FlyinFlynn

I seem to remember the blade shaft is fixed to the blade holders with a small screw that is fitted into the end of the shaft through the blade holder, both the spindle and a replacement linkage set are available from https://modelhelicopters.co.uk/ As for the lack of collective, you will need to look into the setup. Do the three cyclic servos move together to raise the swash plate as you add throttle?

Using a constant current charger as Paul and Geoff suggests is certainly a more eloquent way of forcing a little charge back into a totally flat lipo/life type cell, I just give em 12V @ 1A or so for 20-30 seconds from a bench power supply. It's not like there is any energy in the cell to explode with and it will either accept the charge or remain short circuit.

The other side of that coin is - Because the end of the whip antenna has the WEAKEST radiation if you point your antenna at your model and you lose control then simply lifting your Tx so the antenna is at 90 degrees to your model will present a much stronger signal to the model and should give you control back so you can land and investigate why you have so short a range. Another point about directionality is the legal maximum transmitted power is quoted in EIRP - Effective Isotropic Radiated Power - so if you channel the Tx output power in one particular direction you effectively increase the EIRP in that direction. The Tx power is calculated by the power available at the antenna multiplied by the gain of the antenna. Tricky things radio waves!

I'm in France but please don't hold that against me!. I am not adverse to selling some on once I have built and tested one 🙂, especially if the panelising works because with 6 boards to each panel and the minimum order of 5 boards I will have a few spare. It cost me ~$10 per batch but it kept me busy the whole day so I see that as a good price for a whole days entertainment - any price will be pretty much just postage.... if it happens! I have also done a design using a Seeed Studio Xiao ESP32C3 instead of the super mini. I have a few of them and as the design doesn't employ wifi it doesn't need the external antenna those boards come with. I don't suppose anybody will really be interested though because the Xiao costs quite a bit more than the super mini . Incidentally, there are two ESP32C3 'super minis', this is the one you want - This is a ESP32C3 Zero, sometimes conflated with a esp32c3 supermini, it has a RGB Led on board and has a different pinout - Easy to confuse the two! Here is the Xiao - It is very slightly smaller than the supermini if you ignore the external wifi antenna Quite a few of my previous boards ended up in the bin too, it is amazing how little time you need with the PCB in your hand to spot the fubar you spent a whole day looking for before pressing the 'buy' button.

It progress init! The Arduino drawer in my parts box has gathered a good layer of dust. The latest offerings from the ESP32 family are faster, smaller, contain more Flash memory, more Sram, faster clock speed, have WiFi and bluetooth capability., etc ,etc...... the prices of the super mini and their ilk are dropping and are the same price of a nano or less (I've seen them well under $2 each), The only limiting feature would be the number of I/O pins but if you need more there is always the ESP32 dev boards. There is wide-ranging support for the Arduino IDE for programming if folks are still wedded to it. What a great time to be an enthusiast!

PCB done, now just the long wait to discover where I messed up 🤪 I tried to panelise them because 4 would fit under the 100mmx100mm minimum price PCB size but I'm not sure it worked!... I'll wait until a successful test before releasing the gerbers but I think the circuit is right if anyone wants to design their own PCB.

My pet gripe with Banggood is they automatically try to add a charge for dealing with non-deliveries!!! Cheeky sods..... they are responsible for the successful delivery of all items purchased from them without that extra charge. They are also quite often not the best value against Aliexpress and Temu. Not sure how much longer buying from China is going to be an option though..........😟☠️

OK, Dave, I have made a couple of minor mods to your sketch and now have it working on the same hardware as the RiD I was playing with. It is currently working on a ESP32C3 super mini dev board and a ATGM337H GPS module but I intend to swap the gps module out for a HT1818Z3G5L module when new supplies arrive. I am now working on designing a PCB for it. busy busy busy 🤪 WindyMillersDataLogger.ino

I would be if I were flying! ....thats my house that is 240Metres AMSL 🙂

Looks good Dave! Thanks for posting. I'm looking to utilise a smaller uP and GPS and have some bits on order. I have taken a look at porting your sketch over and I think it should be ok. I did start writing a sketch from scratch and this is as far as I got (without the hardware to test it all out). It does produce a nice serial output though! GPS_Logger.ino

Well done Dave, I mistakenly thought you were using a Quectel L80 and I see you do initialise the module! Did you link the sketch?... I didn't see it.

It worked great straight off the bat for me but the firmware I used had a setting for the chipset that the module uses. The L80 is a MediaTek MT3339 and the HT1818z3g5 is a u-blox M8030-KT. They both output GGA as delivered, but I'm not sure what else they might output which isn't needed for this application and will 'clog up' the data stream. The firmware I used set the baud rate and limit the sentences to PGA and RMC. I don't know if your nano firmware does initialise the GPS module or not. Cheap as chips huh!

Given the cozy relationships between manufacturers and their regulatory bodies we have seen in various industries in recent times I'm not so sure we do know how to do safety critical engineering any more. The almost religious pursuit of net zero will, I fear, push all other considerations to a distant second place.

Is there a contrast adjustment for the screen somewhere on the PCB? What are the screen dimensions and are there any markings on the display to identify exactly what it is?

Weight, cost & complexity.

So I took my RiD for a walk around my house.... I obtained the csv data ...showing lat/long, speed, altitude. Using https://www.gpsvisualizer.com/ I got (which actually isn't too accurate! but hey-ho. So the device looks like this Weighs is wired like this costs and comes from https://github.com/fanfanlatulipe26/BaliseDGAC_GPS_Logger and looks like this on a PC/phone screen Firmware available upon request. All credit goes to https://github.com/fanfanlatulipe26/BaliseDGAC_GPS_Logger

GPS track/speed/altitude logging is available from the RiD beacon designed and developed by fanfanlatulipe26. It is capable of either recording a gps trace in CSV format for offline use or as a FlySky iBus telemetry stream. I haven't played with the telemetry so cannot comment on if the data is savable or not. It will of course suffer from the same problems that Phil commented on. Of course, it is easier, although more expensive, to just buy the commercial offerings!

So why should stopping support render your software inoperative? It seems gone are the days when you could keep your old applications going almost indefinably by just not updating stuff on your computer. Planned obsolescence I suppose, software and hardware sellers in cahoots. The internet has a lot to answer for!

....or more street cleaners needed to clean up the autonomous air taxis after 'delivering' someone from 500 feet after meeting a pigeon en route to some 'important meeting' that they 'couldn't' take a limousine to.

That is a good epitaph.

I think ED is on the right lines, it looks to me like the NEC B772 PNP transistor is across the push button, there is a LM339 quad comparator that is often used as a timer and a 6Amp mosfet in series with the negative supply. Once the push button is activated, the transistor holds the device on until the timer disables the transistor which turns the mosfet off..... however, there also appears to be a PWM input so perhaps the device is controllable from the transmitter also? Just a guess mind! Connect it up and see what happens to the magic smoke! 💭

I think my advice (offered even though not asked for) would be to postpone your first flight until you have a way to turn the gyro off in flight. It is a very easy setting to get wrong, too low and it wont help in stabilising the model and too high and it will introduce an uncontrollable porpoise that will end in tears. /2p.

There are a few Moraine Saulniers close to my neck of the woods at the Musee Volant Salis here in France. They include the following - Morane Type H13 (replica) Morane-Saulnier MS.138 Ep.2 Morane Saulnier MS.185 Morane Saulnier MS.230 Morane Saulnier MS.315 Morane Saulnier MS.317 x2 Morane Saulnier MS502 Criquet ..... none are a pretty as the A1 though (IMHO). I had to look twice at your first photo, it looked like it was fitted with a bubble canopy 🤩 how cool would that be!

Oh... how I wish I still had mine. Talk about photos pulling at the heart strings!

Just for info..... €45.99 in France with €4.99 delivery if you cant get one in store. ....... not so much 'rip off Britain' then after all!