Ok, so ever since I saw First Person Video's from R/C airplanes online, I have wanted to join the fun. The cost has been quite prohibitive however. The ultimate setups are real time virtual reality setups complete with on board telemetry and GPS navigation.

I've looked into mounting video camera's on the plane, however, the camera's available to date have either been too heavy, too expensive or poor quality video (or all of the above).

Well, a few weeks ago I was introduced to a keychain camera that records 640x480 for less than $20!!! It arrived on Monday and wow. It's small, light and the video is actually quite reasonable. Before ordering your own, check out this extensive research page. The unit I received is apparently a #7 version. Here's my camera (for those outside of Canada, that's a one dollar coin - about 2.5cm across):



and here's my first FPV video taken from my golden yellow foamy:



Enjoy! There will more to come I'm sure!!

Had a great evening flying my Parkzone Citabria with a friend. He was just getting started with his Citabria and ended up sliding tail first down a net used as a wall. Something caught his elevator and stripped the servo - bummer.

Then I remembered all those Airhog toy R/C planes - they are only throttle and rudder! So we trimmed the elevator to stop the servo from whining and gave it a go. Worked like a charm! Now to be fair, he couldn't make nice gentle landings, and turning hard was out of the question, but he was back in the air and the evening wasn't lost.

So, to quote a TV great - "If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.".

I received a larger battery for my Citabria last night (again thank you). It is a 138mAh battery and boy does it make a big difference. Not only in improved flight times, but in power as well. The newer battery must have a lower internal resistance, because I noticed improved climb rate and brighter lights.

The only downside with the larger battery is that it is larger. Meaning, it will not fit in the charger. Well, I fixed that. By cutting open the charging slot, I extracted the connector and now I can plug anything in!



I also reconnected the lights and swapped the yellow LED on the right for a proper green one. The green LED is not as bright and packaged differently, so it won't really help sorting my plane out from the crowd, but at least it is now running the correct colours.