Yeah, I agree.
[1785.37] Curry: I'm extremely dubious that drone delivery will ever happen.
[1789.09] Curry: Me too.
[1789.49] Curry: Because they only need one crash over a residential area to say, this can't go on.
[1796.33] Stephen: Look, look at what's happened.
[1797.57] Stephen: So they've got as far as trialing it in the States, right?
[1799.73] Stephen: One of the pharmacies is doing it.
[1802.05] Stephen: Was it Walgreens or someone?
[1803.77] Stephen: I can't remember.
[1804.85] Curry: It's weird because if you've been to the US, there's a Walgreens literally on every corner.
[1808.33] Curry: I don't know why you'd need drone delivery from Starbucks.
[1810.77] Frank: I mean, it's also being done in the UK around, you know, some of the smaller islands,
[1816.29] Frank: particularly during Covid, they've they've had some pretty big wings flying stuff out to
[1820.77] Stephen: islands, you know, it's not this is a lighthouse with five people on the island.
[1824.49] Stephen: Sure.
[1827.49] Curry: Let's go through central London and just drop something here, not there, because we'll hit
[1832.73] Curry: someone just there somehow.
[1835.61] Frank: Well, that's the other thing is, you know, it's also being used as blue is kind of covered
[1840.29] Frank: before. It's being used out in Africa already.
[1845.45] Frank: Similar sort of thing where it's not to the actual address, but there's points where it's, you
[1850.69] Frank: know, it's going from point to point and it's where there isn't the traditional kind of
[1856.05] Frank: infrastructure for delivery.
[1858.85] Frank: But I think that's probably more where it's going to be.
[1861.89] Stephen: So you think instead of having like the traditional British red letterbox postbox at the end of the
[1867.81] Stephen: street, we might see some kind of drone landing area in future, a little street helipad.
[1875.05] Frank: I think it's probably more likely to be on your on the top of your local Amazon warehouse,
[1882.09] Frank: there'll be a little drone thing that will be dropping it there from the warehouse, like 100
[1889.09] Frank: miles away.
[1889.81] Frank: Yeah, that seems to shave another show you a day of logistics, and it will be all worth it for
[1896.49] Frank: them.
[1896.97] John RCVR: Yeah, if they could hard code GPS coordinates for, you know, go here, go there, that that makes
[1901.49] John RCVR: sense to me because that's that seems doable, where you're not going to have interference from the
[1906.61] John RCVR: populace. And I was about to say a little earlier, you guys are aware of the gun culture we have in
[1911.21] John RCVR: the US when I went out to the desert and flew long range. I'm not kidding. I have video of guys
[1916.01] John RCVR: shooting at my plane. You know, they, I'm not kidding. We'd fly over at four or 500 feet and we'd
[1923.61] John RCVR: use our pan and tilt and look down and you'd see them come out, they come out of their garage with
[1927.45] John RCVR: their guns, they'd aim up and you'd see them shooting at us, trying to take them take take them
[1931.53] John RCVR: down. So that's another problem they'll have here too, because we have that kind of crazy in the US,
[1936.41] John RCVR: where people will actually say, Oh, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna see what that drone is carrying. I'm
[1940.89] John RCVR: gonna get myself an Amazon drone and whatever it's carrying.
[1943.49] Stephen: Pretty sure if you shoot like a ballistic up into the air from your property, that's pretty much
[1949.41] Stephen: guaranteed to be illegal. And well, over here in most places, because the kill kill range on that is
[1956.05] Stephen: just ridiculous. You could be killing someone a mile away without knowing it, right?
[1960.85] John RCVR: Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, we have the same here. I'm not saying it's legal. I'm saying
[1970.77] Curry: if they ever get deliveries done it, the sport would be let's go and see if we can take them down
[1975.45] Curry: with our normal quads for fun. We're just randomly shooting at them as well. Yeah, which is a whole
[1983.05] Curry: new different thing.
[1984.29] Frank: All of a sudden, Jack's parts bin gets a lot bigger.
[1987.49] Curry: Yeah.
[1988.93] Curry: It's like, Oh, I need a motor. That's just off we go. There's one.
[1995.25] Stephen: How much of the delivery drones worth like you're flying one of those over East London, how long
[1999.93] Stephen: before a bunch of kids just go out and get the nets out?
[2004.61] Stephen: Yeah, just start stabbing it just a distinct
[2008.01] Stephen: Yeah, they steal pizza delivery drivers like cheap ass scooters. What are they going to do to get hold
[2013.61] Stephen: of some like 20,000 pound 20,000 quid worth of quadcopter?
[2019.29] Jack: People are just going to get like all those frequency jammers and make a massive cannon and just fail
[2025.77] Jack: safe out of the air.
[2027.61] Stephen: Yeah, people disassembling microwaves in the street and trying to yeah.
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[2058.33] Frank: Speaking of fail safes, what, John, what do you use in your helis? Just thinking about line of
[2065.61] Frank: sight stuff. I've been to a lot of line of sight fields, haven't been to a lot of line of sight
[2071.29] Frank: fields with with helis being flown out. The only time I've really seen a load of helis being flown
[2076.41] Frank: has been at Western Park, which is a big event near us. And it's there. I think pretty much everyone
[2084.17] Frank: seemed to be using like jetty radios. I think that seems to be the one I noticed. I don't know.
[2091.53] John RCVR: Jetty is a big one and V bar is another big one for the for the heli guys. But I bucked that trend
[2096.41] John RCVR: because I've been on open TX and now edge TX for my entire flight career. And I've I've sent stuff
[2102.17] John RCVR: down range and it's I've gotten it all back. So these are these are the radios I use. But regarding
[2107.69] John RCVR: the fail safe on these fly barless units on the back, they have a rescue mode. So what the rescue
[2113.61] John RCVR: mode does is whatever the helicopter is doing, it will level it and then climb for a period of time.
[2120.17] John RCVR: And that's all configurable. So I actually put my rescue on a momentary switch.
[2125.05] John RCVR: So if I'm flying and I hit that, the helicopter will level in and climb the problem. There are
[2130.17] John RCVR: two problems with the rescue mode or the the fail safe mode on this one. And that's if you're
[2134.73] John RCVR: inverted, it will level inverted and climb inverted, which reverses the piston. So you have to be
[2141.13] John RCVR: prepared for that. That, you know, when you let go, you don't want to, you know, instantly go up
[2146.49] John RCVR: and and think you're going to climb because you could smash it down into the ground, which is
[2150.01] John RCVR: terrible. And there are plenty of videos of people doing that. And then the other thing,
[2154.33] John RCVR: the other problem that I've noticed in the rescue mode is that if you're doing maneuver, you're
[2159.21] John RCVR: flying the helicopter and it gets wonky and you decide to hit rescue, it will level up. But the
[2164.89] John RCVR: problem is it maintains whatever momentum it had. So if you're cooking along with a head of steam
[2170.17] John RCVR: and you hit the rescue mode, it will square itself up, but it keeps going. And that can be
[2176.09] John RCVR: problematic if you're already having visibility or orientation issues. Now, there is another one
[2181.69] John RCVR: that I haven't tried yet. I'm kind of thinking about it. I actually mentioned it in the discord,
[2186.81] John RCVR: in my discord, and the helicopter guys just skewered me and they said real men don't fly
[2191.45] John RCVR: with GPS's on their helis. And they go, next question. There is a GPS unit that actually does,
[2198.81] John RCVR: it'll hover it, it'll bring it home. And I am thinking about trying it out. I don't need to
[2203.29] John RCVR: prove anything to anybody. I'm thinking about trying it. You've got a lot of money in the air
[2207.53] Stephen: and you can't just slam those things into the ground like you can in a quad, right?
[2210.89] John RCVR: Absolutely. These are glass jaw joes. If this goes into the dirt, you're going to write a check.
[2217.29] John RCVR: I had a little one. I have it over there. I can show it in a minute. But I had a little one,
[2222.33] John RCVR: I was flying around the front yard and I landed it on my sidewalk and the blades just touched the
[2227.93] John RCVR: grass and it tipped over and that cost me 50 bucks for a feathering shaft. I've broken this,
[2232.81] John RCVR: I've broken that. I broke the one-way bearing. I couldn't believe it. 50 bucks and it wasn't even
[2237.21] John RCVR: a flight error. It was the stupid thing touched the grass. Unbelievable. See, I was going to ask
[2242.01] Curry: the question because if you're flying a collective pitch or free deer on a heli, obviously you don't
[2247.45] Curry: want to just knock the throttle down. I was going to say, how do you get used to that? Because if
[2251.21] Curry: we have a problem in a quad, we'd instantly knock the throttle down and just stop. But you don't
[2256.01] Curry: do that in a heli because there's no instance you just want to have it land on the ground
[2260.33] Curry: out of control. I suppose you've got to get good in a sim before you even think about
[2266.17] Curry: taking a real heli out. And at that point, you're just hovering and coming down and building up
[2271.29] John RCVR: really slowly, are you? That's a great question. And there's actually a way to solve a little bit
[2276.81] John RCVR: of that in the radio because I did exactly what you said. The first time I tried forward flight,
[2281.53] John RCVR: it got uncomfortable for me and I pulled the stick down, which is the instantaneous reaction.
[2286.01] John RCVR: If you're a fixed wing, slow the aircraft down and then make the turn, whatever. And when I did that,
[2290.25] John RCVR: it cannonballed it directly into the ground and it just turned it into a freaking meteor.
[2295.21] John RCVR: So the way you solve that is with a pitch curve that looks like this. So in this pitch curve,
[2299.45] John RCVR: what happens is this is what heli guys call normal mode. So normal mode, you have a pitch curve that
[2305.13] John RCVR: takes away the full negative pitch. It only goes about negative three or four degrees. So normal
[2311.45] John RCVR: mode while you're flying, you can put a curve in that basically takes the 3D out of it by only
[2318.89] John RCVR: having it go negative three. And so when you first start flying, it's a good idea to fly around with
[2323.69] John RCVR: a pitch curve like that. When you decide to get adventurous, then your pitch curve looks like that.
[2328.41] John RCVR: It's more linear in nature. So it's a straight pitch curve. But when you're learning
[2334.81] John RCVR: or if you're, you know, just tooling around a little bit, you're not going to do any stunts.
[2339.05] John RCVR: It's not a terrible idea to use this because that way if you do go full negative, you can see that
[2344.49] John RCVR: your pitch doesn't go all the way down to here. And that's that's the way we solve that.
[2349.45] Curry: What about if you guys have tried using a 3D quad, but I had exactly that problem as
[2354.41] Curry: soon as I'd get into a problem, drop the throttle. Yeah, so it went in so fast, just trying to get
[2361.85] Curry: too neutral. It takes a lot of thought. It's obviously easy just to oh, yeah, I should just.
[2367.29] Stephen: You've got to switch flight modes. That's got to be your reaction. Then you've got to teach yourself
[2370.81] John RCVR: to switch flight modes rather than. Yeah. And I think, you know, there is that learning curve.
[2376.65] John RCVR: So when you first start out, maybe the first thing to do is fly around with a mode like that
[2380.41] John RCVR: for a little while until you kind of get it. You know, it was amazing to me how hard it was to get
[2384.65] John RCVR: forward flight because again, the rudder, the orientation, you have to do this coordinated
[2388.81] John RCVR: turn. And if you don't, when you first, when I first, at least for me, when I first started
[2392.81] John RCVR: flying helicopters, they would get in these kind of weird, uncoordinated modes. And when that
[2397.13] John RCVR: happened, boy, they would just come out of the sky like a bowling ball. And the way I solved that,
[2401.45] John RCVR: a friend of mine gave me a little plastic blade three nano. And that thing, if you're going to
[2407.05] John RCVR: crash it, all you have to do is kill the power. You just hit the power throttle cut. And when
[2411.45] John RCVR: you do that, that thing, it doesn't matter how it crashes, it survives. So as you walk over,
[2417.93] John RCVR: pick it up, take off again. Okay. That's what kind of got me over the forward flight thing.
[2421.85] Stephen: So you've got to start with something that's light enough. It doesn't have enough energy to
[2425.29] John RCVR: trash itself. Exactly right. That's exactly the point. It doesn't have enough mass to be able to
[2430.33] John RCVR: damage itself when it hits. So that was brilliant because that got me over, you know, the forward
[2437.21] John RCVR: flight stuff that I was struggling with. It got me over the first flips, the first loops, you know,
[2441.45] John RCVR: the first everything I tried out on that once I did it in real life. Then the funny part is you
[2446.89] John RCVR: got with a real helicopter like this one, and it's a lot easier to do than those little, you
[2451.37] Stephen: know, cheapy plastic ones. So you've learned to counter all the wind movement and the noise that
[2457.93] Stephen: you got in the cheap quad and it makes you a better pilot as well. Yeah, the little ones,
[2462.57] John RCVR: they're definitely squirrely. They're hard to hold on to. So that definitely makes you a better
[2466.09] John RCVR: pilot because if you can chase one of those down and make it do what you want these things. And,
[2470.49] John RCVR: you know, this is kind of a small one. I did it because it fits on the desk. But this is a 380
[2474.73] John RCVR: class helicopter and it's fairly lightweight. You can see, but, you know, they have seven
[2479.05] John RCVR: hundreds that are like this. And when you put those and I've only the biggest one I've flown
[2483.61] John RCVR: so far is a 550. And when you put that thing in the air, it's just kind of like, you know,
[2488.17] John RCVR: it just parks itself and it hovers and it's amazing. You know, it's a lot easier to control
[2493.05] John RCVR: than even this one. So the bigger ones are definitely easier to manage. And that one you've
[2499.69] Frank: got there, that's a, is it a Saab Goblin? SAB Goblin Buddy. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
[2506.09] John RCVR: Yeah. And they do great graphics too. That's the other thing about these things. The graphics work
[2510.25] John RCVR: is amazing. They're very step up, high level stuff on the graphics and they just look good.
[2516.81] John RCVR: You know, it's fun. They're fun to play with. It's a whole new thing. If you want to challenge
[2521.69] John RCVR: yourself with something new in RC, try a helicopter out. I'll tell you what, I'm not going to say I
[2527.53] John RCVR: was arrogant about it, but I'm like, how hard can it be? What a lesson. I was fascinated to see
[2537.05] Stephen: some guys fork beta flight a while ago. And they, they created a project called heli flight 3d,
[2542.41] Stephen: I think, or maybe rotor flight as well. They changed names. You experimented with that any,
[2548.01] John RCVR: have you heard about that? I have not. Part of the reason for that is because when it comes to,
[2554.09] John RCVR: we talked about cost, right? Once, once you get it figured out, it's kind of like this formula.
[2560.89] John RCVR: I just don't want to really mess with it. I know this computer and being a review channel,
[2565.37] John RCVR: I probably should start experimenting a little, but you know, money is still money. So I get a
[2572.09] John RCVR: little nervous. I'm kind of familiar with this one now on my discord. I've got some good help
[2576.17] John RCVR: and now I know enough about it. I can set them up on my own. So yeah, that's why I haven't really
[2582.17] John RCVR: experimented because these things aren't cheap. I normally go with what's called a basher. I, I,
[2587.13] John RCVR: when I experiment, I have a, I have another helicopter 380 size. It's a protos 380. And
[2593.37] John RCVR: that one's that kid alone was only 139 us. So that's what I call my basher. And I experiment
[2600.57] John RCVR: on that one. So if I do anything like that, I'll probably try it on a protos. I would not experiment
[2604.97] John RCVR: with this until I brought it. And this is a small one, you know, this is a small SAB, but SAB,
[2611.93] John RCVR: their quality is superb, but they charge for it. And I'll tell you another thing that I had a hard
[2617.29] John RCVR: pill to swallow was the motors and the servos too. When I first looked up the motor for a helicopter,
[2621.85] John RCVR: this little thing was a hundred dollar motor. And I thought, what, what the hell are they thinking?
[2626.09] John RCVR: So I do a lot of motor testing on my channel too. And I thought I can beat that. So I went out and
[2631.53] John RCVR: found another motor that was equivalent, but the thing that stopped me was a temperature. This one
[2635.53] John RCVR: has a much higher rated temperature than the fixed wing motors, much higher, like dramatically higher.
[2641.53] John RCVR: And I thought, Oh, okay. Well, I see the problem. The last thing I want on a helicopter is my
[2645.77] John RCVR: magnets to come loose while I'm flying because, you know, you have a pretty aggressive amount.
[2653.29] John RCVR: Well, I mean, you know, this is, there's not much there on the front. And I guess if you're
[2660.33] John RCVR: hovering or, you know, doing TikToks or whatever, you're not really necessarily moving through the
[2665.21] John RCVR: air. It kind of depends on your flight style, I guess. But at any rate, I went out and checked
[2671.13] John RCVR: some of the helicopter websites and just looked at setups. And one thing I can tell you is that this,
[2676.57] John RCVR: this is an ExNova motor and setup after setup after setup. They said, ExNova, ExNova, ExNova.
[2682.33] John RCVR: So, you know, when in Rome, you know, that's the way I look at it. What size of motor is that?
[2687.93] John RCVR: This one's only like a 2800. I'm getting my glasses on so I can read it. It's like a 2820
[2693.29] John RCVR: 890 KV. And I'll tell you that, speaking of KV, yep, that's it 2820 890 10 pull.
[2701.85] John RCVR: And it runs success. And speaking of KV, that's another thing that kind of shocked me. One of my
[2707.61] John RCVR: helicopters is an Align T-Rex. And that came with a 1600 KV, but it runs on success. But that's
[2713.85] John RCVR: okay for a minute if you're a fixed wing guy. Like, if you would have said to me three months
[2718.81] John RCVR: ago, go ahead and connect a 6S battery to a 1600 KV motor, I would have said if you're off your
[2724.33] John RCVR: rocker, like, are you crazy? But that's the way they do. Now there's gearing, of course, you know,
[2729.21] John RCVR: there's opinion in a gear. So it changes things. But in the fixed wing world, you never say things
[2734.89] John RCVR: like 6S and 1600 KV, you say 6S and 500 KV. You know, so that was another thing that I kind of
[2741.29] John RCVR: had to learn was that that's perfectly natural in the helicopter world. So it's a huge learning
[2746.33] John RCVR: curve. I mean, everything about it. Head speeds on those things are scary. Yeah, I wonder if you
[2752.65] Jack: could get one of those motors and try it on a fixed wing. Well, I just yeah, one of my recent
[2761.05] John RCVR: live streams, I showed a big motor for a big for a five series helicopter. And I made that exact
[2767.05] John RCVR: point. I said, hey, if you're out there, you know, struggling to find the right size motor with the
[2770.73] John RCVR: right power, check out a helicopter motor because the bolt pattern is the same, the wiring is the
[2775.61] John RCVR: same, you might have to manipulate the shaft because they use the base here and the shaft
[2780.49] John RCVR: normally goes down through the base for fixed wing guys. Normally, the shaft comes out this way
[2784.89] John RCVR: normally. Some airplanes have the shaft out of the base like the precision aerobatic stuff. But
[2791.45] John RCVR: anyway, if you can relocate the shaft, then that might be an option. They look they make ludicrous
[2797.29] John RCVR: power. I just bought a motor yesterday for a Tron 7 that I have coming and that is a 5,820 watt
[2804.65] John RCVR: motor at 115 amps with a 6L battery. Absolutely ludicrous. What kind of VSC are you running then?
[2811.85] John RCVR: It must be some insanely chunky ESC. Well, it kind of depends. So in the 700 there's a real there's
[2818.57] John RCVR: a dividing line in that world where if you're one of these professional, they call them smack pilots
[2825.21] John RCVR: if you ever watch the heli videos, these guys get up and they're like, you know, it's crazy,
[2828.41] John RCVR: you can barely even see what the helicopter is doing. In that in that configuration,
[2834.41] John RCVR: they would probably use a 200 amp ESC. Then it depends on your amperage and how hard you're
[2840.97] John RCVR: flying. And of course, I'm not that good. I'm more of a casual sport flyer, big air,
[2846.01] John RCVR: what they would call big air in the heli community. And in that in that model on that 700, it'll be
[2851.93] John RCVR: 130 amp ESC. The motor itself peaks out in 150 for continuous, but 115 for continuous. But the
[2861.61] John RCVR: reason you do the 130 is because the 130 hobby wing is the first one that supports 12S. So that'll
[2868.65] John RCVR: be a 12S helicopter. On my 6S helicopters, the big 500, 120 amp ESC for those.
[2875.69] Curry: We've got a question coming from Richard Warwick, as I've talked about it before. And it says,
[2884.01] Curry: question is John not being on camera a deliberate decision on his part? Is he shy,
[2888.33] Curry: wants to keep anonymous or something else? Are you on the run? Are you shy?
[2893.45] John RCVR: I am not. I'm a citizen with FPV before. No, as far as I know, no wants, no warrants. That's as
[2900.81] John RCVR: far as I know. And the IRS knows where I live. So yeah, there's no, there's no, it's none of that.
[2907.05] John RCVR: The reality is that I still have kids at home and the world is kind of strange. I get I get so many
[2911.21] John RCVR: things on YouTube that I made a decision that while I'm going to do this, I just don't want to
[2916.25] John RCVR: be the personality. I want the technology to be the personality. So I made a choice way back when
[2920.97] John RCVR: just to focus on the tech and the equipment rather than me. And then I also coupled that with the
[2926.17] John RCVR: idea that I do have kids at home and the world is a strange place these days. So until my kids
[2930.73] John RCVR: are out of the house and I don't want them to have to worry that I'm identified somehow. So I just,
[2935.37] John RCVR: not that I feel like I'm famous or anything, but you never know. I get weird emails. I get,
[2940.01] John RCVR: I get comments on my channel. Where do you fly? When are you going to go flying next? What field
[2944.97] John RCVR: do you like? I haven't had people ask for my address. Now they're probably, it's probably
[2948.73] John RCVR: innocuous. They probably just want to send me a t-shirt or something. But I just, you know, I'd
[2953.61] John RCVR: rather just remain anonymous for the time being. And then the other cool thing about it though,
[2958.41] John RCVR: is that as the channel grows, there may be a point where I might be able to use that for a,
[2962.33] John RCVR: you know, a viral video or something. Hey, I'm going to unmask, you know, at this point. So who
[2966.41] John RCVR: knows? I haven't figured it out yet. But yeah, I just prefer to stay off camera.
[2971.53] Curry: I have had people recognize where I've been flying. And had someone ominously just appear
[2978.25] Curry: behind me as I've been flying around. I'm like, who's that behind me? Why is he still stood there?
[2982.89] Jack: What's going on? There's a there's another question. What would be a good start and model
[2989.13] Jack: to begin with? Helicopter side of the RC world. I'm intrigued by the foot by the financial side of
[2995.85] John RCVR: it all. Well, it is a good word. I can tell you right now, if you guys get into helicopters,
[3001.13] John RCVR: you better bring your wallet because they're not they're not cheap. But if you give me a moment,
[3006.57] John RCVR: I'll bring out a couple of good examples of where I would recommend starting. Just give me one moment.
[3011.53] Frank: Yeah, no worries. So I know I've had my eyes on one of the OMP helis. Since NJ was
[3020.17] Curry: ready to seem like you're turning to the dark side a little bit here, Frank. Are you
[3025.29] Curry: between NJ and john here? Have you sort of thinking I haven't got a heli? I don't know you anymore.
[3033.93] Frank: Well, you know, I've flown way more line of sight than I've flown in FPV in the past year or two.
[3041.53] Frank: Now I actually have a car. And I have a place to store things. And I have fields that where I can
[3047.77] Frank: fly stuff and I have explicit permission to fly stuff. I could quite happily go in for a heli.
[3056.57] Curry: Some money. Yeah, exactly. I am. I am fascinated by the radio side of things. Because you know,
[3062.73] Curry: generally, as far as the radio goes, it's like you don't do anything, do you? You do some stuff in
[3067.13] Curry: beta flight, you can fly quad. But having looked at some radios today, and it had the whole
[3072.25] Curry: throttle cut. And then the the mixing was something 120 degrees or whatever.
[3080.17] Curry: Swashplate stuff. It's like what's this about? It's like you actually have to do something
[3085.05] Curry: program on your radio for a change. I'm still I'm still blown away by john's radio gimbals.
[3091.37] Jack: They're like light up. They look like something belonging a trendy London bar.
[3097.45] John RCVR: Free day. Yeah, those are the LEDs are available pretty much everywhere that go and they go on the
[3104.49] John RCVR: radio master, you have to wire them in yourself, of course. And then I got to a point where, you
[3109.29] John RCVR: know, I use this on a simulator. And at night, if the lights are off, I don't want the blue lights
[3112.81] John RCVR: blowing in my face. So I put a I decided to put a little on off switch on there for that doesn't
[3117.45] Stephen: come in that way. You have to put that in. So is that just a shim between the shell of the radio
[3121.29] John RCVR: and the gimbal? You've got a translucent plate. Right? Yep, that's exactly what it is. Just a
[3126.25] John RCVR: shim. That's exactly what it is. So anyway, regarding starting, I got a couple of different
[3133.61] John RCVR: things out to show you guys. The first one is this is a blade nano. This is the one that my friend
[3140.89] John RCVR: gave me. And this is weirdly enough, it is a fully 3d capable helicopter. It'll it'll do it
[3148.33] John RCVR: flies inverted. It's got full collective pitch. It's got negative pitch. That's still a brushless
[3153.45] John RCVR: motor. This one is brushed. This is a brush motor. And they're fairly cheap. You can get this for
[3161.29] John RCVR: about $80. And it'll bind right up with a radio master radio, you don't it supports DSM. So it
[3168.25] John RCVR: just binds right up. So that's a good place to start. This is the one where I probably crashed
[3173.05] John RCVR: this about 15 times before I ever finally got forward flight worked out. Crash after crash
[3178.49] John RCVR: after crash. So that's a decent one. Those are readily available. And then here's another one.
[3184.49] John RCVR: This is a K 110 or an XK K 110. And very similar to the blade nano. It's fully, fully 3d capable,
[3193.05] John RCVR: got full collective pitch negative pitch. And you can get these on, I believe been good for
[3198.49] John RCVR: about 80 or $90. And same deal, right? They'll take a punch, you can crash these. The main thing
[3203.85] John RCVR: you want to do before you crash them is make sure you kill the power. If it's going in, just kill
[3207.53] John RCVR: the power and they'll survive a crash. So these two, I would recommend these two as starters. Now,
[3213.69] John RCVR: I did a video on these where I said this blade nano is like the worst piece of kit you have to
[3218.49] John RCVR: own, because it flies pretty much terribly. It just doesn't fly well. But that's not the point.
[3224.41] John RCVR: The point is that, and when I say it doesn't fly well, I mean, when you try and do tricks, you know,
[3229.05] John RCVR: you try and do tik toks or inverted hovering, it's a challenge, it's kind of squirrely,
[3234.01] John RCVR: it flies in forward flight just fine. So it's just, it's a lot to hold on to. That's the point.
[3240.25] John RCVR: It doesn't fly well. But because it can take such a punch, and it's got the full configuration that
[3246.09] John RCVR: you use on a full size helicopter. It's a great learning platform, it'll kind of get you over the
[3251.93] John RCVR: initial hurdles without spending too much money. I mentioned earlier, a basher. This is what I call
[3259.45] John RCVR: my basher. This is a little Protos 380. They don't really sell this particular model anymore.
[3266.57] John RCVR: It's hard to get this one, but they do have an updated version of V2. It's a little more
[3271.29] John RCVR: expensive. But in the grand scheme of things regarding helicopter pricing, this one's kind
[3276.17] John RCVR: of cheap. It's basically got the same electronics kit as that buddy that I had. So the electronics
[3281.93] John RCVR: are still a little spendy, but the kit itself is pretty cheap. And the replacement parts are
[3287.45] John RCVR: readily available and fairly inexpensive. So this is another good one. Once you say, okay, I can fly
[3294.49] John RCVR: this around and not crash it, this would be a good place to maybe get your feet wet. Although
[3299.61] John RCVR: there is a school of thought in the heli community that they have a saying that says,
[3303.53] John RCVR: buy the biggest helicopter you can afford to repair. So they do say that. Because if you guys
[3309.93] John RCVR: have ever flown big fixed wing, big fixed wing aircraft are easier to fly. They just deal with
[3316.09] John RCVR: the wind better. They're easier to see. They're easier to deal with. And there is a point to be
[3322.89] John RCVR: made for that. Although I don't necessarily agree because some of these things, if you crash the
[3328.81] John RCVR: main gear, this main gear right here on some bigger helicopters can run as much as $50.
[3335.21] John RCVR: You know, on this on this aircraft, it'd be $3. So you know, you got to take that into consideration.
[3341.21] John RCVR: That's quite the jump.
[3343.05] John RCVR: It is. And then I thought I would get out a bigger one just to give you guys a look
[3350.17] John RCVR: to see from a scale perspective, what's involved in skipping from a 380 to a like a 500 class.
[3356.57] Jack: I'm going to have to zoom the camera out now. Yeah.
[3366.25] Jack: We've had mummy bear and baby bear. This is going to need a wider angle lens.
[3370.41] Jack: Daddy's in the house. Yeah.
[3373.61] Frank: So it's it's what the the even just the kind of the head of it where the blades attach is about
[3380.57] Frank: as big as the whole TX 16 radio. Yeah, it literally has fat boy written on it. Yeah.
[3389.77] Curry: That's quite the size comparison. Just imagine scary samurai sword spinning at a couple of
[3395.61] John RCVR: 1000 RPM. And well, and the funny part about it is the this is the Tron 5.5 and fat boy is the
[3405.13] John RCVR: retailer in the US. So these are OEM. They're actually RJX blades, but he still screens his
[3410.57] John RCVR: company name on there. And the Tron 7, which is I have that arriving actually today. One of the
[3417.45] John RCVR: guys on my channel got got his Tron 7 and started working on it last night. He took the canopy off
[3423.85] John RCVR: his Tron 5 and it fits inside the Tron 7 canopy with plenty of room to spare. So Tron 5 7 canopy,
[3431.29] John RCVR: I can't even show you guys because I don't think I can zoom out that far. It's huge. You know,
[3437.05] John RCVR: that's a huge, huge. So this is Tron 5. This is actually considered by a lot of people,
[3442.89] John RCVR: the first non micro. So a lot of folks will consider something like this little 380 over
[3447.45] John RCVR: here a micro heli. The five 500 is where they stopped calling it a micro micro, at least in
[3453.45] Frank: some circles. Wow. I guess that's that's kind of similar to like a 300 size quad being a mini quad
[3462.81] John RCVR: still. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. So these are, you know, again, I'm just fascinated by the machinery
[3470.73] John RCVR: involved to make this whole thing work. And it's fascinating that they can produce them with such
[3476.97] Curry: consistency too. We have to ask Stephen about this because he talked about making a wing
[3484.49] Curry: without any moving parts because he does he distrust servos. So what's your idea for helicopter
[3490.89] Stephen: with no moving parts? It's called a quadcopter, Wayne. I don't know if you've heard about it.
[3495.45] Stephen: It's a recent innovation where people have dispensed with servos and mechanical complexity
[3500.09] Stephen: in favor of speed and brute power. That's no fun. You have to do it with a single rotor.
[3506.01] Frank: Have you not seen Tom Stanton's one? He's done a helicopter with without surveys where he's just
[3512.73] Stephen: we were posting videos on the other week of some crazy Swede who was doing counter rotating
[3520.73] Stephen: design with with kind of moving fans to direct the thrust on a rotor there.
[3527.69] Jack: Yeah, we are sat with Mr. Bone drone himself.
[3536.57] Stephen: That's a chunky motor, isn't it? So what are we up to there? We're up from a 2820 to what,
[3541.45] John RCVR: like 35 or something there? This is a 4020 1200 kV. This is the joke that I was making earlier.
[3548.41] John RCVR: This is a 1200 kV motor and it uses a 6S battery. So you'd see those on X class quadcopters just
[3554.33] Frank: to give people kind of perspective. And it looks like a small component of this particular aircraft.
[3563.29] Jack: I love the two capacitors like probably holding on to dear life,
[3569.93] Jack: like poking just near the big old hot motor. I cannot do it any good.
[3576.89] John RCVR: Yeah, well, that's the arrangement. And there's another capacitor back here. I don't know if you
[3584.17] John RCVR: can see that for the fly barless. And then these are the spark arresters I was talking about earlier
[3588.89] John RCVR: that I just installed today. They've got a little built in resistors that helps prevent the spark hop.
[3594.73] Jack: Stops you welding your HD 60 leads together.
[3598.73] Stephen: Yeah, so with multi rotors, we're kind of used and pardon me if this is a novice question,
[3603.37] Stephen: because I don't really have any experience with helis. But with multi rotors, people tend to kind
[3607.77] Stephen: of get a frame and there's a billion different frames out there and then pick some components
[3612.33] Stephen: and put it together themselves. Are these built to spec or is this something you tend to kind of
[3620.33] Stephen: get a heli frame and then fit all the parts on yourself?
[3624.33] John RCVR: Yeah, it's the latter. You tend to fit your parts on your own. So the motors,
[3629.69] John RCVR: you know, the best thing to do, it's like anything else in the hobby, if you don't know,
[3633.69] John RCVR: it's to talk to other people who do and then read. I like to read setups. I have a lot of,
[3638.09] John RCVR: I have a great faith in the community when I can find consensus. So when I go out to a channel or
[3643.45] John RCVR: a website and I can find consensus where people are saying the same things like, yep, I use next
[3648.09] John RCVR: number 4020 in mine and love it and you hear five other people say the same thing, then I start
[3652.33] John RCVR: putting a little faith in that. That's where I start to get my ideas. But I'm also blessed enough
[3657.77] John RCVR: to have some guys that the ones that were pushing hard for me to get into helicopters have been,
[3662.81] John RCVR: you know, in them for quite some time, also advising me and then, you know, doing their own
[3668.09] John RCVR: testing and sharing what they get back to. So you do have to kick them out yourself. But we again,
[3673.85] John RCVR: heli direct.com in the US, they have a website that's actually pretty good because they,
[3680.89] John RCVR: when you go and pick a helicopter from their website, they provide suggestions, right? They
[3686.25] John RCVR: say here's if you want cyclic servos, these are good. You know, they're selling, you got to take
[3691.85] John RCVR: it with a grain of salt because they're making recommendations for for retail purposes. But,
[3696.97] John RCVR: you know, they'll put you in the right ballpark, right? So once you understand what they're
[3700.09] John RCVR: recommending is a good servo or good equipment, then you can make your comparisons and use that
[3704.81] John RCVR: as a frame of reference. I've done that as well. So you seem pretty sold on the X Nova motors,
[3710.01] Stephen: then they're with the high temperature resistance, they're doing the job for you.
[3713.13] John RCVR: They are. Yeah, they are. Although the Tron seven is actually going to get a different motor
[3717.37] John RCVR: calling ego drift will be the first time I put something other than next Nova in a helicopter
[3722.01] John RCVR: that didn't come as a combo. Now, some of the align stuff, they do a lot of combo combo kits
[3727.61] John RCVR: where they give you the motor ESC and servos in the kit. And that's not terrible, except on my
[3733.13] John RCVR: line, I've already replaced the ESC and the fly barless because I wanted my icon and I wanted my
[3738.97] John RCVR: ESC. And the reason I wanted the ESC is because telemetry. I did a video where using the radio
[3746.41] John RCVR: master r 161. That's the receiver right there. That supports F port v two. So that port v two,
[3754.01] John RCVR: we can have a single signal wire to the icon and then telemetry from the ESC is we get we get
[3760.81] John RCVR: voltage and current head RPM and all kinds of telemetry from the icon over a single signal and
[3767.93] John RCVR: telemetry wire one wire for both. Well, I'm glad you don't have to rely on a timer. No, I
[3773.77] John RCVR: yeah, I do not rely on a timer. I actually definitely use voltage. I'm a big proponent
[3778.57] John RCVR: of using the voltage. And I actually have an open TX and edge TX tutorial video on how to create
[3786.17] John RCVR: some logic to account for voltage sag. So rather than have your voltage timer go off, just because
[3792.33] John RCVR: you hit 3.75 momentarily, and then you know, you lay off the throttle a little bit and it climbs
[3797.45] John RCVR: back up to 3.85 or 3.9. So I built a little logic in open TX it says, I only want the voltage alarm
[3805.61] Frank: if I hover below 3.75 for a couple seconds. Nice. Well, before we sign off, can I just ask you to
[3816.33] Frank: compare your your arm with the size of that blade because it looks absolutely enormous.
[3824.25] Stephen: Are you saying would it pass the samurai test Frank, in fact, cut straight through his arm.
[3829.69] Frank: I'm terrified to think it might well do that. Oh, my God, just your forearm next to that blade.
[3835.05] Frank: I just want to want to see a comparison of that size because it just looks in the absence of a
[3840.65] John RCVR: coke can. Yeah, or a banana. So here's an iPhone. So this is an iPhone. That's an iPhone 12 Pro Max
[3851.77] Stephen: if that's enough to be a small wing. I remember a flight test episode with David
[3861.77] Curry: Winnesdale flew just a 250 size into a mannequin and the mannequin broke.
[3868.41] John RCVR: You don't want to have enormous be on the receiving end of that. Yeah, they're,
[3873.69] John RCVR: they're big blades and they go back quite, quite a bit. So where can people go to find your videos
[3879.61] John RCVR: then john, if you go to our YouTube slash RC video reviews, you'll find me or if you just search for
[3886.25] John RCVR: RC video reviews on YouTube, they'll find me. So good. Fortunately, I've done enough material now
[3893.21] John RCVR: where YouTube gives me that one. So yeah, it's quite a general search term and you own it now.
[3899.21] John RCVR: Well, yeah, yeah. And then I have a website as well. Although the website really, I don't do a
[3904.97] John RCVR: whole lot with the website. It's mostly videos. I started with the idea that I would, my whole
[3910.49] John RCVR: premise in the video channel was to do video evidence. So I, well, here's what happened.
[3917.85] John RCVR: I had a guy in our field, young kid, he was 1516 years old, he was flying his airplane, he crashed
[3924.33] John RCVR: it. And he came back, he was, well, guys, I don't think I'll be seeing you for a couple months. And
[3927.85] John RCVR: I said, What do you mean? And he said, Well, I crashed my plane. I said, Yeah. And he goes,
[3931.53] John RCVR: Well, I got to repair it. And I said, Okay. And he goes, Well, this little motor, this E-flight
[3935.37] John RCVR: motor is $75. And I said, What? 75? What? And he goes, Yeah, it's $75. I said, No, you go on
[3942.65] John RCVR: Amazon, here's the motor size to look for. And you can buy it for $14.99 or whatever, you know,
[3947.45] John RCVR: 20 bucks, whatever. And he said, he goes, Well, will it work? And I said, Well, of course, it'll
[3952.09] John RCVR: work. He goes, doesn't have to be E-flight. And I said, No, it doesn't have to be flight. And then
[3956.49] John RCVR: he has battery too. Same thing on his battery. He had a three cell 2200 battery. These are small
[3960.81] John RCVR: motors, right? It was not a big plane. And his his battery was shot. And he said, Well, you know,
[3965.69] John RCVR: the battery is $45. I said, 45 with go to hobby King, you get yourself a three s 2200 for 12 bucks.
[3973.45] John RCVR: He said, No, that won't fly it. Will it? And I said, Of course it will. That's all I have.
[3978.17] John RCVR: And that's the moment I decided that we needed I needed a channel to kind of talk about things
[3984.09] John RCVR: like I'm not I'm not cheap, I'll spend money, you can ask my wife, definitely spend money with the
[3989.61] John RCVR: best of them. Like, you know, I wasn't the Navy. So the whole drunken sailor thing kind of applies,
[3993.61] John RCVR: but I will spend the money. But I always look for value, right? You gotta if you're gonna make me if
[3998.89] John RCVR: you're gonna ask for my money, you got to give me the value in return. So when it comes to something
[4003.53] John RCVR: like a three s 2200 battery, that's not exactly high tech these days. I mean, you know, so, so,
[4010.57] John RCVR: you know, I get frustrated when I see that because I don't like the idea. I mean,
[4013.85] John RCVR: it's a free market economy and all that I get it, but I don't like to see people who don't know,
[4018.33] John RCVR: getting mugged, I just it bothers me. So that was why I got the channel started. It was just to
[4023.69] John RCVR: provide information to say, Hey, you know, here's where you can go. Here's what you can get. Here's
[4028.41] John RCVR: how much you can spend and get something and then to show people right just show, you know,
[4032.73] John RCVR: rather than talk to show people, you know, here's what happens if you do this. And that's really
[4038.73] John RCVR: what my channel is really intended to be about is video evidence, the concept of showing it rather
[4044.09] John RCVR: than talking about it. A lot of people talk out their ass really, when they have no idea,
[4050.65] John RCVR: we have a flight instructor, I know I shouldn't say that I won't say where he's a flight
[4054.01] John RCVR: instructor. But there's a guy I know that his buddy was flying, he said, Hey, I'd like my plane
[4058.49] John RCVR: to go a little faster. What should I do? He said, he goes, Well, change your propeller from a nine
[4062.97] John RCVR: six to a 10 six. And I said, number one, no, that's wrong. Number two, don't tell people just
[4068.49] John RCVR: to do that. He goes, Well, it'll be fine. It's no, it won't be fine. First off, changing the
[4072.57] John RCVR: diameter doesn't change the speed. He goes, Yes, it does. I said no, it, you know, and I'm losing
[4076.97] John RCVR: it at this point, because this guy's giving bad advice. It does not change the speed. It changes
[4083.77] John RCVR: the torque and it can pull more amps and give his ESC in trouble. So unless you know, don't talk out
[4089.13] John RCVR: of your ass, tell you know, base it on facts and analysis and data. And again, that was another
[4095.13] Jack: reason for the channel. So all right, that is all we've got time for. But thank you very much,
[4102.42] Jack: John, for giving us your time and coming on with the lovely voice that you have. And, you know,
[4111.3] Jack: sharing your experiences. We've been let's go now. Thank you to all our patrons. Thank you for
[4118.34] Jack: everyone who tunes in and supports us. And if you're listening to this on new on iTunes, or any other
[4125.3] Jack: platform, we are live every Thursday at 8pm GMT. And you've been joined by everyone's favourite,
[4132.42] Jack: Curry Kitten. Goodbye. Shiny video stuff, Steven. Thanks. And I absolutely agree with that
[4139.06] Stephen: knowledge is power. Learn, help others learn, make everything better. Based on facts, based on facts.
[4146.34] Jack: And if you don't know, so you don't know. Yeah, nothing wrong with that.
[4150.9] Jack: Yeah, everyone's favourite Andrew Stashfrank.
[4153.86] Jack: Hi, John, from RC video reviews. Thanks for having me guys. I appreciate it. Thank you.
[4161.62] Jack: My pleasure to join you today. Thank you. And I've been bright until I fly and you've been
[4166.42] Jack: listening to Lester now. Thank you. Good night.