=== Let's Drone Out — Episode 456 ===
Title: LDO 456 - Frank's FPV Fixtures
Recorded: 2024-05-23
Hosts: Andrew "Frank" Hyams, Stephen "Belrik" Howell, Jack "Brightontillifly" Nash
Guest(s): (none recorded)
Total audience: 862
Platforms: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg4egZP6Is0); SoundCloud (http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/1828952667-letsdroneout-ldo-456-franks-fpv-fixtures.mp3)
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[0.0] Jack: Hello and you're listening to What's Drone Out and special thank you to our lovely patrons that help donate so that we can pay the editor to remove the swear words and silly things we say. Massive thank you to.
[14.0] Jack: Carlos Campos.
[16.0] Jack: Art Faulkner.
[18.0] Mosquito: Sam Dahmer.
[19.0] Mosquito: On with the show.
[21.0] Mosquito: Let's drone out now.
[23.0] Jack: Hello and welcome back to another episode of What's Drone Out.
[57.29] Jack: Tonight you are joined by the man with mustache, Stephen.
[61.29] Jack: Good evening. Hello everyone.
[63.29] Jack: Our Lord of Master, Andrew Staphranc.
[67.29] Mosquito: Hello.
[69.29] Jack: And I'm bright to the fly. Hello.
[73.29] Jack: You didn't sound very sure.
[75.29] Mosquito: It sounds like you have a question for who you are.
[79.29] Stephen: I like the way we talk.
[81.29] Jack: Who am I again?
[83.29] Stephen: That pre-show workup that we do, we're all just like shouting and jumping up and down to reach this energy level. I don't know if five years would tell but we keep pushing it.
[93.29] Mosquito: I thought maybe Jack was wondering which show this was because you've got another show on.
[99.29] Stephen: Welcome to the Thursday night.
[101.29] Stephen: It's late and we're going to be playing some electronica.
[108.29] Mosquito: Not 80s music.
[109.29] Mosquito: That's not what Jack usually does.
[110.29] Mosquito: 80s music.
[111.29] Jack: Electronica is 80s.
[113.29] Jack: 80s, yeah.
[115.29] Mosquito: Yes.
[117.29] Stephen: That was my attempt at late night video discussion.
[120.29] Stephen: I can't do it again, sorry.
[122.29] Jack: I've left my normal glasses downstairs so at some point I will have to do it.
[126.29] Stephen: Oh my God, yeah.
[127.29] Stephen: It looks like you should in fact dock to DJ persona when you put those up.
[132.29] Stephen: It should be like a different voice and set of mannerisms that goes with those glasses.
[139.29] Stephen: So flying.
[141.29] Mosquito: Yes.
[142.29] Mosquito: Are you doing any flying?
[144.29] Mosquito: No.
[146.29] Mosquito: I've done a bit of flying. I've been flying around the country.
[151.29] Mosquito: I've been places and done things.
[154.29] Mosquito: Someone has started people.
[156.29] Mosquito: Things are happening.
[158.29] Mosquito: Weather is permitting it.
[160.29] Jack: I know me and Steven have got our fingers up our butts.
[165.6] Stephen: Steven's there saying speak to yourself.
[167.6] Stephen: I've been exercising and tinkering with PCs mainly.
[170.6] Stephen: So not so much flying, right?
[174.6] Jack: Is that what the hard drive's about?
[177.6] Stephen: Yeah, yeah.
[178.6] Stephen: I bought a bunch of hard drives thinking, oh, what a deal.
[181.6] Stephen: Someone's offloading all these old hard drives or grab a couple.
[185.6] Stephen: I need to not realize that the cheap little synology I was going to put them in only accepts
[192.6] Stephen: hard drives that have 512-byte sectors or 512-byte emulated sectors.
[198.6] Stephen: I didn't see these because they have 4K, 4096-byte sectors.
[203.6] Stephen: So I split them somewhere else, which is quite irritating.
[207.6] Mosquito: I did with the sort of thing in my day job, and I don't know what you're talking about.
[211.6] Mosquito: So I'm tuning out.
[214.6] Mosquito: Moving on.
[215.6] Mosquito: Yeah.
[218.6] Mosquito: In the chat, I can see Caroline and Stubsey, who I saw at the weekend,
[225.6] Mosquito: but they may not be expecting me to show this picture,
[232.6] Mosquito: which is where I started my week last week.
[235.6] Mosquito: I went out to BMFA Buckminster last Wednesday and was there until Friday afternoon
[244.6] Mosquito: to have an FPV fixed-wing meet,
[248.6] Mosquito: particularly with a load of scale models and head-tracking models,
[254.6] Mosquito: but with a load of FPV in them.
[257.6] Stephen: Is that one of Andy's creations?
[259.6] Mosquito: This is not one of Andy's creations.
[261.6] Mosquito: I think this might be...
[265.6] Mosquito: Who would this be?
[267.6] Mosquito: I think this might be Niels, who probably won't know.
[273.6] Jack: For our audio listeners, we're looking at a FPV spitfire, by the looks of it.
[282.6] Mosquito: Did you think it'd be indeed?
[285.6] Jack: Five-bladed prop and a big old nose cone.
[291.6] Mosquito: Yeah, don't...
[293.6] Mosquito: DGIA.
[294.6] Mosquito: Let's not go too far into our spitfire recognition.
[299.6] Mosquito: I think I'm going to put my reputational line up.
[304.6] Mosquito: I think the five blades means it's a Griffin engine,
[310.6] Mosquito: which means it's like a Mark Bortgen?
[315.6] Mosquito: Something like that?
[317.6] Mosquito: They got, like, progressively locked in there.
[319.6] Mosquito: Oh, Caroline saying Mark 22.
[321.6] Mosquito: I mean, it's a later Mark.
[323.6] Mosquito: Put it that way.
[324.6] Mosquito: I can't see the wing tips.
[326.6] Mosquito: Let's move on from the question of which particular Mark bitfire this bit of foam is pretending to be.
[331.6] Mosquito: But it's got a DGIA camera and DGIA unit in it.
[337.6] Mosquito: Which is not historically accurate.
[340.6] Stephen: Yeah, I don't think the foam's historically accurate either.
[343.6] Stephen: Personally, I think that the construction list is all wrong, really, for a spitfire.
[347.6] Stephen: If you're going to go scale, which will literally be with the same construction materials,
[351.6] Stephen: that should be adventure rolls, rice engine.
[354.6] Jack: Where did China stand in 1942?
[359.6] Stephen: Not very much involved in the creation of spitfires.
[363.6] Mosquito: Not involved in the creation of spitfires.
[365.6] Mosquito: I grant you that.
[366.6] Mosquito: They were heavily involved in the Second World War.
[370.6] Mosquito: Arguably, the Second World War started with China,
[373.6] Mosquito: depending on which historian you talked to.
[376.6] Mosquito: So, you know, very much involved.
[380.6] Jack: History with Frank.
[382.6] Stephen: They suffer to some horrible massacres that don't really get talked about.
[387.6] Stephen: Yeah.
[388.6] Stephen: I can't believe that.
[389.6] Mosquito: It's like China.
[390.6] Mosquito: Back to the pumping after the show.
[392.6] Stephen: Yeah.
[393.6] Stephen: Let's get those energy levels right up there.
[395.6] Jack: Talking about the war.
[397.6] Mosquito: Yeah.
[398.6] Mosquito: Don't mention the war.
[399.6] Stephen: Yeah, I've been listening to lots of war podcasts a while,
[402.6] Stephen: but I'm worried it's an interesting one.
[405.6] Mosquito: We have ways of making you talk.
[407.6] Mosquito: It's got 500 episodes.
[409.6] Mosquito: 500.
[410.6] Mosquito: I very much enjoy that one.
[412.6] Mosquito: Yeah.
[413.6] Mosquito: Yes.
[414.6] Mosquito: But anyway, so I was at BMFA Buckminster,
[417.6] Mosquito: and this is why I wasn't on the show,
[419.6] Mosquito: was because there was less than one meg up last week from BMFA Buckminster,
[424.6] Mosquito: even though they've got shiny new Wi-Fi everywhere out onto the fields.
[429.6] Mosquito: They've put in a load of effort, but it was struggling.
[433.6] Mosquito: But yeah, so it's an FPV scale.
[435.6] Mosquito: So this was from the Channel 4 Battle of Britain Model Squadron
[441.6] Mosquito: from back six years ago.
[444.6] Mosquito: We've had the kind of two or three meetups every year.
[448.6] Mosquito: But this year, because we've got a couple of other things going,
[452.6] Mosquito: and the May is always the one with the kind of not great weather,
[456.6] Mosquito: so it's the one that people generally miss out.
[458.6] Mosquito: So to make up the numbers,
[460.6] Mosquito: Don Lancaster, who runs these meetups,
[464.6] Mosquito: decided what we should do is we should open the doors to anyone
[467.6] Mosquito: with some head tracking or scale FPV
[470.6] Mosquito: and broaden their horizons and invite some other people along.
[475.6] Mosquito: So that was what was going on.
[480.6] Mosquito: So yeah, it was good fun to see different things.
[484.6] Mosquito: So these are the sort of things that John Lancaster does.
[487.6] Mosquito: So this is Mosquito.
[489.6] Mosquito: And so you can see there's an FPV on a pan tilt.
[494.6] Mosquito: There's an FPV camera on pan tilt there,
[497.6] Mosquito: hidden away next to a co-pilot with a literal scale map.
[502.6] Mosquito: And he makes all this stuff from scratch himself
[508.6] Mosquito: to an absurd level of detail and accuracy.
[512.6] Mosquito: John Lancaster's cockpits are just amazing.
[515.6] Stephen: The placement of the camera there is quite interesting
[518.6] Stephen: because it's actually far enough.
[520.6] Stephen: You'd be able to move the camera inside the cockpit far enough back,
[523.6] Stephen: not press back.
[524.6] Mosquito: Yeah.
[525.6] Mosquito: It's in the kind of the position that the pilot's head would be in
[529.6] Mosquito: and you can look around and see the co-pilot
[532.6] Mosquito: and see the co-pilot's map and all the D dials and things.
[536.6] Mosquito: Cute.
[537.6] Mosquito: Working dials?
[539.6] Mosquito: Not working dials, but they're very, very detailed.
[545.6] Mosquito: I think that's something sort of that will happen later on.
[548.6] Mosquito: So this is his desert spitfire.
[550.6] Mosquito: So you can see he's got a fan on his air unit.
[556.6] Mosquito: You can see he's got like a gun sight there,
[559.6] Mosquito: which is a proper color mating gun sight.
[561.6] Mosquito: So it sort of projects a virtual target out into the distance.
[568.6] Mosquito: Yeah.
[569.6] Mosquito: But this is the one that I bought,
[572.6] Mosquito: which maybe I've got...
[575.6] Mosquito: I might have a picture of somewhere.
[577.6] Mosquito: It's just literally like a pepper's ghost.
[580.6] Mosquito: It just shows a dot that sort of appears in the cockpit.
[585.6] Mosquito: But a color mating one does some funny magic to make it appear
[592.6] Mosquito: like it's way out in front of the nose somewhere.
[595.6] Mosquito: It's very clever.
[598.6] Stephen: Is that just a pan or does it...?
[601.6] Mosquito: I think it is a pan tilt.
[603.6] Mosquito: I think all John's finds a pan tilt.
[606.6] Mosquito: I could be wrong.
[608.6] Stephen: Looks like he's done some magic to really make the camera casing smaller as well.
[612.6] Stephen: Oh, yeah.
[613.6] Mosquito: He's spent so much effort on making all this stuff.
[618.6] Stephen: Because that would restrict the movement inside the cockpit
[620.6] Stephen: if you've got a big chunky camera with the lens sticking out.
[623.6] Stephen: That's a surprisingly low profile camera for DJI.
[627.6] Mosquito: Yep.
[628.6] Mosquito: And all the mechanisms as well that your customer makes
[632.6] Mosquito: just to get them just right.
[635.6] Mosquito: It is baffling if you see one of these in person
[638.6] Mosquito: and realize just how small these details are
[641.6] Mosquito: and how much effort he fits into these.
[643.6] Mosquito: It's amazing.
[645.6] Stephen: To see how many footage people could look at,
[648.6] Stephen: see what it looks like.
[649.6] Stephen: Yeah.
[650.6] Mosquito: If you want to see this,
[652.6] Mosquito: if you go to YouTube and go to Robo Biggles,
[655.6] Mosquito: that is his channel.
[657.6] Mosquito: And he doesn't post that frequently.
[661.6] Mosquito: But when he does, it's always good stuff.
[664.6] Mosquito: So definitely watch out for the Mosquito on there.
[668.6] Mosquito: And his Thunderbolt, his P47 Thunderbolt.
[671.6] Mosquito: That is a beautiful cockpit in FPV.
[675.6] Mosquito: Yeah.
[676.6] Mosquito: So he's just some lovely, lovely scale models with a lot of FPV.
[680.6] Mosquito: At the other end of the spectrum, I would say,
[684.6] Mosquito: we had a couple of guys over who we've had on the show before
[688.6] Mosquito: from FPV Combat.
[692.6] Mosquito: And so they brought their models along,
[695.6] Mosquito: which they've scratch built out of insulation foam
[698.6] Mosquito: and brightly colored packing tape.
[702.6] Mosquito: And so they don't look as nice to look at on the ground.
[708.6] Mosquito: They look a bit taping.
[710.6] Stephen: But when they're darting around.
[712.6] Mosquito: But in the sky, they look great.
[715.6] Mosquito: And they still have wonderfully detailed tiny little cockpits.
[719.6] Mosquito: Very nice.
[720.6] Mosquito: This is like, you know, there's dials with markings on
[726.6] Mosquito: and the dial is like a quarter of the size of your fingernail.
[730.6] Mosquito: It's lovely stuff.
[733.6] Mosquito: And when you're in the FPV and you just have these kind of details
[737.6] Mosquito: it's slightly out of focus and it's a great experience.
[742.6] Mosquito: It's a lot of fun.
[744.6] Stephen: Could I share a video of Robo Biggles for a second?
[747.6] Stephen: Because he has some position in the Spitfire that...
[750.6] Stephen: Absolutely.
[752.6] Stephen: You're looking at that.
[753.6] Stephen: So if I just share this, it's probably going to turn into absolute rubbish.
[757.6] Stephen: We've got the interior cockpit of this Spitfire up.
[761.6] Stephen: Now it's him taking off.
[763.6] Stephen: So he's flying the foam Spitfire that we looked at.
[766.6] Stephen: Put the retracts up and I thought I had a bit of footage.
[770.6] Stephen: Here we are.
[771.6] Stephen: He's in the cockpit looking out over the wing doing a turn over to the left.
[776.6] Stephen: And you can see that there's a ton of cockpit detail.
[778.6] Stephen: He's actually got surprising amount of visibility.
[780.6] Stephen: He can look right back to the limits of the headrest behind him with that camera
[784.6] Stephen: which is pretty impressive considering there's a cockpit around it.
[787.6] Mosquito: And he's posting out some photos somewhere as well.
[790.6] Mosquito: Well, there's some screenshots where you can see the rear view mirror at the top of the cockpit there.
[795.6] Stephen: You can actually see the sights in front as well.
[798.6] Stephen: Just showing up there that you were mentioning.
[800.6] Mosquito: Yeah, that's his collimating.
[802.6] Mosquito: Yeah, absolutely.
[803.6] Mosquito: But yeah, the rear view mirror, he's got a fantastic screenshot of like a 109,
[809.6] Mosquito: a Luftwaffe aircraft in the rear view mirror of this Spitfire.
[813.6] Mosquito: And it's that war.
[814.6] Mosquito: That is cool.
[815.6] Mosquito: It's very cool.
[817.6] Stephen: Yeah, terribly impressive.
[820.6] Stephen: It's taken out a lot of work.
[822.6] Stephen: Being able to see it so it looks like just like a real plane as well.
[825.6] Stephen: Because once you get up to HD, you're getting all of the details inside the cockpit.
[830.6] Stephen: It's not just a blurry mess.
[832.6] Stephen: You can really see the ground detail.
[834.6] Jack: Could you imagine showing this to a veteran?
[837.6] Jack: I know.
[839.6] Jack: You're doing a really cool roar.
[842.6] Jack: I don't know.
[844.6] Stephen: Really?
[846.6] Stephen: Depends if we want to talk better or not to start with, I guess.
[850.6] Stephen: Can't take things for granted.
[852.6] Jack: Would they have to be having flashbacks of like,
[855.6] Jack: I remember the Luftwaffe there in the mirror of doom.
[860.6] Stephen: Yeah.
[862.6] Stephen: Yeah, my grandfather works as a medic.
[865.6] Stephen: He can definitely express the urge to talk about anything.
[868.6] Mosquito: No.
[870.6] Mosquito: But yeah, I just...
[872.6] Mosquito: John's models are the pinnacle of scale FPV as far as I'm concerned.
[878.6] Jack: I mean, he's even painted the rivets and crying out loud.
[882.6] Mosquito: Oh, yeah.
[884.6] Mosquito: He's been around the museums.
[887.6] Mosquito: He's got all the reference images that he's taken.
[890.6] Mosquito: He's managed to talk his way into sitting in a Spitfire
[894.6] Mosquito: at the Bathabreckon Memorial Flight to the RAF Spitfire.
[899.6] Mosquito: You have the real experience of what it is that you're feeling like
[904.6] Mosquito: and where your head ends up and all that kind of stuff.
[907.6] Mosquito: I have a lot of attention to detail.
[911.6] Mosquito: They're very nice.
[914.6] Jack: Thank you, RoboBiggles.
[916.6] Stephen: Check out that channel on YouTube and stuff.
[919.6] Mosquito: Yeah.
[921.6] Mosquito: Yeah, so we have these Germans over with, again,
[929.6] Mosquito: nice-scale cockpits with a slightly less-scale aircraft,
[934.6] Mosquito: but still very nice cockpits and animated hands and things.
[938.6] Mosquito: He's got one where it waves and you can see the joystick moving around and stuff.
[944.6] Mosquito: Again, very cool.
[946.6] Mosquito: But their big thing, which is what they came on the show before a couple of years ago,
[951.6] Mosquito: is the FPV combat system.
[954.6] Mosquito: So that's using infrared laser tag.
[960.6] Mosquito: So transmitter guns and receiver infrared receivers
[965.6] Mosquito: to be able to shoot each other down effectively and score points and things.
[970.6] Mosquito: They've got these sort of elaborate games that go along with that as well.
[975.6] Mosquito: It used to be that they had, I think, when they were on the show,
[980.6] Mosquito: to be able to do HD stuff with their system.
[984.6] Mosquito: They kind of had some LEDs that would light up in the cockpit,
[988.6] Mosquito: but now they've actually integrated that through FPV,
[994.6] Mosquito: what is it called, WTF OS or whatever it is.
[998.6] Mosquito: They've actually integrated it into DJI FPV once it's slightly hacked,
[1007.6] Mosquito: and so you can have an actual OSD displaying the game state on there,
[1013.6] Mosquito: which is all exciting stuff.
[1018.6] Mosquito: So it does end up with quite a lot of cables and boards and things
[1023.6] Mosquito: when you've got a flight controller and a receiver and a VPX,
[1026.6] Mosquito: and you've got the combat stuff as well.
[1029.6] Mosquito: So you end up with a bit of a rat's nest of wires going everywhere.
[1035.6] Mosquito: But they do a fair job of attempting to tidy this up
[1040.6] Mosquito: with lots of cable ties and cable braiding and stuff.
[1046.6] Mosquito: There's a lot of cables.
[1050.6] Mosquito: There's a lot of wires.
[1053.6] Mosquito: But it works, and they combat them,
[1056.6] Mosquito: so inevitably there is quite a lot crashing and gluing back together.
[1061.6] Mosquito: But yeah, that's all good fun.
[1066.6] Mosquito: This is my one that I bought from them while they were over.
[1074.6] Mosquito: So that's my onsite, put on something at some point.
[1077.6] Mosquito: I don't know what I'm going to put that on.
[1079.6] Mosquito: Probably end up on my cup, because that's what I've got.
[1083.6] Stephen: Any FPV combat happening on the day?
[1086.6] Mosquito: I think they sort of did a couple of demos,
[1090.6] Mosquito: but basically we don't need the two of them.
[1093.6] Mosquito: We were all kind of more interested in just flying together.
[1100.6] Mosquito: The Wednesday and the Thursday was fairly grim,
[1105.6] Mosquito: so it was mainly building stuff.
[1107.6] Mosquito: So we were using one of our hangars at the MFA Buckminster
[1110.6] Mosquito: and just building stuff.
[1113.6] Mosquito: So Leon here was setting up this 109
[1116.6] Mosquito: and basically spent the entire time setting this up.
[1120.6] Mosquito: So we were all sort of getting involved a bit.
[1126.6] Mosquito: It's a very welcoming crowd.
[1128.6] Mosquito: Everyone's there to lend a hand and help me carry on.
[1132.6] Mosquito: Here's Andy Simmons from the MFA.
[1135.6] Mosquito: All the kind of local regulars were all intrigued
[1138.6] Mosquito: at all the FPV stuff.
[1141.6] Mosquito: There was more positive vibes than you might expect.
[1147.6] Mosquito: Because it was so wet, we did end up messing around
[1151.6] Mosquito: with some other things as well.
[1153.6] Mosquito: So we've had some whoops around in the hangar before.
[1157.6] Mosquito: This time Sharon brought a shark, a helium shark.
[1161.6] Mosquito: It was passing the transmitter around.
[1163.6] Mosquito: We were all having a go at the shark,
[1165.6] Mosquito: which literally swims around.
[1167.6] Mosquito: The tail wanks back and forth.
[1170.6] Stephen: So it's just a helium balloon then?
[1172.6] Mosquito: Yeah, it's just a helium balloon with a couple of servos on it.
[1176.6] Mosquito: It was good fun.
[1178.6] Mosquito: Kept us entertained for a bit.
[1180.6] Mosquito: Dragging cables all over the nice scale models.
[1186.6] Mosquito: And then Andy turned up and brought along his typhoon
[1191.6] Mosquito: that he was hoping to maiden at Buckminster
[1194.6] Mosquito: with a nice really long grass runway
[1197.6] Mosquito: with no time around it with no one else coming around.
[1201.6] Stephen: There's a butt heading towards that conversation, I sense.
[1204.6] Mosquito: But it just didn't stop raining for long enough from try to go.
[1211.6] Mosquito: So it was pootling around the hangar
[1214.6] Mosquito: on the nice concrete floors and being very photogenic.
[1218.6] Mosquito: And we had a go at setting up all the control services
[1222.6] Mosquito: and making sure all the throws were all right
[1224.6] Mosquito: and double checking a lot of things.
[1226.6] Mosquito: But Phil came along as well.
[1227.6] Mosquito: So Andy and Phil do their scale FPV in the Red Arrows Hawks.
[1232.6] Mosquito: So they brought them along as well.
[1234.6] Mosquito: So here's Andy's typhoon with the air brake coming out.
[1238.6] Mosquito: And it's got the lovely afterburner effects
[1241.6] Mosquito: and little vents that open and stuff.
[1244.6] Mosquito: It's a very, very nice model.
[1247.6] Mosquito: But again, he's got the Pantil DJI system on it.
[1252.6] Mosquito: So it's a shame that we didn't get to see that.
[1255.6] Mosquito: I would love to have seen that fly.
[1257.6] Mosquito: I look forward to...
[1259.6] Mosquito: I imagine at some point Andy will post out a video.
[1263.6] Mosquito: It was very impressive.
[1266.6] Mosquito: But they brought along the Hawks as well.
[1271.6] Mosquito: Andy's one that has him in the back of it,
[1274.6] Mosquito: a little mini me that you got a Western part.
[1277.6] Mosquito: This must be Phil's.
[1280.6] Mosquito: Yeah, that was good to see as well,
[1282.6] Mosquito: sort of how they set up their Pantil system
[1285.6] Mosquito: for their head tracking.
[1288.6] Mosquito: So it got so wet there
[1291.6] Mosquito: that the Germans were getting a bit of cabin fever
[1296.6] Mosquito: and decided that if they weren't going to be able to fly
[1300.6] Mosquito: their pixeling stuff for a while,
[1303.6] Mosquito: they would at least attempt to pretend they had.
[1307.6] Mosquito: So they were dragging each other around
[1310.6] Mosquito: in one of these trolleys
[1312.6] Mosquito: with their FPV system on their head
[1315.6] Mosquito: and just holding the plane around
[1317.6] Mosquito: and just flying it through the hangar
[1321.6] Mosquito: to get some video.
[1325.6] Mosquito: So yeah, that was how wet and cold and windy
[1330.6] Mosquito: and windy it felt.
[1331.6] Stephen: So if people weren't attempting to fly inside the hangar,
[1333.6] Stephen: then it wasn't quite that large of a hangar.
[1336.6] Mosquito: No, it's not quite that level.
[1338.6] Mosquito: Not for the sort of size models that we have.
[1340.6] Mosquito: We have flown some fixed wing stuff inside before,
[1343.6] Mosquito: but only small 3D stuff.
[1347.6] Mosquito: Yeah, so having a bit of a laugh.
[1351.6] Mosquito: We did go out and fly.
[1356.6] Mosquito: His bill flying his glider just proves that,
[1359.6] Mosquito: you know, we're not scared of the wet.
[1361.6] Mosquito: It's just we don't like getting it
[1363.6] Mosquito: on the lenses of our cameras.
[1366.6] Mosquito: So it's a bit annoying,
[1369.6] Stephen: especially with the amount of time it takes to,
[1371.6] Stephen: I guess, repair one of these.
[1373.6] Mosquito: Yeah, so I did practice my line of sight flying with the cup.
[1377.6] Mosquito: That was my main thing
[1380.6] Mosquito: while it was raining.
[1383.6] Mosquito: Well, we have the opportunity.
[1385.6] Mosquito: And Martin was there making pizzas with James.
[1387.6] Mosquito: So we had some wood-fired pizzas on the site as well.
[1391.6] Mosquito: All good fun.
[1392.6] Mosquito: On the Friday, the weather improved, which is good.
[1396.6] Mosquito: So we can actually go out and fly some FPV stuff.
[1399.6] Mosquito: Just some streamer chasing
[1401.6] Mosquito: and just some formation flying.
[1404.6] Mosquito: So we've got the Mustang and a couple of,
[1407.6] Mosquito: I don't know what they're called,
[1409.6] Mosquito: but they're basically scratch-fit models
[1411.6] Mosquito: that aren't really scale of anything in particular,
[1414.6] Mosquito: I don't think, but they just, they fly well.
[1418.6] Mosquito: Flying them all FPV, all in formation,
[1421.6] Mosquito: just bombing around the field is all good fun.
[1426.6] Mosquito: And yeah, so that was all good.
[1434.6] Mosquito: So even the kind of line of sight stuff
[1438.6] Mosquito: ends up getting quite silly at times.
[1440.6] Mosquito: So Steve has his giant glider tug.
[1446.6] Mosquito: So it can pull like really, really big gliders up to,
[1452.6] Mosquito: up the height, this bright, yeah, big bright yellow thing.
[1456.6] Mosquito: And Martin had this very knackered trainer
[1463.6] Mosquito: I can't remember what friendly trainer it was,
[1465.6] Mosquito: probably a max thrust fire, I think.
[1469.6] Mosquito: And they ended up doing like,
[1472.6] Mosquito: basically trying to pull that little trainer apart
[1476.6] Mosquito: with the big tug and got very close to it, I think.
[1480.6] Mosquito: I jumped at one point
[1484.6] Mosquito: because he kind of crashed it where I was standing.
[1486.6] Mosquito: But again, all fun.
[1489.6] Mosquito: And then we sort of occasionally,
[1494.6] Mosquito: sort of every other hour or something like that,
[1497.6] Mosquito: we'd try and get as many aircraft flying together as we could.
[1502.6] Mosquito: So he's, you know, a bunch of us flying FPV
[1506.6] Mosquito: and just absolutely filling the skies
[1510.6] Mosquito: with lots of little angry buzzing things.
[1515.6] Mosquito: Yeah, that was basically my time with the scale
[1520.6] Mosquito: and pick-swing, head-tracking meet-up
[1525.6] Mosquito: at the MFA Buckminster.
[1527.6] Mosquito: Which is, yeah.
[1529.6] Stephen: It was fun.
[1531.6] Mosquito: Yeah.
[1533.6] Mosquito: So, you know, that would be enough for one week.
[1536.6] Mosquito: But I drove straight from Buckminster,
[1539.6] Mosquito: up in Grantham, to South Wales
[1542.6] Mosquito: where the weather was bloody lovely.
[1545.6] Mosquito: You imagine Wales just be mistaking the grey all the time.
[1549.6] Mosquito: They're like blue skies.
[1551.6] Mosquito: It's like amazing.
[1553.6] Mosquito: We've got sunburn.
[1554.6] Mosquito: Hot.
[1556.6] Mosquito: Very unexpected.
[1558.6] Mosquito: Yeah, so this was the wing racing.
[1562.6] Mosquito: So the wing racing league organized by Brady and Matt.
[1566.6] Mosquito: So using the FPV flying wings,
[1572.6] Mosquito: this is just two control surfaces,
[1575.6] Mosquito: the elevons and a motor.
[1579.6] Mosquito: And there's a kind of a spec.
[1581.6] Mosquito: They're not very strict on the spec at the moment.
[1584.6] Mosquito: Basically up to 40-inch wingspan, I think it is.
[1589.6] Mosquito: And up to like 4S.
[1592.6] Stephen: And that's to be a pretty sure right,
[1594.6] Stephen: just for everyone's general safety.
[1596.6] Mosquito: Yeah, yeah.
[1597.6] Mosquito: But it's not very strict on it.
[1599.6] Mosquito: So in the US where it's been going a bit longer
[1603.6] Mosquito: and a bit more people involved,
[1605.6] Mosquito: they've got a much more strict spec
[1607.6] Mosquito: because they're trying to make it more about,
[1610.6] Mosquito: let's actually do very competitive racing.
[1615.6] Mosquito: But the UK, so wing racing league UK
[1619.6] Mosquito: is not quite at that level yet
[1621.6] Mosquito: where there's enough people involved enough of time.
[1624.6] Mosquito: Everyone's still kind of getting into it.
[1626.6] Mosquito: There's not that much availability of the spec components
[1629.6] Mosquito: like the motors.
[1631.6] Mosquito: In the US, they have a particular motor
[1634.6] Mosquito: and a particular aircraft and a particular airframe.
[1638.6] Mosquito: And in the UK, it's quite hard to get any of that.
[1642.6] Mosquito: And any one motor seems to be hard to get hold of.
[1646.6] Mosquito: They just kind of kept it fairly loose
[1649.6] Mosquito: in what you can find.
[1651.6] Mosquito: But Brady's been doing the race timing
[1655.6] Mosquito: and was streaming as well using Starlink and stuff.
[1661.6] Mosquito: So if anyone calls it over the weekend,
[1664.6] Mosquito: you can thank Brady for that.
[1666.6] Mosquito: And there you go.
[1668.6] Mosquito: This is rack of various bits of componentry
[1672.6] Mosquito: that he was using to stream everything
[1675.6] Mosquito: and provide some music and screens
[1678.6] Mosquito: for spectators and all sorts.
[1681.6] Mosquito: Big battery backup at the top.
[1683.6] Mosquito: Oh, yes.
[1684.6] Mosquito: I think there's another one at the bottom, actually.
[1688.6] Mosquito: So, yeah, there's a lot going on.
[1691.6] Stephen: Check loads of those NRAC APCs.
[1693.6] Mosquito: Yeah.
[1694.6] Stephen: Very popular.
[1695.6] Mosquito: Yeah.
[1696.6] Mosquito: And they had a very big generator.
[1699.6] Mosquito: Matt was running around,
[1701.6] Mosquito: keeping all the flags up,
[1703.6] Mosquito: getting the gates going.
[1704.6] Mosquito: So we've got these two big inflatable gates
[1708.6] Mosquito: that have run off for Jenny's as well.
[1711.6] Mosquito: So Matt was doing a great job of doing that
[1715.6] Mosquito: and wrangling the pilots and all sorts.
[1719.6] Jack: It's very strange to see the first person of you
[1722.6] Jack: and they don't even exist anymore.
[1725.6] Mosquito: Yeah, yeah.
[1726.6] Mosquito: So on that flag.
[1728.6] Mosquito: I think this was one from the air show.
[1732.6] Stephen: It probably won't last for a few more races.
[1735.6] Stephen: Those flags don't last forever.
[1737.6] Mosquito: Well, these have been kicking around for quite a while.
[1740.6] Mosquito: Turns out wings don't chew up flags as much as quads do.
[1745.6] Stephen: Oh, yeah.
[1746.6] Stephen: That's less pointy bits.
[1748.6] Mosquito: Yeah, the pointy bits are at the back.
[1751.6] Mosquito: They tend not to catch things so much.
[1753.6] Mosquito: We were hosted by the South Wales Valley Flyers Club,
[1758.6] Mosquito: which did a grand job of hosting us.
[1762.6] Mosquito: Very, very welcoming, very friendly,
[1764.6] Mosquito: very interested in FPV and all sorts of things
[1768.6] Mosquito: that had sort of questions.
[1770.6] Mosquito: They fed us, they did a load of barbecues,
[1772.6] Mosquito: they did a load of teas and coffees.
[1774.6] Mosquito: Great people.
[1777.6] Mosquito: Very welcoming.
[1778.6] Mosquito: And then in the times where we had some downtime
[1781.6] Mosquito: because either Brady was having to sort out stuff
[1784.6] Mosquito: with the timing system
[1786.6] Mosquito: or maybe we're like going around to a tree
[1789.6] Mosquito: and fishing something out of a tree.
[1792.6] Mosquito: And the club that's, you know,
[1795.6] Mosquito: we'd usually be making good use of a field
[1797.6] Mosquito: on a sunny weekend.
[1802.6] Mosquito: You know, we sort of made time for them as well
[1804.6] Mosquito: to still get out and find it.
[1806.6] Stephen: Get by a crowd then.
[1807.6] Stephen: Have the local club there
[1808.6] Stephen: and so you were, you know, getting all these pilots.
[1811.6] Stephen: How many pilots do you reckon attended?
[1814.6] Mosquito: It must have been, I mean, it wasn't a huge number of us.
[1818.6] Mosquito: There was like 13, 14 of us, I think.
[1822.6] Mosquito: Plus the local club, which had been another,
[1827.6] Mosquito: I guess another 10, 12 or so people,
[1832.6] Mosquito: sort of friends and family that had talked along as well.
[1834.6] Mosquito: So, you know, it's a small event, but it was life.
[1837.6] Mosquito: It never felt quiet.
[1840.6] Mosquito: Caroline here was demonstrating to the club chairman,
[1846.6] Mosquito: her nanogoblin and the O3 system, I think.
[1851.6] Mosquito: She's got a nanogoblin.
[1854.6] Mosquito: She's having a go with the goggles.
[1857.6] Mosquito: This episode was recorded in front of a live online audience,
[1860.6] Mosquito: downloaded and edited to make sense when it played audio only,
[1864.6] Mosquito: censored to please the iTunes people,
[1866.6] Mosquito: hosted on the internet,
[1867.6] Mosquito: forwarded through to your podcast provider,
[1869.6] Mosquito: downloaded, playing on your device
[1871.6] Mosquito: and is now playing in your ears.
[1873.6] Mosquito: All thanks to our Patreons.
[1875.6] Mosquito: Consider joining them and you'll also get other online benefits.
[1878.6] Mosquito: Find out more at patreon.com forward slash let's drone out.
[1883.6] Mosquito: Some people took camping very seriously
[1886.6] Mosquito: because a lot of us were camping there.
[1888.6] Mosquito: I mean, I was just in the back of my car,
[1890.6] Mosquito: but a couple of the guys, I think this is their first race.
[1896.6] Mosquito: Up long and yeah.
[1899.6] Mosquito: That's a proper tent.
[1900.6] Mosquito: Tony should see that.
[1901.6] Mosquito: You can.
[1902.6] Mosquito: I know those.
[1904.6] Mosquito: Exactly.
[1905.6] Mosquito: I mean, this is like absolutely Tony central for camping.
[1909.6] Mosquito: You can imagine him getting on very well there.
[1913.6] Mosquito: Yeah.
[1914.6] Mosquito: We also had some drone races pop along and spectate the wing racing,
[1922.6] Mosquito: which is always nice to see,
[1924.6] Mosquito: sort of a wider FPV community getting involved and seeing these events
[1929.6] Mosquito: and sort of the friends and family coming along as well.
[1933.6] Mosquito: And yeah, sort of seeing it.
[1936.6] Mosquito: Definitely Caroline there,
[1938.6] Mosquito: I think was inspiring quite a few younger people to sort of be interested in it
[1946.6] Mosquito: and sort of feel like it's acceptable, which is always nice.
[1952.6] Mosquito: So sort of the way the event works,
[1956.6] Mosquito: sort of begin with you arrive there Saturday morning,
[1961.6] Mosquito: making sure everything is still working,
[1963.6] Mosquito: plugging everything in, getting everything to bind,
[1967.6] Mosquito: doing some fail safe checks.
[1970.6] Mosquito: So you plug in, you get it all working,
[1973.6] Mosquito: you get the motor running and then turn off the radio
[1976.6] Mosquito: and make sure that everything turns off.
[1980.6] Mosquito: You know, important, I would say.
[1984.6] Mosquito: And then you called up.
[1986.6] Mosquito: So basically because we had enough people for three heats,
[1990.6] Mosquito: so we had, so you'd have a heat that you were spotting for.
[2000.6] Mosquito: So you basically you launch the plane and you count the laps
[2004.6] Mosquito: in case the, you know, in case they miss a gate
[2008.6] Mosquito: and then the timing system isn't going to know that
[2011.6] Mosquito: or you take a lap off or maybe the timing system don't pick them up,
[2014.6] Mosquito: in which case you had a lap on.
[2018.6] Mosquito: So you're sort of spotting for them and then you'd do your race
[2024.6] Mosquito: and then you've got a round to catch up, fix everything,
[2028.6] Mosquito: charge everything up, get ready for the next one
[2030.6] Mosquito: because you're going to be spotting the next one.
[2033.6] Mosquito: So there's sort of the classic thing from the drone racing
[2040.6] Mosquito: is when everyone's happy, you get your goggles down, thumbs up,
[2044.6] Mosquito: make sure you see all the thumbs up from all the pilots
[2049.6] Mosquito: and then it starts.
[2051.6] Mosquito: The difference is that here, because we're not going off the blocks
[2055.6] Mosquito: because you can't just like launch yourself.
[2058.6] Stephen: Has anyone kind of come up with a bit of wood or something
[2061.6] Stephen: that you could rest a wing on so you could do a take off?
[2065.6] Mosquito: Yeah, the launches do exist, but they're not as good
[2071.6] Mosquito: or not as quick to readjust to the changing wind conditions
[2076.6] Mosquito: because basically you want to launch.
[2078.6] Stephen: There might be some occasions you can't just put the plane down
[2081.6] Stephen: and leave it, it'll blow off.
[2083.6] Mosquito: Well, it's more a case of you want to launch your plane into wind, right?
[2088.6] Mosquito: Because when you first take off, you don't have enough.
[2091.6] Stephen: Does that apply so much when you've got a race wing
[2093.6] Stephen: and it's got like ludicrous power to weight ratio?
[2096.6] Mosquito: If you don't want to just be spinning for the first bit
[2098.6] Mosquito: until you've got enough airspeed, then yeah, it still applies.
[2102.6] Jack: You need enough fluid over the surfaces.
[2105.6] Jack: Yeah, exactly.
[2106.6] Jack: You don't want to be blown in a particular direction
[2110.6] Jack: that you're not flying in.
[2112.6] Mosquito: And you don't want to hit a gate or a flag as you're taking off.
[2115.6] Mosquito: That would be inconvenient.
[2117.6] Mosquito: Just the judges.
[2119.6] Mosquito: Yeah, so we'd be launched and sort of fly around a bit
[2125.6] Mosquito: and then the countdown starts for the race.
[2129.6] Mosquito: You get your beeps and basically if you go through the gate,
[2133.6] Mosquito: the start gate on the beat, that's the ideal situation.
[2137.6] Mosquito: It's like you want beep as you're going through.
[2140.6] Mosquito: Otherwise, you're just a waste of time.
[2143.6] Mosquito: With Christian not being able to make it this weekend,
[2146.6] Mosquito: last year he was absolutely wiping a floor
[2150.6] Mosquito: with his bit of glue with some foam attached.
[2155.6] Mosquito: But he wasn't able to make it to this event.
[2158.6] Mosquito: So John and Nick were very much kind of the two
[2163.6] Mosquito: to watch in this scenario.
[2166.6] Mosquito: And they were doing, you know,
[2169.6] Mosquito: I think they were getting like seven,
[2171.6] Mosquito: they got 70 something laps over the course of the weekend.
[2176.6] Mosquito: I got like 20 something.
[2180.6] Mosquito: There's a slight difference there.
[2184.6] Mosquito: There's room for improvement.
[2187.6] Mosquito: I'll put it that way.
[2190.6] Mosquito: Yeah, it was great from watching those two kind of battle it out
[2194.6] Mosquito: because they're very evenly matched.
[2196.6] Mosquito: They got basically the same aircraft, I think.
[2199.6] Mosquito: So John cuts a lot of the foam as prototype RC.
[2205.6] Mosquito: The spec wings from there.
[2207.6] Mosquito: So they've got basically the same aircraft.
[2209.6] Mosquito: They've been practicing a lot and a lot together as well.
[2214.6] Mosquito: So they take similar lines and take similar risks.
[2219.6] Mosquito: And so they're quite evenly matched.
[2223.6] Mosquito: And seeing them battle it out,
[2225.6] Mosquito: overtaking each other and really pushing things,
[2228.6] Mosquito: it's good fun.
[2232.6] Mosquito: We also have basically everyone there also flies on the site,
[2237.6] Mosquito: also flies quads.
[2239.6] Mosquito: So there was all sorts going on,
[2241.6] Mosquito: particularly in the evenings
[2244.6] Mosquito: after retrieving all the wings from the trees.
[2247.6] Mosquito: Yeah, so Will had a bit of an unfortunate incident here.
[2256.6] Mosquito: So he unfortunately flew behind this oak tree,
[2261.6] Mosquito: which is one of these sort of like a flag,
[2264.6] Mosquito: like an obstacle on the course.
[2267.6] Mosquito: So he was sort of round the back of that slightly,
[2270.6] Mosquito: just as the rest of us,
[2274.6] Mosquito: the three of us all together,
[2277.6] Mosquito: basically flew right in front of him.
[2280.6] Mosquito: So that was a bit unfortunate
[2282.6] Mosquito: because Ivan didn't have video for a fraction of a second.
[2287.6] Mosquito: And yeah, ended up in the tree.
[2289.6] Mosquito: So we had to retrieve it.
[2292.6] Mosquito: And the motor got all tangled up in the branches.
[2295.6] Mosquito: But eventually it came down and got glued back together.
[2299.6] Mosquito: So it smiles all around.
[2302.6] Mosquito: Yeah, so it was a good event,
[2305.6] Mosquito: lots of racing, lots of flying, lots of lapsing.
[2310.6] Mosquito: But we did have to battle a wind quite a lot.
[2313.6] Mosquito: So it got a bit turbulent with the wind blowing off the trees
[2320.6] Mosquito: and you could get thrown around quite a bit.
[2323.6] Mosquito: We learned, or at least those of us at the back of the pack learned eventually,
[2328.6] Mosquito: that if you move your CG a lot further forward than you're used to,
[2333.6] Mosquito: that helps cut through a lot of the wind
[2337.6] Mosquito: and keeps you more stable in the turbulence.
[2339.6] Mosquito: So you're a bit less agile,
[2342.6] Mosquito: but you can actually make it round the track, which is important.
[2347.6] Stephen: Do you like dampen the control response?
[2351.6] Mosquito: Yeah, and just being more nose-heavy,
[2354.6] Mosquito: I feel like it's just sort of having to,
[2360.6] Mosquito: I don't know what it is, but either way,
[2362.6] Mosquito: it doesn't get thrown about by the turbulence as much.
[2365.6] Stephen: The more inertia, the nose is where the camera is, right?
[2368.6] Mosquito: Yeah, yeah.
[2369.6] Stephen: So I guess if you put extra mass around the camera,
[2372.6] Stephen: then it doesn't move as much, right?
[2376.6] Mosquito: Yeah, but as the evening sort of drew in,
[2382.6] Mosquito: Matt Stubbs got his X-Class out and was trying that out,
[2387.6] Mosquito: giving it a bit of a shake down before the X-Class
[2390.6] Mosquito: and wing racing event had popped him on the 8th and 9th of June.
[2395.6] Mosquito: So if anyone's got any X-Class,
[2397.6] Mosquito: or would like to pop along with their wing for that,
[2399.6] Mosquito: then go to WRL-UK.com.
[2406.6] Mosquito: Search wing racing league UK, and you can go along to that.
[2412.6] Mosquito: Turns out X-Class are finicky.
[2417.6] Mosquito: Matt was having some issues with that,
[2420.6] Mosquito: so hopefully that's all resolved by the time popping comes around
[2423.6] Mosquito: and you can race that.
[2425.6] Mosquito: But they are very impressive machines,
[2428.6] Mosquito: and the noise is quite scary, let alone the rest of it.
[2434.6] Mosquito: Yeah, we're sort of, you know, carrying on flying into the night,
[2437.6] Mosquito: had a load of LEDs out.
[2439.6] Mosquito: It's like gathering around a campfire,
[2442.6] Mosquito: except instead of a campfire,
[2444.6] Mosquito: it's just like wings lit up with LEDs entertaining.
[2449.6] Mosquito: They made just some very pretty pictures,
[2451.6] Mosquito: and they've got the LED flags and LED strings along the ground and stuff,
[2456.6] Mosquito: so the whole course is lit up.
[2459.6] Mosquito: Yeah, it's all good fun.
[2461.6] Mosquito: I need to put LEDs on something.
[2465.6] Mosquito: I do not have LEDs on anything.
[2468.6] Mosquito: I've got a mud lead board, and I've got a load of LEDs.
[2471.6] Mosquito: I just haven't put it on anything that flies.
[2473.6] Mosquito: Oh, yeah, the hot glue gun.
[2476.6] Mosquito: So I think it was James, who was one of the new guys,
[2481.6] Mosquito: the new event that I've been to anyway.
[2485.6] Mosquito: He brought along a hot glue gun,
[2489.6] Mosquito: and his mate brought along a solar charged battery pack.
[2495.6] Mosquito: This was very, very welcome.
[2497.6] Mosquito: Basically everyone, I think at some point or another,
[2500.6] Mosquito: used this hot glue gun back in the air.
[2504.6] Jack: We made a lot of friends.
[2506.6] Mosquito: Yeah, if you want to make friends at a wing racing event,
[2509.6] Mosquito: bring a hot glue gun and a lot of hot glue and a source of energy,
[2514.6] Mosquito: because it was much used over the course of the weekend,
[2521.6] Mosquito: and the solar panel and battery pack was, again,
[2525.6] Mosquito: intriguing to all the regular club members.
[2529.6] Mosquito: Yeah, you can see here as well.
[2531.6] Stephen: Solar panels are enough to keep in touch with notoriously wasteful things
[2535.6] Stephen: like eating elements that's impressive.
[2537.6] Mosquito: Yeah, oh, yeah, absolutely.
[2540.6] Mosquito: But there was a lot of sunshine, so that probably helped.
[2549.6] Mosquito: This being a competitive event, it didn't feel very competitive.
[2553.6] Mosquito: To be honest, it felt like sort of hanging out and just having a good time.
[2558.6] Mosquito: But it was competitive.
[2561.6] Mosquito: Yes, so I believe it was Nick in first place,
[2566.6] Mosquito: John in second place, and Phil in third.
[2569.6] Mosquito: This is Phil, and I think got third place,
[2572.6] Mosquito: and then John in second place, and Nick in first place.
[2576.6] Mosquito: And there was also a slightly bit of a wooden spoon of best crash,
[2582.6] Mosquito: which Ian got by absolutely obliterating both his wing and one of the flags.
[2589.6] Mosquito: I'm not really sure how he managed to do it,
[2592.6] Mosquito: but yeah, there was a big cloud of foam and a flag in pieces.
[2601.6] Mosquito: So yeah, he got the prize for best crash of the weekend.
[2607.6] Mosquito: But yeah, so that was my week.
[2610.6] Mosquito: Yeah, all the fun.
[2612.6] Mosquito: What have we got coming up?
[2614.6] Mosquito: We've got Weston Park is, I guess, the next big one.
[2621.6] Mosquito: I mean, there's the wing racing guys.
[2624.6] Mosquito: Like I said, there's the wing racing and X-class racing,
[2631.6] Mosquito: from our point of view on the 15th of June,
[2636.6] Mosquito: 15th and 16th of June.
[2638.6] Mosquito: I think we're going to be at Weston Park on the 15th,
[2640.6] Mosquito: but at least me and Jack, possibly Tony,
[2645.6] Mosquito: and possibly anyone else who wants to make use of our enormous Airbnb.
[2651.6] Mosquito: That would manage the book.
[2654.6] Mosquito: Yeah, but the wing racing guys have actually got quite a few events lined up.
[2661.6] Mosquito: One of the contracts where Caroline is based is the problem one.
[2669.6] Mosquito: And there's a few others that I don't know how definite they are yet,
[2674.6] Mosquito: but check out their website and you can find all their events.
[2677.6] Mosquito: We did have that question that I mentioned on the Discord,
[2682.6] Mosquito: because when we were getting ready to start the races,
[2686.6] Mosquito: there were a few occasions where we stood around waiting for something to happen.
[2693.6] Mosquito: And sometimes, quite often it felt like to me,
[2697.6] Mosquito: we were waiting around for someone's wing to connect back to their transmitter.
[2703.6] Mosquito: And it was always the ELRS we were waiting on.
[2709.6] Stephen: The rate negotiation, because like Crossfire, FrSky, all these other systems,
[2716.6] Stephen: they essentially just got one mode they operate in.
[2719.6] Stephen: Crossfire, you can tell it explicitly to go into a fast mode,
[2722.6] Stephen: but by default, they just have a single speed, right?
[2725.6] Stephen: So it's running at 50 hertz or 100 hertz or 150 hertz.
[2729.6] Stephen: And that's it.
[2731.6] Stephen: ELRS has in excess of 10 different modes that it can go at,
[2735.6] Stephen: from 50 hertz all the way up to 1,000 hertz with some weird things
[2740.6] Stephen: that are like double send modes.
[2742.6] Stephen: So it sends every update twice in case one of them is lost.
[2747.6] Stephen: So there's a ton of different modes.
[2749.6] Stephen: And the receiver doesn't know which one you selected on the transmitter.
[2755.6] Stephen: So it just cycles through all of them when it starts up
[2758.6] Stephen: until it hits the one that the transmitter is using,
[2762.6] Stephen: which is irritating, albeit very friendly to newbies,
[2766.6] Stephen: because they can't get anything wrong and it always connects.
[2769.6] Stephen: It just might take a couple of seconds.
[2772.6] Stephen: If you can't have something like a safety switch,
[2775.6] Stephen: which is what typically do, like on my RC cars and things,
[2780.6] Stephen: I just have an arm switch that's safe.
[2784.6] Stephen: So I link up, make sure I've got telemetry,
[2788.6] Stephen: and then arm when I'm ready to use the car.
[2791.6] Stephen: But if you don't want to set up your radio like that,
[2794.6] Stephen: you can go to the transmitter,
[2797.6] Stephen: and either when you flash it or in the Wi-Fi configuration dialog,
[2801.6] Stephen: instead of getting it to cycle through all of the modes,
[2804.6] Stephen: set it to the one you intend to use, and it'll lock onto that.
[2808.6] Stephen: That's what you want to do.
[2812.04] Stephen: I don't know the exact documentation,
[2814.04] Stephen: but that will allow you to fix the other problem,
[2817.04] Stephen: which is that you should read documentation.
[2821.04] Stephen: So go and find it.
[2823.04] Stephen: It's a very nice, friendly website,
[2825.04] Stephen: and if you can't get through,
[2828.04] Stephen: ask the LRS guys on Discord.
[2830.04] Stephen: There's hundreds of people there.
[2832.04] Stephen: They're not trolls, they're not obnoxious,
[2834.04] Stephen: they're really nice and friendly,
[2836.04] Stephen: and they don't mind answering questions.
[2838.04] Mosquito: So go ask.
[2840.04] Mosquito: There we go.
[2842.04] Mosquito: The other thing I thought I should point out with the wing racing,
[2846.04] Mosquito: I think there was at least three there
[2849.04] Mosquito: where foam boards, flying wings,
[2854.04] Mosquito: cut by hand, made from scratch,
[2859.04] Mosquito: so very cheap.
[2861.04] Mosquito: It's only got two servos,
[2863.04] Mosquito: an ESC, motor, prop, receiver,
[2867.04] Mosquito: and an FPV system.
[2870.04] Mosquito: So if you've flown a quad,
[2874.04] Mosquito: you can probably get into this very cheaply.
[2878.04] Mosquito: Turns out, stakes are very low.
[2881.04] Mosquito: It's good fun.
[2883.04] Mosquito: So if anyone does want to give it a go,
[2886.04] Mosquito: have a go.
[2888.04] Stephen: Right.
[2890.04] Stephen: I guess with that wing-tastic update, Frank,
[2893.04] Stephen: we're pretty much at the end of the show now.
[2896.04] Stephen: I certainly haven't got anything else they want to drop in.
[2899.04] Mosquito: I've got the beer of the week.
[2902.04] Mosquito: I've got a thirsty ferret.
[2904.04] Mosquito: I don't know where you stopped.
[2906.04] Stephen: I was on Cezanne de Avon from Lost and Grounded,
[2909.04] Stephen: same as last week, and yes, still delicious.
[2912.04] Stephen: Very nice drop.
[2914.04] Stephen: All gone now, unfortunately, I have to show for that.
[2917.04] Stephen: Highly recommended.
[2918.04] Stephen: Yeah, thirsty ferrets are a favorite of mine as well.
[2921.04] Stephen: Badger, right?
[2923.04] Mosquito: Yep.
[2925.04] Mosquito: I should also mention something has just popped into my head next week.
[2932.04] Mosquito: So from the 30th to...
[2935.04] Mosquito: 30th of May to the 2nd of June is EM Ashcamp.
[2942.04] Mosquito: I will be there, and on the Saturday evening,
[2946.04] Mosquito: at about 8 o'clock for two hours,
[2950.04] Mosquito: I have the use of Stage A, which is a big circus tent,
[2955.04] Mosquito: for doing whooping in.
[2958.04] Stephen: I'm conducting a study into the propagation of radio waves
[2962.04] Stephen: and reception thereof in a highly noisy RF environment.
[2966.04] Mosquito: You joke, but I am also in touch with a guy
[2972.04] Mosquito: who's running the Tesla coil village
[2975.04] Mosquito: about how we can negotiate not being wiped out by the cars.
[2981.04] Stephen: You switch off and go and have a nice dinner for a couple of hours.
[2986.04] Mosquito: Exactly. So, yeah, I will be there.
[2990.04] Mosquito: At some point, I imagine on Thursday,
[2992.04] Mosquito: wandering around with a few of us.
[2995.04] Mosquito: So this has been the London Aerospace Group
[2999.04] Mosquito: who basically got me into Jones and FPV in the first place.
[3004.04] Mosquito: So I'll be wandering around, one of us with some goggles on,
[3008.04] Mosquito: one of us holding a quad of timing with you,
[3012.04] Mosquito: and another one directing us,
[3014.04] Mosquito: trying to find out where the noise floor is acceptable.
[3018.04] Stephen: Is it going to be an everyone-fly-at-once type of deal?
[3022.04] Stephen: Because it's mostly going to be pilots knocking other pilots out of the air,
[3025.04] Stephen: if that's what you're doing.
[3027.04] Mosquito: No, we're going to have, because it's a big stage,
[3032.04] Mosquito: we're going to have full seats up on the stage,
[3035.04] Mosquito: each with an LED and channel attached to it.
[3039.04] Mosquito: And so, in any case, you fly out from your seat,
[3043.04] Mosquito: and you can fly around the...
[3045.04] Stephen: This being EMF camp, you might be able to synchronise some sort of LED colouring.
[3050.04] Mosquito: Yeah, that's the sort of thing.
[3053.04] Mosquito: Yeah, I've put it in the notes.
[3056.04] Mosquito: Like, if anyone's got LEDs,
[3059.04] Mosquito: consider working out how to use them.
[3063.04] Mosquito: I don't know much about any of that sort of thing.
[3068.04] Mosquito: So that will probably be...
[3069.04] Stephen: I think it's called WOOP FCs.
[3070.04] Stephen: Some AIOs are coming with LEDs on them.
[3073.04] Stephen: They're not super common, unfortunately.
[3075.04] Stephen: But unfortunately, I think it's like a 2-6 SFC,
[3080.04] Stephen: but there's one that comes with a whole bunch of LEDs festooned around it,
[3085.04] Stephen: not the one S boards.
[3087.04] Stephen: It's kind of sad.
[3089.04] Mosquito: Hmm, yeah.
[3092.04] Mosquito: I've just seen Caroline's message in the chat.
[3097.04] Mosquito: She would like to point out that she's never done any racing before,
[3100.04] Mosquito: and she beat me.
[3101.04] Mosquito: Yeah.
[3103.04] Mosquito: This is true.
[3104.04] Mosquito: Come on, now.
[3109.04] Jack: We're all...
[3110.04] Jack: Natural talent.
[3111.04] Jack: Natural talent, Caroline.
[3112.04] Jack: Yeah, exactly.
[3114.04] Jack: Being nice to Frank, not to say,
[3117.04] Jack: he's the only reason we've got a good...
[3120.04] Jack: It's the event photographer.
[3122.04] Mosquito: He was busy doing other things, clearly.
[3124.04] Mosquito: An official event photographer.
[3126.04] Mosquito: Exactly.
[3127.04] Jack: Yeah.
[3128.04] Jack: Tonight, I'm on the ThursdayNightShow.com.
[3134.04] Jack: I'm going to be playing some retro new wave, lost wave music,
[3142.04] Jack: talking about searching for songs.
[3147.04] Jack: We have no idea where they've come from.
[3150.04] Jack: So, yeah, from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.
[3154.04] Jack: 2 a.m.
[3156.04] Jack: A.m., in fact.
[3158.04] Jack: Sorry.
[3159.04] Jack: 1 a.m. to 2 a.m.
[3161.04] Jack: Yeah, so if you head over there,
[3163.04] Jack: you can listen to me and the time-traveling sex robot.
[3168.04] Jack: Play some music and talk and squabble.
[3172.04] Stephen: Nice.
[3174.38] Stephen: Lovely.
[3176.38] Stephen: Awesome.
[3177.38] Stephen: I've got nothing terribly exciting going on.
[3179.38] Stephen: I'm running another podcast.
[3182.38] Stephen: Ooh.
[3183.38] Stephen: But that's not really much overlap.
[3185.38] Stephen: It's more kind of IT-focused.
[3188.38] Stephen: So I started doing a podcast called Post Cloud,
[3192.38] Stephen: talking about beauty and things.
[3195.38] Stephen: But I'm not sure there's necessarily much overlap
[3197.38] Stephen: when you slide through it in the mix.
[3199.38] Jack: Do you want to see us out, Stephen?
[3201.38] Stephen: Thank you, everyone.
[3203.38] Stephen: You've been joined by myself, Stephen,
[3206.38] Stephen: our Lord and Master, Frank.
[3208.38] Mosquito: Bye.
[3209.38] Stephen: And our fearless leader, Jack.
[3211.38] Stephen: Oh, no, I'm not in charge, please, Frank.
[3213.38] Stephen: We'll see you all next week.
[3215.38] Stephen: Thank the patients.
[3217.38] Stephen: See you next week.
[3219.38] UNKNOWN: Telemetry lost.