=== Let's Drone Out — Episode 509 ===
Title: LDO 509 - Let's Smoke Out
Recorded: 2025-05-29
Hosts: Andrew "Frank" Hyams, Stephen "Belrik" Howell, Jack "Brightontillifly" Nash
Guest(s): (none recorded)
Total audience: 984
Platforms: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFyAk1uTCBw); SoundCloud (http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/2105538294-letsdroneout-ldo-509-lets-smoke-out.mp3)
=====================================

#letsdroneout #LDO #podcast #drone #mulitrotor #quadcopter #fatshark #impulseRC #ethix #brightontillifly #TeamBlackSheep #FPVUK #BLHeli #lipo #KISSULTRA #KissESC #esc #FlyDuino #JoshuaBardwell #Skitzo #Alien5 #MrSteele #FPVRacing #MiniAirShow #LondonFPV #UKFPV #betaflight #fpvdrones #FPVRacing #MiniQuad #podcast #fpvwing
let's drone out #BrightontillIfly #Fpv, #Drone, #Drone racing  #Quadcopter #Gopro, #Drone #KissFc #KissEsc #FPVwing #LondonFPV #Uk #Easa #betaflight #brightontillifly  #FPV #FPVdrones #letsdroneout #interview, #Jack #Brightonfpv #Naze32 #Help #Fix #Bug #blhelli #flyduno #Letsdroneout Alien5  #FPVDrone #MiniQuads #Turnigy #MiniQuad #Racing #FPVRacing #FPV #FPVBrighton #FPVUK #lipo #rottingdean #MiniAirshow #FPVCrash

[0.0] Jack: Hello and you're listening to Let'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 too.
[14.0] Jack: Carlos Campos.
[16.0] Jack: Art Faulkner.
[18.0] Stephen: Sam Dahmer.
[19.0] Stephen: On with the show.
[21.0] Frank: Let's Drone Out now.
[23.0] Stephen: Hello and welcome to Let's Drone Out. This week you are joined by Jack, aka Bright Until I Fly.
[57.42] Stephen: Can't drink properly.
[59.42] Stephen: Yeah.
[60.42] Stephen: Everyone's actual problem.
[62.42] Stephen: Good evening. Hello.
[64.42] Jack: And myself Stephen.
[65.42] Jack: Hello.
[66.42] Jack: Matt is an attacker.
[67.42] Jack: How are you going to watch your sleep?
[70.42] Jack: You're messing with me.
[72.42] Jack: Oi.
[74.42] Stephen: It's too busy.
[75.42] Stephen: I'm going to catch it.
[77.42] Stephen: After a spate of drone tangential efforts, someone has been exceedingly busy.
[86.42] Stephen: The kind of smoke that comes from grandiose displays of elegance and power and not from setting things on fire.
[93.42] Stephen: So without further ado, Frank.
[96.42] Frank: Yes.
[98.42] Frank: Yeah, it's been an interesting few weeks playing around with various things.
[104.42] Frank: Beating up a lot with Greg from Menace RC.
[107.42] Frank: So there's new exciting things on the horizon from Menace.
[111.42] Frank: So you want to skip all of this and just learn all about the new stuff.
[117.42] Frank: The LDO secret code for learning about new stuff from Menace is if you go to Menace's website and find the contact form
[126.42] Frank: and stick in your email and in the subject line put smoke in exclamation mark no G like Jim Carrey from the mask.
[134.42] Frank: Smoke in exclamation mark.
[137.42] Frank: Then he will let you all know about the latest release before anyone else other than if you've listened to this then you'll know a bit more.
[146.42] Frank: But, you know, there we go.
[148.42] Frank: LDO secret hack.
[153.42] Frank: Yeah.
[156.42] Frank: We me and Greg first met up in this sequence of events a couple of weeks ago at Papa Mayor show, which I think Jack has tried to share some of his tiny stuff that he was he was doing.
[172.42] Frank: But I've got some photos.
[173.42] Frank: If you want to see some photos and share some of those won't be any good for the people listening along.
[178.42] Jack: But my DVR wasn't great for anyone watching along.
[184.42] Jack: It was terrible.
[186.42] Frank: This isn't Jack Sanguis.
[188.42] Frank: This is a child.
[190.42] Frank: Yeah, definitely child sized.
[193.42] Frank: I would say only in that.
[196.42] Frank: Yeah, that's where Tony's been.
[198.42] Frank: He's been in that and he's got blown away and he's off in the distance across the channel with pedal power by the looks of it.
[206.42] Jack: Yeah.
[209.42] Jack: Yeah.
[210.42] Frank: And it really does look like an actual person is in there because I don't have the photo of it where you see his face.
[215.42] Frank: But yeah, when it's at the distance sort of drifting along and he's got his scarf fluttering in the breeze.
[221.42] Frank: It doesn't look like.
[222.42] Frank: Wow.
[224.42] Frank: He's drifted out.
[225.42] Stephen: He's the bravest person in the world because it's like two pieces of string go plink.
[232.42] Stephen: Then all of a sudden things are very bad indeed.
[235.42] Frank: Yeah.
[236.42] Frank: Yeah.
[237.42] Frank: But this is the sort of stuff that was on the main flight line at Poppam covered, as you can see, in the distance by Don from Essential RC is covering everything.
[247.42] Frank: So I'm sure if anyone follows Essential RC's YouTube channel, you'll see all this stuff.
[253.42] Frank: And maybe if you look very hard in the background, you'll be able to see Greg and I and possibly a Jack occasionally off in the distance on where the when the spectators are allowed to be.
[264.42] Frank: This is is quite a big distance between the crowd line and the flying at Poppam.
[271.42] Frank: But, you know, safety first and all that, I suppose.
[275.42] Frank: Grudgingly.
[276.42] Frank: Yeah, exactly.
[278.42] Frank: They had some some faster things as well, like this turbo prop.
[282.42] Frank: It's all nicely fiberglassed and was making good noises and they make good noises and good smells and stuff.
[288.42] Frank: Yeah, you know, they had a wide range of things.
[291.42] Frank: Me and Greg were going up and down the flight line, looking at all the stores and having a chat with them because we went on the Sunday.
[300.42] Frank: Apparently, the Saturday was extremely packed, very, very busy.
[304.42] Frank: So I think the traders were all a bit slightly worn out by the Sunday by the time me and Greg got there.
[310.42] Frank: But, yeah, it seemed like they had a good time.
[314.42] Frank: But, yeah, Sunday was a was a bit less busy than it had been on a Saturday.
[321.42] Frank: So if you want to go to Poppam in future events, I would recommend the Saturday might be the day to go.
[327.42] Frank: So cute little helicopter.
[329.42] Frank: Yeah, this was this was cool.
[330.42] Frank: They had a bunch of helicopters there doing a display, sort of breaking up the flight line and having different helicopters flying down the display.
[338.42] Frank: So at one end, there was there's a little airwolf at the other end.
[341.42] Frank: There was a big airwolf and in the middle, there was this water bomber, I guess, firefighting helicopter, doing a little demo where it would go in, dip its little bucket in the pool, fill out the bucket and then go over somewhere else and dump the water.
[359.42] Frank: It was quite fun.
[360.42] Frank: Yeah.
[361.42] Frank: As he's saying, it was it was a load of smoke, which, you know, as you'll learn later on, me and Greg were very excited about saying lots of smoke and trying to see what's going on there and how that was done.
[377.42] Frank: In fact, that was and this is this is an enormous thing.
[381.42] Frank: This is like basically the size of a manned aircraft, I would say, from from what I could see.
[388.42] Frank: It was just enormous.
[390.42] Stephen: This I would get because it looks like it's going pretty slow.
[394.42] Frank: Oh, yeah, this is like, yeah, offering basically a very 3D thing with enormous.
[401.42] Frank: So if you see the the elevons on its tail are more than half of the like tail are like elevators.
[411.42] Frank: So, yeah, lots of lots of control surface to throw about the sky.
[417.42] Frank: Very exciting. Lots of smoke.
[420.42] Stephen: Good fun.
[424.42] Frank: We we saw what it was in the main flight lines and we went into the into the tent and immediately as a Jack behind behind the netting behind the safety netting soldering away as we know that's that's Jack's happiness is with a soldering iron in his hand.
[442.42] Frank: But it's enormous event going on surrounded by people.
[445.42] Frank: No, it's not something or something.
[450.42] Frank: Yeah.
[452.42] Frank: This is in the the tiny book end of the big top that they have at Poppam.
[458.42] Frank: So they have the enormous enormous marquee.
[462.42] Frank: I mean, calling it a marquee is a service to it.
[465.42] Frank: It's it's very tall, very big.
[468.42] Frank: And they put it up at the beginning of a few shows and they keep it through a whole few shows that they do at Poppam.
[474.42] Frank: So there's light aircraft and manned aircraft.
[479.42] Frank: Think they have like a classic car show and they have the model show and they have something else as well.
[483.42] Frank: Motorbikes, perhaps.
[485.42] Frank: And this this big tent covers all of them over the month.
[489.42] Frank: And so the one end of it, I've been there already in the region helping Chris with a K net it off and they've been putting up a tiny whip track in there.
[502.42] Frank: And so they were doing tiny racing in there all weekend, which was fun to see some of these things whipping around all the all the gates and stuff.
[512.42] Frank: But Jack was in there grabbing hold of things and soldering them as it is.
[519.42] Stephen: Did you get out and fly?
[521.42] Frank: Yes. Yes, Jack did fly briefly.
[526.42] Frank: So next to the tiny whoops is the drift cars and they've been there before.
[530.42] Frank: This is a clipping point is the club that does these little RC drift cars, which, you know, very much.
[540.42] Frank: There's there's a good atmosphere in the big top between the tiny way because they're having a little party.
[546.42] Frank: The drift races are having a little party.
[548.42] Frank: The party is all merged.
[550.42] Frank: It's all all good fun in there.
[551.42] Frank: Everyone's having a good laugh.
[552.42] Frank: Out on the flight line, you've got some very serious things.
[556.42] Frank: It's all very serious.
[558.42] Frank: But for something where everyone's playing around with big boys toys, it's, I would say, a bit stage.
[566.42] Frank: But you come into the tent and it's a big party.
[568.42] Frank: It's quite good.
[570.42] Stephen: So are they spraying down the track to keep it slick?
[573.42] Frank: No, it's just very hard plastic cheating and very hard plastic tires.
[580.42] Frank: And they just skid about everywhere.
[583.42] Frank: They some of them have gyros in them that control the steering so that the wheels point more in the direction of where it's going.
[593.42] Frank: So it kind of holds the drift for you.
[596.42] Frank: But even then, when I had to go and when Jack had to go, it's it's still not easy.
[607.42] Frank: Yeah, it's still a challenge, definitely.
[611.42] Frank: But so they've been there last year and Jack was like, oh, I want to FPV that.
[616.42] Frank: So this year he came prepared, mostly.
[619.42] Frank: Awesome soldering.
[622.42] Frank: And so added FPV onto one of the drift cars.
[628.42] Frank: So this is Jack's little, this is what he was soldering together and putting together.
[633.42] Frank: Nice little all in one.
[637.42] Stephen: Well, I wouldn't say all in one because there's a lead to spring down after the battery.
[641.42] Frank: Well, yeah, it's the cameras and all in one.
[645.42] Frank: I'm trying to see how it works.
[650.42] Stephen: Do we have any interior footage?
[653.42] Frank: I think Jack's DVR was the problem there.
[657.42] Frank: It was definitely going.
[661.42] Frank: The guy who owned the car, who actually knows how to drift it, had to go.
[666.42] Frank: Because we were thinking, oh, the field of view is going to be so narrow.
[669.42] Frank: You're not going to be able to see where it's going.
[671.42] Frank: Because obviously, when the car is going sideways, the camera is not pointing sideways.
[677.42] Frank: Yeah, but it is a very wide angle camera, right?
[680.42] Frank: But it's a very wide angle camera.
[682.42] Frank: And we were all sort of having to look through the goggles as well, having a ride along because it's analog.
[687.42] Frank: And so you can just tune all the goggles into it.
[689.42] Stephen: But he wasn't held back by the fact that the camera didn't go with the steering.
[693.42] Stephen: And he was able to do that.
[694.42] Frank: No, no, no.
[696.42] Frank: He was drifting this round.
[698.42] Frank: And he said it was not as easy for him just because of muscle memory to do it via the FPV than it was line of sight.
[707.42] Frank: But he was doing it.
[709.42] Frank: And it looked good to us.
[711.42] Frank: And you could see where it was going.
[713.42] Frank: You could see everything around.
[714.42] Stephen: It was good.
[716.42] Stephen: So drifting, I've played some computer games and I've been terrible at it.
[720.42] Stephen: But it's not speed.
[723.42] Stephen: So how do you score a drift race?
[727.42] Stephen: Who is the best?
[728.42] Frank: It didn't seem to be a problem.
[731.42] Frank: As far as I could tell, competition wasn't really an element of what was going on here.
[738.42] Frank: At least at Pop'em, it didn't seem to be a competitive endeavor.
[743.42] Frank: It seems more about...
[745.42] Stephen: I'm just wondering how they decide who is the best at drifting.
[749.42] Stephen: It's all...
[750.42] Stephen: It's about to not hit stuff, but beyond that.
[752.42] Jack: Yeah.
[753.42] Jack: It's about style.
[760.42] Jack: It's how close you get to things without hitting them.
[765.42] Jack: And also it's about chaining drifts together.
[770.42] Jack: So the more that you can sustain a drift and then flick into the next one to go around
[778.42] Jack: the next corner.
[779.42] Stephen: So it's about joining them together with minimal interruption.
[782.42] Stephen: Yeah.
[783.42] Jack: Let's see.
[785.42] Frank: Yeah, so I think I'm right in saying that you soldered that on site, Jack.
[791.42] Frank: That was what you were soldering, right?
[793.42] Jack: Because my batteries changed from the old MX connector to the BT 2.0 connector.
[807.42] Jack: So I had to change.
[810.42] Jack: It was something that I thought about and then forgotten in the year.
[818.42] Jack: And then when I grabbed it, I was like, ah, that won't work.
[821.42] Jack: And then I grabbed a big power lead and was like, I'll solder it when I get there.
[825.42] Jack: I'd done the 3D print and I'd done the antenna for the camera.
[832.42] Jack: I just...
[833.42] Jack: My batteries had changed.
[837.42] Frank: And as Richard Boric in the chat suggests, if you're into...
[843.42] Frank: Oh, and that wasn't what I saw.
[845.42] Frank: I thought I saw a comment where someone had said,
[849.42] Frank: and the RC has done FPV in an RC drift car and in the indoor bit
[854.42] Frank: with a little smoke machine as well.
[857.42] Frank: So I'm going to check them out.
[859.42] Frank: Also very relevant.
[864.42] Frank: Yeah.
[865.42] Frank: So then the whoopers got involved with the drifting as well.
[868.42] Frank: So there's tiny whoops flying around drift cars, racing around the track.
[873.42] Frank: So like chasing the drift cars with a five inch of the full scale drift cars,
[879.42] Frank: this was chasing the model scale drift cars with tiny whoops.
[885.42] Frank: And it looks great fun.
[887.42] Frank: I had a go on...
[889.42] Frank: I think it was Jack's.
[890.42] Frank: You gave me a go, right?
[891.42] Frank: Yeah.
[892.42] Frank: I do not have the skill for this.
[895.42] Frank: That's the problem of the limitation of skill in this area.
[898.42] Frank: But it was Matt, wasn't it?
[901.42] Frank: Mini Rolls Roll from Birmingham Tiny Whoopers was down and chasing...
[906.42] Frank: I think it was his because it's got lots of LEDs on it.
[909.42] Frank: And I know his has lots of LEDs.
[913.42] Frank: And doing a great job of chasing everything else around this track.
[917.42] Frank: That was a good fun.
[919.42] Frank: It's nice when you have these disparate communities just having a laugh together.
[924.42] Jack: It's a good fun.
[925.42] Jack: And he was on analog.
[928.42] Jack: So he wasn't even HD zero.
[933.82] Stephen: Well, these peasants never learn.
[935.82] Frank: Yeah.
[936.82] Frank: And there's like some funny ones like this one here.
[939.82] Frank: I didn't get a picture or a video of it.
[941.82] Frank: Sorry Jack.
[942.82] Stephen: I just see Jack's like...
[946.82] Stephen: Sorry Jack.
[949.82] Frank: This one had like LEDs in the headlights.
[952.82] Frank: It also had LEDs in the exhaust.
[954.82] Frank: So it sort of like backfired and glow the LEDs.
[958.82] Frank: They went somewhere on these models.
[961.82] Frank: And then we were all just mobbing him while he was flying.
[966.82] Frank: That's the worst photo of me.
[969.82] Stephen: I look terrible.
[970.82] Stephen: You do seem to be as hunched as any human being could ever be.
[974.82] Jack: That's his FPV pose.
[976.82] Jack: I was, yeah.
[978.82] Jack: I was chin-bandying it.
[981.82] Frank: We got some cooling in the marquee as well.
[986.39] Frank: Active cooling.
[988.39] Frank: Yeah.
[989.39] Frank: Active cooling courtesy of this Mavic that was hovering about above us.
[994.39] Frank: Slightly unnerving until you got the down-draft from it.
[997.39] Frank: And then it was very welcome.
[998.39] Frank: It could stay there as much as it liked after that.
[1001.39] Frank: It was quite toasty in the marquee.
[1005.39] Frank: Sweaty.
[1006.39] Stephen: Yes.
[1007.39] Stephen: Yes.
[1008.39] Stephen: Exactly.
[1009.39] Stephen: It's a morgue in the chat.
[1011.39] Stephen: It says bits bits.
[1013.39] Stephen: Scaled drift car has gears and a handbrake all on a programmed Arduino with HD FPV.
[1019.39] Stephen: Wow.
[1020.39] Stephen: Sounds insane.
[1022.39] Stephen: I love that.
[1023.39] Stephen: No.
[1024.39] Stephen: Above and beyond the call of duty level of engineering.
[1026.39] Stephen: Sounds fantastic.
[1028.39] Jack: That is amazing.
[1030.39] Jack: Nice.
[1032.39] Jack: I wonder what that hard track is actually made out of though.
[1037.39] Jack: I reckon.
[1038.39] Jack: Is it some sort of like greasy, naturally greasy Dela room or something?
[1043.39] Frank: I thought it was just like HDPE or something.
[1046.39] Frank: I don't think it was anything particularly special.
[1049.39] Jack: It's just going to be a polymer, isn't it?
[1051.39] Frank: Yeah.
[1052.39] Jack: I've got James's number, the guy who opens the track, so we could text him.
[1059.39] Frank: And then shortly after that, I went up to John Lancaster's scale.
[1067.39] Frank: FPV invitational and dragged along both Andy RC, Bill, if he's listening, and Greg as well
[1076.39] Frank: for menace.
[1077.39] Frank: And so if you don't remember or didn't hear because of technical issues on episode 500.
[1088.39] Frank: So we have the like these scale FPV cock bits on aircraft.
[1093.39] Frank: And this was back from the Channel 4 back in 2018.
[1098.39] Frank: We were sticking FPV in scale models and sort of trying to recreate the Battle of Britain in a funny sort of way.
[1107.39] Frank: And that sort of carried on.
[1109.39] Frank: We kept meeting up going to BMFA Buckminster and carrying on with scale models with pan tilt systems and head tracking and stuff.
[1118.39] Stephen: Did you have multiple pan tilts on the larger models?
[1121.39] Stephen: Because some of those bombers would have had a quite large crew.
[1124.39] Frank: Oh, yeah.
[1125.39] Frank: Yeah.
[1126.39] Frank: There's ones where the gunners have got pan tilt systems and got multiple points of view.
[1131.39] Frank: Also got slightly less scale models where we're just sticking like pan tilt stuff.
[1138.39] Stephen: I think that's exactly how they used to do it in World War II with 30 on the side of the cockpit.
[1145.39] Frank: I mean, it's been more and more in terms of the variety.
[1151.39] Frank: So it's not a start with a lot of warbirds because of the Battle of Britain is where the group started.
[1157.39] Frank: But it's been expanding out as we've dragged in Andy and Phil as well.
[1161.39] Frank: They've been bringing their cubs and he's brought his typhoon.
[1166.39] Frank: Chris is one of the Germans who comes over very regularly as this lovely jet,
[1173.39] Frank: which was facing everything around and looks great fun.
[1178.39] Stephen: I can't remember what it was.
[1180.39] Stephen: It seems a bit risky.
[1182.39] Stephen: It seems like they've got an open cockpit on that jet.
[1186.39] Stephen: I'm not sure that's necessarily what pilots would prefer.
[1190.39] Frank: Yeah.
[1191.39] Frank: All the EDFs and stuff, because EDFs were very popular this year,
[1196.39] Frank: they do all have open cockpits.
[1198.39] Frank: They haven't seen anyone who's had a glazed cockpit FPV or fully glazed,
[1203.39] Frank: just because it's sometimes the canopy,
[1206.39] Frank: but the bit ahead where you're usually looking is usually not glazed
[1210.39] Frank: because it's very hard to get it clear enough and sort of flat enough
[1214.39] Frank: and free of scratches enough to be able to see through it.
[1217.39] Frank: So it's not so much that.
[1219.39] Jack: Yeah, not horrible reflections.
[1221.39] Frank: Yeah.
[1222.39] Jack: Interesting pose we've captured there.
[1226.39] Frank: Yeah, exactly.
[1227.39] Frank: There's a lot of other stuff.
[1228.39] Frank: I mean, it's a fairly loose and free kind of group mucking around with things.
[1233.39] Frank: So there's Mavics.
[1234.39] Frank: There's a big 3D stuff.
[1237.39] Frank: There's a lot of banter, I would say, all good-natured, all good film.
[1244.39] Frank: And there's a few beers and a few pizzas.
[1248.39] Frank: And it's, yeah, I would highly recommend if you get a chance to come along.
[1253.39] Frank: If you do a load of scale FPV or head-prepping FPV,
[1257.39] Frank: get in touch because John's always looking for more people
[1261.39] Frank: that are doing similar things to invite along to the May events.
[1265.39] Frank: There's also Martin Thompson here, who you may remember,
[1271.39] Frank: from the Wings and Wheels show that we did a year or so ago
[1276.39] Frank: on the right here.
[1278.39] Frank: The one is significantly shorter than the other two.
[1282.39] Frank: He is making his own balsa kits,
[1287.39] Frank: but he is worth keeping in mind for the end of the show.
[1291.39] Stephen: It looks like a pretty simple kit.
[1293.39] Stephen: That appears to be just a single sheet with a mouthful.
[1296.39] Frank: It is more complex than that, certainly.
[1300.39] Frank: It's got quite a bit to it, but it's a retooling of a classic,
[1307.39] Frank: I think you would like it described as.
[1311.39] Stephen: For our audio listeners, we're looking at a plane
[1314.39] Stephen: where we can largely see underneath that.
[1317.39] Stephen: It's pretty flat.
[1320.39] Frank: It's a built-up delta wing.
[1323.39] Frank: It's got some hand-held grips.
[1326.39] Frank: It's got tail fins.
[1328.39] Frank: I think it's purely Elavon-controlled
[1332.39] Frank: and has a space for a big engine up the front.
[1336.39] Frank: Vroom, vroom.
[1339.39] Frank: He's a big fan of the balsa and the IC,
[1343.39] Frank: but more stuff to come.
[1349.74] Frank: He's doing this under the Black Raven Aerosports.
[1355.74] Frank: He's got a lot of hats that he wears,
[1359.74] Frank: but just remember Martin Topson.
[1361.74] Frank: He's important to remember.
[1363.74] Frank: Yes, he has hats.
[1365.74] Frank: Back to the head tracking and the scale FPV and stuff.
[1368.74] Frank: These head tracker modules,
[1372.74] Frank: I had my information set.
[1375.74] Frank: I have not had much luck with that.
[1378.74] Stephen: He's still going to manage to get it to listen to you,
[1381.74] Stephen: obey your commands.
[1383.74] Frank: No, it does for a little while and then gets distracted.
[1387.74] Frank: As any of us do.
[1390.74] Frank: Absolutely.
[1392.74] Frank: Slightly annoying, so I ended up not using it very much.
[1397.74] Frank: As well as the scale stuff,
[1401.74] Frank: there's challenges or goals, I guess, from the flying.
[1406.74] Frank: A couple of bitches here were being used
[1410.74] Frank: to try to do some in-flight refueling.
[1414.74] Frank: One of them had a little probe on the front with a little magnet.
[1417.74] Frank: Tom was trailing a drogue
[1421.74] Frank: and then there was some probe and drogue
[1424.74] Frank: in-flight refueling simulation that looked good fun.
[1431.74] Frank: Tom on the right here did a grand job of rebuilding this Bixler
[1435.74] Frank: which suffered greatly over the course of the week, I think.
[1439.74] Frank: There's a lot of that kind of stuff going on.
[1445.37] Frank: We do still have a lot of the scale stuff
[1448.37] Frank: and even when there's a load of line of sight stuff going up,
[1453.37] Frank: like spitfires and decoders and things, hurricanes and whatnot,
[1459.37] Frank: there's still a load of FPV going on.
[1462.37] Frank: So this sort of a furball of scale models going up
[1470.37] Frank: will have a bunch of line of sight models going up,
[1473.37] Frank: a bunch of FPV models going up
[1475.37] Frank: and a sort of fly information all at the same time altogether,
[1479.37] Frank: which is a challenge, definitely, but it's good fun.
[1484.37] Frank: So that's the kind of stuff we were doing there.
[1489.37] Frank: Andy was getting involved as well.
[1492.37] Frank: Greg was sort of dragged along for the ride,
[1496.37] Frank: but you will see why in a little bit.
[1502.37] Frank: Andy also brought his EDF glider.
[1504.37] Frank: We had a lot of chasing between various things.
[1508.37] Frank: And we had the formation flying.
[1510.37] Frank: This is pure FPV formation flying.
[1512.37] Frank: This was my favorite bit of...
[1515.37] Stephen: It's the trick thing.
[1516.37] Stephen: You could have just done that and I haven't gone and grabbed the cover.
[1521.37] Frank: Yeah.
[1522.37] Frank: Well, that's not the fun bit, is it?
[1528.37] Frank: Yeah.
[1529.37] Frank: So doing all sorts of formation flying.
[1531.37] Frank: This is Phil and Andy doing mirror passes.
[1534.37] Frank: So if you check out on Andy R.C.'s channel,
[1536.37] Frank: you'll see where they've been practicing sort of...
[1540.37] Frank: I don't think there's people on the way out.
[1542.37] Frank: ...pericastics information.
[1543.37] Frank: Yeah.
[1544.37] Frank: But there's also the scale stuff and the EDFs.
[1548.37] Frank: A lot of EDFs over the course of the week.
[1551.37] Stephen: Well, people love to trash talk EDFs, but they're pretty popular, huh?
[1555.37] Stephen: Yeah.
[1556.37] Frank: Well, the sort of thing about the Model Squadron stuff is like,
[1558.37] Frank: although there is a bit of bolster and a bit of IC,
[1561.37] Frank: most of it is electric foamies,
[1563.37] Frank: which means that there's not a lot of snobbery.
[1567.37] Frank: Everyone's very happy to sort of fly anything.
[1572.37] Frank: Everything goes up together.
[1574.37] Frank: It's a very welcoming group, I would say.
[1578.37] Frank: It's good fun.
[1579.37] Frank: Cool.
[1580.37] Frank: But yeah, lots of EDFs this year,
[1584.37] Frank: both from Andy R.C. and Phil,
[1587.37] Frank: but also a lot of others were brought along as well.
[1591.37] Frank: So yeah, all kind of good stuff all happening together
[1596.37] Frank: and making use of the BMFA Buckminster site,
[1602.37] Frank: which we were flying not only during the day,
[1605.37] Frank: but well into the night.
[1607.37] Frank: Andy R.C. with his afterburners on here
[1610.37] Frank: and LEDs and stuff.
[1613.37] Frank: Great stuff for seeing that.
[1615.37] Jack: Such a good photo.
[1618.37] Frank: Nice.
[1619.37] Frank: I'm very happy with it.
[1622.37] Frank: But some of these new EDFs as well.
[1626.37] Frank: Lots of spotters.
[1628.37] Frank: Need lots of spotters, obviously.
[1630.37] Frank: Always flying in the spotter.
[1632.37] Jack: The urban camo as well on that plane.
[1637.37] Jack: Yeah.
[1638.37] Jack: Oh, that's problems going to happen.
[1641.37] Frank: Into the combat, yeah.
[1643.37] Frank: So we're doing sort of a streamer combat
[1646.37] Frank: with some of the more well bruised foamies.
[1655.37] Jack: Expendable foamies.
[1657.37] Frank: Expendable foamies, yeah.
[1659.37] Frank: So including ones where they gained extra streamers
[1665.37] Frank: courtesy of the battery coming out
[1667.37] Frank: and being dragged around on the battery lead.
[1670.37] Frank: But no one managed to get those extra streamers, luckily.
[1675.37] Frank: And big stuff as well.
[1677.37] Stephen: So that what I thought was the rudder, what's it?
[1682.37] Stephen: That's just the battery hanging out the top on the last shot.
[1685.37] Frank: Yeah.
[1686.37] Frank: Yeah.
[1688.37] Frank: So this is sort of to compare
[1691.37] Frank: the size of some of the models that are flying there
[1694.37] Frank: versus this is mine down in the bottom left.
[1697.37] Frank: That's my biggest model.
[1700.37] Stephen: Yours is a lot further away from the camera, obviously.
[1703.37] Frank: Really?
[1704.37] Frank: Yeah.
[1705.37] Frank: That's why it's in front of his foot.
[1706.37] Frank: It's peeled over.
[1708.37] Frank: Only...
[1713.37] Frank: Tony could live in that.
[1715.37] Frank: Yeah.
[1716.37] Frank: Some big stuff.
[1717.37] Frank: But what me and Greg were there for
[1719.37] Frank: was to mess around with this smoke system.
[1723.37] Frank: So, I mean, this is back from, like,
[1728.37] Frank: when we first did the Channel 4 show
[1730.37] Frank: and we were setting off smoke grenades
[1732.37] Frank: on the Battle of Britain models,
[1736.37] Frank: the Spitfires and the 109s and things.
[1739.37] Frank: And that smoke system was finicky.
[1743.37] Frank: It was not reliable, I would say.
[1746.37] Frank: And so I messaged Greg being like,
[1750.37] Frank: there must be a better way to do this.
[1752.37] Frank: And he's already had a go using the Menace RC switch
[1757.37] Frank: to control bits to be able to set off a smoke.
[1762.37] Frank: But after much nagging,
[1767.37] Frank: both from Andy RC and from me,
[1770.37] Frank: Menace has got a new smoke system
[1774.37] Frank: which will be coming out shortly.
[1777.37] Frank: So, let me show you.
[1779.37] Frank: That is the sort of size that we're talking about.
[1784.37] Frank: It is not big.
[1785.37] Frank: I see a capacitor.
[1786.37] Frank: Basically capacitor.
[1787.37] Frank: I can see some screws.
[1788.37] Frank: And I see a JST.
[1790.37] Frank: Yeah.
[1791.37] Frank: Yeah.
[1792.37] Jack: Basically capacitor with a little board.
[1795.37] Jack: And tool-less connections as well.
[1800.37] Stephen: Tool-less connections.
[1801.37] Stephen: Those are definitely screw terminals.
[1804.37] Frank: These are screw terminals.
[1805.37] Frank: This is one of the pre-production ones
[1807.37] Frank: that we were testing at this weekend.
[1809.37] Frank: There is definitely plans to go
[1813.37] Frank: for some spring terminals somewhere
[1815.37] Frank: to make it a bit easier to quick swap them out.
[1817.37] Stephen: I can check it's waving spring terminals aggressive.
[1820.37] Frank: Yeah.
[1822.37] Frank: Yeah.
[1823.37] Frank: So, this is on this little plane here,
[1826.37] Frank: which Bill, I'm very happy to...
[1829.37] Stephen: I see some plane protection there.
[1833.37] Stephen: It looks like several thick cats have died
[1835.37] Stephen: to keep your plane safe.
[1837.37] Frank: Exactly.
[1838.37] Frank: So, this is the sacrificial plane
[1840.37] Frank: to have a first go at it.
[1843.37] Stephen: For our audio listeners,
[1845.37] Stephen: the bottom of Frank's plane looks like
[1848.37] Stephen: it's been in the barbecue.
[1850.37] Frank: Yeah.
[1851.37] Frank: Don't be fooled, though.
[1852.37] Frank: That is not burn.
[1853.37] Frank: That is dye.
[1854.37] Frank: That's flavour.
[1855.37] Frank: So, the smoke grenades
[1858.37] Frank: make their smoke and colour
[1860.37] Frank: by spitting out a lot of dye stuff.
[1864.37] Frank: And so, I mean, it is a pyrotechnic.
[1868.37] Frank: So, it does get hot.
[1869.37] Stephen: Is there a napkin to make sure it goes into the air
[1871.37] Stephen: and not onto the fuselage then?
[1873.37] Stephen: Do you need to consider it?
[1874.37] Stephen: Yes.
[1875.37] Stephen: Absolutely.
[1876.37] Frank: Yeah.
[1877.37] Frank: We learnt this on the sacrificial one.
[1880.37] Frank: You basically don't need very much at all distance
[1883.37] Frank: between the nozzle and the foam.
[1886.37] Frank: But, yeah, as a first check to be like,
[1889.37] Frank: does this destroy foam?
[1891.37] Frank: No.
[1892.37] Frank: I've taped it right up against the foam in my plane.
[1894.37] Frank: And the foam itself is...
[1897.37] Frank: What I was kind of getting at is that,
[1898.37] Stephen: is there a better way of mounting smoke
[1901.37] Stephen: with diffusers and things to direct the smoke?
[1905.37] Frank: Absolutely.
[1907.37] Frank: So, this was sort of the first attempt.
[1912.37] Stephen: Let me...
[1914.37] Stephen: Because the trouble with smoke,
[1915.37] Stephen: often from a quad point of view,
[1917.37] Stephen: is it's quite difficult to obtain.
[1920.37] Stephen: And when you do get it up on quads,
[1922.37] Stephen: it's incredibly underwhelming
[1924.37] Stephen: because it just all gets blown out of the way.
[1926.37] Stephen: Obviously, in a plane, you don't have to worry as much.
[1928.37] Stephen: But at the same time,
[1930.37] Stephen: you want to see a nice chunky line of smoke, don't you?
[1933.37] Stephen: Not just a haze.
[1935.37] Frank: Yeah.
[1936.37] Frank: So, the important bit is to use the,
[1941.37] Frank: or at least from our experience,
[1943.37] Frank: and we've tried a bunch of different things.
[1945.37] Frank: The key bit is the Enola Gay smokes,
[1949.37] Frank: the EG...
[1951.37] Frank: So, we were using EGWP40s
[1954.37] Frank: and EG Micro smokes.
[1958.37] Frank: Right.
[1959.37] Frank: So, those seem to be the ones that...
[1961.37] Stephen: Can I translate how many terms those are?
[1963.37] Stephen: Hmm?
[1964.37] Stephen: Translated into newbie layman's terms, those are?
[1967.37] Stephen: Those are...
[1970.37] Stephen: What sets them apart from other things?
[1973.37] Frank: WP40 is that big.
[1976.37] Stephen: Right.
[1977.37] Stephen: And...
[1978.37] Stephen: Is that spent or unused?
[1980.37] Frank: Yep.
[1981.37] Frank: No, it's spent.
[1983.37] Stephen: I like the words,
[1984.37] Stephen: yes, that is spent or unused.
[1987.37] Frank: And that is a...
[1989.37] Frank: What do they call it?
[1990.37] Frank: An EG25.
[1991.37] Frank: That's the micro...
[1992.37] Stephen: That's a little bit more compact.
[1993.37] Stephen: Yep.
[1994.37] Frank: That's a smaller one.
[1996.37] Stephen: So, does that have millilitre capacity or weight or what?
[2000.37] Frank: I think it's the diameter of the tube, seems to be.
[2006.37] Frank: But...
[2008.37] Frank: There we go.
[2009.37] Frank: In millimeters.
[2011.37] Frank: That seems to be the big difference.
[2013.37] Frank: But yeah, so having tried out the little one
[2015.37] Frank: and worked out what could work there,
[2017.37] Frank: I got my bigger cub and stuck a couple of...
[2021.37] Frank: I'm sticking a couple of them on there.
[2024.37] Frank: And there we go.
[2025.37] Frank: No scorches, no...
[2028.37] Stephen: In this photograph for audio listeners,
[2030.37] Stephen: Andrew has more sensibly tied it to a wing strut
[2033.37] Stephen: well away from the foam of the aircraft.
[2036.37] Jack: And the prop from buffering and diffusing.
[2039.37] Jack: Yeah.
[2040.37] Frank: Yeah, all of that.
[2042.37] Frank: So that's...
[2043.37] Frank: From that sort of distance,
[2045.37] Frank: you didn't see it, not even on the tail plane.
[2047.37] Frank: Absolutely nothing.
[2048.37] Frank: It didn't cover anything.
[2050.37] Frank: Which is nice.
[2051.37] Frank: So we tried sticking the bigger ones on it.
[2053.37] Frank: Still worked.
[2054.37] Frank: All good.
[2056.37] Frank: So then, Andy and Phil were coming along.
[2060.37] Frank: And so we were sharing out the smoke systems.
[2065.37] Frank: Andy brought along this nice little thing that he'd worked out.
[2068.37] Frank: Like a GoPro mount or something.
[2070.37] Frank: Yeah, printing a holder for the big smokes
[2074.37] Frank: that clips into the GoPro mount.
[2077.37] Frank: We had the spring clamps that he'd found.
[2079.37] Frank: So this made it nice and quick.
[2081.37] Frank: And we could just sort of swap them out
[2083.37] Frank: and keep trying all the different colors that Gregor brought along.
[2085.37] Frank: Nice.
[2086.37] Frank: So that was all good fun.
[2090.37] Frank: And then after me and Phil and Andy had been playing about with it,
[2095.37] Frank: left it with some of the other Model Squadron guys.
[2099.37] Frank: And with basically no instruction,
[2102.37] Frank: they worked out how to get it to work and get it to work safely
[2106.37] Frank: and get it on their spit and fly smoke around.
[2110.37] Frank: So that was a success.
[2113.37] Frank: Very successful week.
[2116.37] Frank: So I do have some DVR footage as well of us playing around.
[2123.37] Frank: Me and Andy and Phil playing around with the smoke.
[2127.37] Frank: So if I manage to get to it, I will show you that as well.
[2133.37] Frank: This episode was recorded in front of a live online audience,
[2136.37] Frank: downloaded and edited to make sense when it played audio only,
[2139.37] Frank: censored to please the iTunes people,
[2141.37] Frank: hosted on the internet,
[2142.37] Frank: forwarded through to your podcast provider,
[2144.37] Frank: downloaded, playing on your device and is now playing in your ears.
[2148.37] Frank: All thanks to our Patreons.
[2150.37] Frank: Consider joining them and you'll also get other online benefits.
[2153.37] Frank: Find out more at patreon.com forward slash let's drone out.
[2159.37] Frank: So this is, I think,
[2163.37] Frank: so Chris, you have the EDF jet.
[2169.37] Frank: I think this was his Dart 250.
[2173.37] Frank: That's chasing my hub with,
[2178.37] Frank: no, this might even be the little plane.
[2182.37] Frank: I think that might be the little plane because it's got no struts.
[2185.37] Frank: It's got a little plane with one of the micro smokes.
[2191.37] Frank: So this is, in a big, you know,
[2196.37] Frank: it's a little plane being thrown about by the wind.
[2199.37] Frank: We had like 20 mile an hour winds.
[2201.37] Frank: It's only got about 30 seconds of smoke on each one,
[2204.37] Frank: but I mean, it works well.
[2208.37] Frank: It's a bit of a highlight and especially if you look at the pods.
[2211.37] Stephen: When you press the button,
[2212.37] Stephen: how much of a kind of delay do you have between the smoke actually going?
[2218.37] Frank: It takes a fraction of a second for it to like properly get going.
[2224.37] Stephen: That's one of the big issues people seem to have.
[2227.37] Stephen: They're pressed as it's supposed to have started yet,
[2229.37] Stephen: and they never quite knew.
[2232.37] Frank: Well, we did not have that problem, I would say.
[2236.37] Frank: It was pretty much instant of like you hit the thing
[2240.37] Frank: and there's a load of smoke coming out.
[2241.37] Frank: So this is my bigger cup with two smokes on it.
[2247.37] Frank: And there we go, both together.
[2251.37] Frank: So the fact that they both went off the same time as each other,
[2255.37] Frank: that shows you kind of how well controlled it is between them.
[2261.37] Frank: And the colors are great and it is great.
[2264.37] Frank: It was good fun. I loved it.
[2267.37] Stephen: What flying club is this rank?
[2269.37] Stephen: Given the amount of testing that you're doing,
[2271.37] Stephen: did you get into any like sky writing?
[2275.37] Frank: No, I was, like I said, we have like 21 hour winds gusting like 30 at times.
[2283.37] Frank: It was unpleasant to fly generally, but this made it all worth it.
[2291.37] Frank: This thing was fun to play with.
[2294.37] Frank: And while I might have spent more time in the hangar,
[2298.37] Frank: setting something else up, we were out there playing with the smoke
[2303.37] Frank: and having a good life.
[2304.37] Frank: So, yeah, I had the battery right up the front of the nose,
[2310.37] Frank: like keeping it as heavy as possible to deal with the wind.
[2314.37] Frank: I had all the stabilization I could get hold of.
[2317.37] Frank: I was just like, please let me fly.
[2320.37] Frank: Please let me land.
[2323.37] Frank: That was my main goal for all the testing sessions.
[2326.37] Frank: Well, I'm nervous.
[2331.37] Stephen: What are your listeners?
[2334.45] Stephen: Someone almost gave Frank a friendly tap.
[2337.45] Frank: Yeah, friendly love tap.
[2339.45] Frank: I mean, it's a dart, right?
[2341.45] Frank: Like he can give my cover a little friendly love tap and it'll be all right.
[2346.45] Frank: The props at the back, I don't mind.
[2353.55] Frank: Yeah.
[2355.55] Frank: So, the another gay smokes come in.
[2358.55] Frank: This is why I had issues with my head tracker still.
[2363.55] Frank: So, my head is not moving.
[2366.55] Frank: And you will see, imminently, it just starts to drift very much.
[2372.55] Stephen: That's not what you're looking for in a head tracker, is it?
[2374.55] Frank: No, that is not what I'm looking for in a head tracker.
[2377.55] Frank: So, I basically turned off my head tracking.
[2382.55] Frank: I think I might have tried it one more time and just came up.
[2386.55] Stephen: Are you using a different system to NDRC?
[2388.55] Frank: No, this is the annoying thing.
[2390.55] Frank: I'm using the same system that everyone else is using.
[2394.55] Frank: Everyone's got their own theories of why mine would stop working or do this.
[2401.55] Frank: Have you tried this?
[2403.55] Frank: Have you calibrated it this way?
[2406.55] Frank: Have you calibrated it that way?
[2408.55] Stephen: It's the hard way it would be the next question.
[2410.55] Stephen: Like, is the gyro just crap?
[2413.55] Frank: Well, so, there's multiple versions of the Arduino Nano that's in the middle of it.
[2420.55] Frank: So, my suspicion is that the version that Andy and John have is not the version that I have.
[2428.55] Frank: Right.
[2429.55] Frank: That's my current working hypothesis.
[2432.55] Frank: I'm working on that.
[2434.55] Stephen: Do you spill it yourself with an Arduino?
[2436.55] Stephen: Can you just grab another Arduino and pop it in?
[2438.55] Frank: Yeah, you can do.
[2440.55] Frank: But the version that they're all using is, or that I think that they're using, is no longer available.
[2449.55] Frank: Is it an original one?
[2452.55] Stephen: Would you like an original, genuine Arduino?
[2455.55] Stephen: I was buying a clone just on Aliexpress because I was buying those weird-ass Arduino micros and Arduino Nanos and stuff.
[2466.55] Stephen: Right.
[2467.55] Jack: I have a drawer full of them.
[2470.55] Jack: Yeah.
[2471.55] Frank: Well, there's a question for another time.
[2474.55] Frank: Would you like me to send you some?
[2477.55] Frank: No.
[2478.55] Frank: I don't want any more stuff.
[2480.55] Stephen: It's a crunchy Arduino with a delicate catnip and salt covering.
[2485.55] Frank: Yeah.
[2488.55] Frank: But we, you know, I was just flying with my pan tilt just set at a particular position.
[2497.55] Frank: But we had to, because we've been flying formation, practicing for flying formation.
[2502.55] Frank: We have the smoke systems that are working.
[2504.55] Frank: We have to do a red arrow style, red, white and blue, green arrow, load of smoke.
[2512.55] Frank: So that was what we were working towards over the course of the couple of days that we had Andy and Phil.
[2522.55] Frank: We were working up towards that.
[2524.55] Frank: So here we've got, so Chris again is following and then there's me and there's Andy and there's Phil.
[2535.55] Frank: So we've got the three cubs in the air and the dark.
[2540.55] Frank: We're, again, fighting the somewhat blustery lumpy wind.
[2548.55] Frank: But we're managing it.
[2550.55] Frank: We're managing to fly in formation just about.
[2553.55] Frank: And we're going to manage that lumpy wind.
[2555.55] Frank: Yeah, exactly.
[2558.55] Frank: That knows all about that.
[2561.55] Frank: The, you know, we sort of had a practice run with with some other colors of smoke and working our way up to the most expensive ones.
[2572.55] Frank: I mean, I say expensive, it's not very expensive.
[2577.55] Frank: And the red, white and blue.
[2580.55] Frank: Mine's in the middle with the blue.
[2582.55] Frank: And he's up, he's up at the front with the white and Phil's back with the red.
[2586.55] Frank: All flying liner stern because that was what we decided would be the easiest thing to fly in in the given the weather conditions.
[2595.55] Frank: Yeah, great fun.
[2597.55] Frank: I loved it.
[2599.55] Frank: I love flying with the smoke.
[2602.55] Frank: Because even when people were flying around, as you can see, this this Bixley got involved because turns out when you got a load of smoke in the air, you can see where everyone is.
[2613.55] Frank: And it looks good from the ground, looks good from the air.
[2618.55] Frank: The smokes, by the way, I think the smaller ones that last 30 seconds are about six pounds ago.
[2626.55] Frank: And the bigger ones that last for a minute and a half that have all the nice colors to them.
[2632.55] Frank: The WP 40 is there about eight quid ago.
[2636.55] Frank: And menaces menaces pyro trigger, which can do any particular pyrotechnics that you want that can be set off with a standard match.
[2648.55] Frank: And that's going to be between 10 and 20 pounds.
[2654.55] Stephen: But to be determined, to be confirmed, you want to stop by all these and go for the bulk discount if you have anything else.
[2668.47] Stephen: Yeah, yeah.
[2670.47] Jack: How old is that GPS?
[2672.47] Jack: Back about a wing, by the way.
[2674.47] Frank: So that is Andy's. So he's got a flight controller in there.
[2678.47] Frank: His his flight controller was not a fan of the wind. It did not like arming because the the wind was was fluttering it about so much even on the ground.
[2691.47] Jack: It was still in his hands.
[2694.47] Frank: Yeah, it was just like I'm refusing to arm. I can't arm in this.
[2699.47] Frank: I refuse.
[2702.47] Jack: It looks like a BN2 20 if I didn't know any better.
[2706.47] Stephen: It'll look like that, man. There's so many clones of that.
[2712.97] Stephen: Well, the solder blob in the middle does data. It's an older one, I think I've got so many GPS.
[2721.53] Stephen: I just dismayed because you can buy the fanciest GPS in the world. You put it on a quad and it just performs like.
[2729.53] Jack: Yes, it is a BN2 20.
[2734.53] Stephen: I'm going to be asked for GPS, Stephen.
[2740.45] Stephen: The E2 20, the updated version of that is pretty good and also dirty.
[2745.45] Stephen: Is it?
[2747.45] Jack: I just need frames on the fan to print. I am after one.
[2756.29] Stephen: Yeah, if you're going on a plane, you kind of have the best case scenario because you've got plenty of distance between any noisy electronics and where the GPS is and you can angle it.
[2766.29] Stephen: So it's going to be pointed nice upwards, catching all the sats, whereas a quad is.
[2771.29] Stephen: Yeah, get a 3D printer out and see if you can sort of squish it in the back and then hope you're not too near any of the motors.
[2778.29] Stephen: That never seems to be quite good enough for me with the quads, to be honest. I'd always suffer from noise.
[2784.29] Jack: Well, Paul Frank managed to kill a GPS unit and we have no idea why.
[2789.29] Jack: It's very unclear what its problem is.
[2794.29] Stephen: What even is your problem?
[2796.29] Frank: No particular idea why the GPS, my LR4 just decided it didn't want to GPS anymore.
[2805.76] Stephen: Yeah, I mean, that wasn't the one, I think I asked this already. That's not like an F411 with like software driven GPS, is it?
[2817.76] Stephen: It's not like running an LED pin or anything sketch.
[2820.76] Jack: No, nothing weird like that.
[2823.76] Jack: Yeah, decent, decent flight controller. The UI still works with other stuff.
[2828.76] Jack: Cool.
[2829.76] Jack: Pinned it out with continuity, checked it out.
[2832.76] Stephen: Attach it to u-center, attach it to u-center and make sure the parameters are okay.
[2837.76] Stephen: Didn't do that.
[2839.76] Stephen: So u-center is...
[2841.76] Stephen: u-blocks.
[2842.76] Stephen: It's not u-blocks.
[2844.76] Stephen: Not u-blocks.
[2845.76] Stephen: Just buy a u-blocks one, mate.
[2848.76] Stephen: Just buy one that does u-blocks.
[2851.76] Stephen: Also, if you're running a recent firmware, they've all but dropped support for the NMEA, like pre-u-block stuff.
[2858.76] Stephen: And I've got a ton of them and some of them are really nice form factors, but I was told like, yeah, these are just e-waste now.
[2864.76] Stephen: Really?
[2866.76] Stephen: Yeah.
[2867.76] Stephen: Because they're just a pain in the butt to initialize and to set the parameters right.
[2871.76] Stephen: You've got to kind of do a fire and forget, like, bulk config upload with the old non-u-block stuff.
[2878.76] Stephen: Because u-blocks has got a sensible configuration API, which works.
[2883.76] Stephen: And, yeah, it's just much easier to develop for, so they've gotten pretty annoyed with the non-u-block stuff.
[2890.76] Jack: Yeah.
[2891.76] Jack: I've always had u-blocks.
[2893.76] Jack: And I remember that software used to be a bit janky, but it gave you a lot of information.
[2903.76] Stephen: Yeah.
[2904.76] Jack: It's always better to have more information than you need.
[2908.76] Stephen: There's like a Python one you can have.
[2910.76] Stephen: I think it's NMEA, the other one, right?
[2913.76] Stephen: There's some Python thing you can connect to on a PC.
[2916.76] Stephen: And I did all this and jumped through loads of hoops.
[2919.76] Stephen: And in the end, I was like, I spent hours doing this, so I should have just spent 20 quid and got different GPS.
[2925.76] Frank: What's about to come up on here is we had one of the module squadron pilots.
[2933.76] Frank: So Sharon has a WAP fall, which is sort of a very common foamy.
[2939.76] Frank: And we stuck one of the big spokes under that, basically because I wanted to carry on chasing smoke.
[2947.76] Frank: So we took it as an opportunity to demonstrate how quickly we could just shove this onto a model that's already there and stick it on.
[2959.76] Frank: And it was also using a slightly unusual for us, like from the quad-world radio system.
[2966.76] Frank: So to make sure that everything all works with that as well, because it's, I mean, like I say, it's basically, when you look at it,
[2974.76] Frank: it looks like it's just a capacitor. It's got a little control board that it's mounted on that does clever stuff to make sure it goes off when you want it to go off.
[2983.76] Frank: It doesn't go off when you don't want it to go off.
[2987.76] Frank: This is absolutely fine, I think, with some white smoke on it.
[2992.76] Frank: It's moving.
[2994.76] Frank: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
[2996.76] Frank: The line of sight scale models do not like to fly slowly. That is something I've discovered while trying to chase them.
[3010.9] Frank: Yeah, so it's got a little control board on it that makes sure the smoke goes off when you want it to go off.
[3015.9] Frank: It doesn't go off when you don't want it to go off.
[3018.9] Frank: It's got loads of little safety features in it, but basically you don't have to worry about any of that.
[3022.9] Frank: You just plug it in.
[3024.9] Frank: If you get your two solid lights on it, everything's good to go and it will fire when you tell it to.
[3030.9] Frank: That's the good thing about it.
[3035.9] Frank: It does lots of clever stuff, but it's all hidden away and you don't have to think about it, which is the best thing when you're...
[3041.9] Stephen: Not what you want. You don't have to worry about janky relays and things anymore.
[3045.9] Stephen: Exactly.
[3046.9] Frank: And it's not going to brown out your system, so it charges out the capacitor when you first plug in your quad or your plane or whatever.
[3053.9] Frank: It charges it off of the 5V supply.
[3057.9] Frank: Well, it could be 5V up to, I think, 3S now.
[3061.9] Frank: At least definitely 2S, definitely 9V.
[3065.9] Frank: There was talk of it going up to 3S, but definitely up from 5V to 9V it can take...
[3070.9] Frank: Charges out like that when you first plug in, and that's the...
[3073.9] Frank: It will draw like...
[3076.9] Frank: I think it was 125 milliamps or something like that.
[3082.9] Frank: Not very much. It will charge up the capacitor within a couple of seconds when you first boot up.
[3090.9] Frank: And then it will dump all of that when you fire it.
[3094.9] Frank: So it means you don't brown out your receiver or your flight controller or have horrible things happening later on, which we know from X-Class days if you do smoke wrong,
[3107.9] Frank: it can do horrible things to your flight controller. It can do horrible things to your receivers.
[3113.9] Frank: But this takes all of that risk out of it.
[3116.9] Frank: This will just charge up the capacitor when you first turn on, dump it into the E-match when you fire it, and you don't have to worry about it.
[3124.9] Frank: So, as far as I'm concerned, it is the latest new smoke.
[3129.9] Frank: Well done.
[3131.9] Frank: Greg's also getting the code on it so that it can be...
[3139.9] Frank: He's made sure that it all works with flight controllers so you can fire it from a flight controller even if you don't want to do whole PWM pins.
[3147.9] Frank: There's lots of clever stuff.
[3149.9] Jack: The fact is that they were using it without an instruction manual.
[3155.41] Frank: Yes.
[3156.41] Jack: That is very promising.
[3159.41] Frank: Yeah.
[3160.41] Frank: That is key.
[3163.41] Frank: Because even if you know what you're doing, when you've got the pyro there and you've got people watching and all that kind of stuff,
[3174.41] Frank: the pressure's on, it's very easy to make mistakes.
[3178.41] Frank: And this is foolproof enough to not have to worry about that.
[3184.78] Frank: Which is good.
[3188.42] Frank: So, this is what I was talking about with the big pink smoke.
[3196.95] Frank: Yeah.
[3197.95] Frank: I enjoyed chasing all of this stuff.
[3199.95] Frank: It was all good fun.
[3201.95] Frank: I mentioned to remember Martin Thompson.
[3205.95] Frank: So, if you're going to Weston Park or to a swap meet or anything else coming up that you might see what Martin Thompson at,
[3214.95] Frank: but particularly Weston Park, he's going to be in the Black Ravens Aerospace Marquee at Weston Park.
[3221.95] Frank: He will be available to talk to about getting hold of some of these smoke systems.
[3229.95] Frank: And he is going to be a distributor, definitely.
[3233.95] Frank: But if you want to get the very, very latest up-to-date information about it going on sale,
[3239.95] Frank: then there's the Menace RC website, contact form, and the subject, smoke in exclamation mark.
[3247.95] Frank: That's the key things to look at if you're interested in playing around with this.
[3252.95] Frank: Like I say, I was expecting it to be an expensive thing to have to do.
[3259.95] Frank: Smoke seems like it should be expensive.
[3261.95] Frank: You only really see it at the big shows.
[3266.95] Frank: But this is going to make it pretty cheap to be able to dip your toe into it and have a go.
[3277.73] Stephen: I'm in the smoke. You heard it here.
[3279.73] Stephen: Yeah.
[3282.2] Frank: I imagine Andy will do a nicer edit than I have.
[3286.2] Frank: I just dumped a load of DVR together.
[3289.2] Frank: But I imagine Andy will actually make a nice video about it at some point.
[3299.1] Frank: Magical Pencil asks, could you chain the feet together so they fire one after the other?
[3303.1] Frank: Yes.
[3304.1] Frank: They are very much built to do that.
[3306.1] Frank: You can have one channel and it will fire them off.
[3313.1] Frank: First time you fire it will fire the first one.
[3316.1] Frank: Second time you fire it will fire the second one.
[3318.1] Frank: Someone, someone, someone.
[3319.1] Frank: You can have infinite number as long as your bet or flight controller or whatever can support the startup amps,
[3327.1] Frank: which, like I say, would like 120 milliamps, something like that.
[3333.1] Frank: We worked out the other day that the...
[3337.1] Frank: Hang on.
[3338.1] Stephen: 120 milliamps on what? Like a UART pin or which pins?
[3342.1] Frank: Because it's like a servo connector, right?
[3347.1] Frank: Yeah.
[3349.1] Frank: You've got your signal, ground and 5 volts.
[3353.1] Frank: It's on that.
[3357.5] Stephen: It'll pull on 5 volts, right?
[3360.5] Stephen: Yes.
[3361.5] Stephen: It's not going to pull.
[3362.5] Frank: 6 volts to 9 volts, any kind of servo type power supply.
[3366.5] Stephen: For a minute I thought you were like, oh, it's going to try and pull power through the TPA opens.
[3372.5] Frank: No, that would be bad. It does not do that.
[3374.5] Stephen: It's definitely a bad thing to do.
[3376.5] Frank: Yeah, no.
[3378.5] Frank: So if we were looking at one of the wing boards, one of the Maytec wing boards,
[3383.5] Frank: could support 40 of these on startup at least.
[3391.5] Frank: So you don't really have to worry.
[3393.5] Stephen: The challenge is there.
[3394.5] Stephen: You've got to figure out how many player rows your aerodynamics will allow you to take off with
[3399.5] Stephen: and then just go from there.
[3401.5] Frank: Exactly.
[3403.5] Stephen: And you can find them one after the other.
[3405.5] Stephen: You can expect it to be in 21-hour winds, Andy.
[3407.5] Stephen: You've got to push it.
[3410.5] Frank: Yeah, that is definitely what did for the gamma, the little sacrificial foamy.
[3416.5] Frank: That's why its wing is slightly pink, is I tried to fly it in winds with a big enough smoke on it
[3425.5] Frank: that I think was a bit too much drag and a bit too much mess away from the center of gravity.
[3432.5] Frank: All right.
[3434.5] Frank: It didn't fly very well.
[3437.5] Stephen: You've got to rebalance the craft and get the smoke canister just so it doesn't move the CG.
[3443.5] Frank: Yeah, but I think as long as you're not flying a tiny, tiny foamy with a massive smoke in horrendous winds.
[3452.5] Stephen: That sounds like 90% of the people are going to use this.
[3456.5] Jack: Do they get much lighter as they burn?
[3459.5] Jack: Not that much.
[3460.5] Jack: Because they definitely will.
[3462.5] Frank: No, we were wondering this, whether it would change your center of gravity.
[3466.5] Frank: So they have on them a little label somewhere that says how much of the stuff actually burns.
[3473.5] Frank: And it's not a very large amount of the mass of the thing.
[3477.5] Frank: Most of it is like the cardboard and the plaster in it.
[3483.5] Jack: Yeah, exactly.
[3484.5] Frank: The plaster.
[3486.5] Jack: Yeah, the plaster is famous for not burning very well.
[3490.5] Frank: Keeping the heat away.
[3492.5] Frank: Because what they're built for is for airsoft or things like that where you want to hold a thing that lets off a load of smoke.
[3502.5] Frank: So they're built to be held.
[3505.5] Frank: That's why they're well insulated.
[3513.22] Frank: That has been let's smoke out.
[3517.22] Stephen: Let's smoke out.
[3520.22] Stephen: Episode 509.
[3523.22] Stephen: You have been joined by Andrew Slat Frank, our lord and master.
[3530.5] Stephen: I'm bright until I fly.
[3532.5] Stephen: Hello, Jack.
[3534.5] Stephen: And myself, Stephen.
[3535.5] Stephen: And thank you once again to all the magnificent Patreons that are not actively used to supply smoke,
[3541.5] Stephen: but would be used to supply fireworks for this show if they were to be generous.
[3547.5] Stephen: They wanted to keep us online, but to keep us ridiculous.
[3550.5] Stephen: So you were able to do that.
[3552.5] Stephen: Greatly appreciate it.
[3553.5] Stephen: The bills do mount up and you help pay our editors now.
[3557.5] Stephen: You help pay for the occasional pyro.
[3560.5] Stephen: And most importantly, you pay for numerous distribution platforms and things that we tally up down the years.
[3569.74] Stephen: So thanks very much.
[3570.74] Frank: As Tailspin says in the chat, rule zero, do not be on fire.
[3575.74] Jack: Yeah.
[3576.74] Jack: Yeah.
[3578.74] Jack: But you're allowed to smoke.
[3580.74] Jack: They smoke.
[3581.74] Jack: There's usually fire.
[3583.74] Frank: But not in this case.
[3587.74] Frank: Thank you very much.
[3588.74] Frank: Goodbye.
[3589.74] Jack: Thank you.
[3590.74] Jack: Bye.
[3591.74] Jack: Bye.
[3592.74] Jack: Telemetry loss.