New Zealand Post

I’m not really surprised I just sent a envelope Air-Post to France, containing a tiny circuit board. It was just thick enough that it wouldn’t go through the letter guide, due to a bit of bubble wrap inside. I sent a $9 item weighting a few grams, charged $10 shipping […]

NZ Post international-air label

ESC testing

ESC Testing with SimonK Firmware

Two ESCs Fail I’ve had two ESCs fail in one day, one in a zero-throttle fast descent and one while bench testing with no props and running off a 5A current-limited bench power supply. Both play the little tune through the motor when powered on but ignore PPM input and […]


Futaba 40MHz Transmitter Repair

The Fault No transmission – pretty simple really. Testing and Repair Turning it on and all seemed OK. The small radio scanner showed that there was no signal transmitted; at least not in the 40MHz band. Maybe the crystal or part of the transmitter circuit had failed. Next, open it […]

futaba 40MHz test

Switching Battery Eliminator Circuit – S-BEC

A Typical RC S-BEC I bought a couple of these S-BECs with the intention of installing one in a FPV wing. Before doing this I needed to know what it was capable of. This module is from Hobbyking and is rated to 26 Volts input and 5 Amps continuous output, […]


Portable cell phone power supply from LiPo battery

My Android phone battery only lasts a few hours when using the GPS to record tracking while hiking around the hills. So I was looking for a quick, cheap, simple and not too heavy solution. This took about an hour to assemble and test from parts I had in the […]

phone charger

Hobbyking T1000FC ground test

Hobbyking T1000FC+GPS – A simple Autopilot for RC planes

Test Setup – General I have connected the T1000FC to a 8-channel Corona DSSS receiver. Channels 1,2,4,6 (aileron,elevator,rudder,mode). Channel 3 (throttle) from the receiver goes directly to the ESC. There is no connection to the BATT terminals on the end. Power is applied via the leads from the receiver to […]


MPLAB X slows to a stop – Unusable

I’ve been using MPLAB-X on Kubuntu Linux on a laptop for quite a while now and converting projects over from the old Windows machine. Yesterday I went to work on a project started a couple of weeks ago and found that MPLAB-X which I believe runs in Netbeans, which is […]


undergrowth

Hex multirotor lost in bush scrub

What Happened Flying late one afternoon I was spotting and the Hex with a Naza controller with GPS was being flown FPV about 200 meters away at about 70-80 meters altitude over a long-grass field. It stopped responding to RC and was switched to RTH mode (return to home). It […]