A little more Doink(er)

I made some more progress on the Doinker.  In fact, short of the props, it's complete.

There were a few steps leading up to that though.  I had to populate the PicoBlox.  The first thing I added was the power stub for the camera.



I really didn't get any pictures of modifying the receiver tray, and the spektrum satellite.  It's stuffed under the flight controller.  I have thick spacers under the FC to provide clearance for the satellite wire.

It's not the most pretty solution, but the "wedge them in" ESC mounts is quite elegant.

16ga wire is a little big.  Here I'm trying to get the receiver bound.  

Happily, I only got one motor wired backwards.  That's a first.  I've had as many as three of four spinning the wrong way.  The wires on the 1104 motors have varnish on them, so when you shorten, and strip them to attach to the ESCs, sand the wires a little, or else your flux and solder just ball up and fall off.

In the end, I swapped the 16ga lead for 20ga going to a JST plug.  Most of my multi cell lipos are either e-flite 3pin, or T-connector.  So I built two adapters to I can use all three kinds of battery without any real strain.

Next is to order a few batteries, and cut down some props.  

Adding FPV to a normal Micro Radian

E-Flite released a UMX Radian with a FPV camera on it.  I thought this was a great idea, but I really didn't like the idea of spending $99 on top of the cost of the glider for a $40 camera and a $7 mount.  

So the first step to adding FPV to a micro plane, is to get power for the camera.  That means cracking open your bird.  The canopy is held on with "just" tape.  The tape to use for putting it back together is Scotch brand 1/2" clear tape.  The glossy stuff.

The UMX radian has a additional speed control board.  There's three pins that feed it, and my pencil is pointing at it.  

The center pin is battery positive, and the pin nearest the sockets is ground.

I bought a bunch of eflite mini JST plug extension wires.  So I cut one in half and slipped it through the canopy.  To put a hole in the canopy, use a normal 3/32" drill bit and spin it in your fingers.

I taped the wires to the inside of the canopy.  Then I soldered the wires to the reciever.

And there we go, a plug on the top of my glider to power a FPV camera.  The factory FPV camera mount is $7 from E-Flite.  Or you can just hotglue your camera on.