Blackout MiniH Quad - Build Log 3

The build.

The first thing I did was grab the frame and try and loose as many screws and bits on the floor as possible.  I was assisted in this by Joss (20 months old and into everything) who was curious what nylon screws tasted like and if they would assist digestion.

After retiring to a more secure location I then did a quick fit build of the frame to see how it all went together.  There are instructions on the Blackout site to follow and it is not rocket science.

I don't have an actual photo from my build but amazingly it looked like the one on the Blackout website:

I didn't tighten anything as at this point I was not sure what order I was going to do things.

Powering up the PDB

Getting power to the power distribution board (PDB) seemed like a good starting point.

I placed the battery on top where just about everyone seems to mount them in the photos, connected the male XT60 connector and tried not to short it out on anything.

I then worked out roughly how long to make the male end of the connector, disconnected it from the battery, trimmed, stripped and tinned the ends.

I then tinned the connections on the PDB with a little help from a trusty flux pen and soldered the connector on.  There are two spare holes in the PDB either side of the power pads and I looped a small cable tie through here and over the leads just to add a little extra security.  It may do nothing but it made me feel better.

Connecting up the battery lights up all the LEDs on the PDB so I could confirm that all was well at that end.

I now also had something bright to chase Joss around the house with while making aeroplane noises which he loved no end.

Motors and ESCs

Now as warned, there is a good bit of hacking involved in this build and it started here.

To reduce weight and make everything fit, the motor wires on the ESC need to be trimmed and the Motor wires also need to be shortened.

On the ESCs I removed the heatshrink and cut the wires off at about 6mm long.  I later re-did these to about 3mm long to give me even more space so please ignore the photo other than for the idea of what was being done.  The three wires were then tinned.

ESC before work

ESC after trimming and tinning but still too long.

I then mounted the motor to work out how much I was going to shorten those leads.

I wanted to put a loop in them for stress relief and found that from the motor to the frame would be about right.  I then cut, trimmed and tinned these three.

Trimmed motor leads

Now since you need two clockwise and two anti-clockwise motors you need a wiring strategy that will prevent you having to re-solder things.  To reverse the rotation of a motor you need to swap any two of the leads between the motor and ESC.

Therefore I laid all the ESCs down the same way opposite their motors and connected two of them up with the wires exactly as the wires lay.

On the other two I simply crossed two of the wires so that I would have two motors that would rotate one way and two that would rotate the other.

ESC and motor wired up - this is a twisted set.

I then applied liquid electrical tape to the joins and finally new 20mm clear heatshrink to protect it all.

Testing the motor rotation part 1

In order to test the motor rotation I needed to get power to the ESC and a signal to the ESC to tell it to spin.

The only way I could think to safely do this (read: without blowing things up) was through the flight controller so it was time to get that side of things ready before I could do anymore.

I did not want to bolt all the motors down and solder the ESCs to the PDB only to have to move everything later on.

This makes part 1 of testing motors really boring as I basically pushed it all to the side and got on with the next part of the build.

Preparing the flight controller

The Naze32 as mentioned previously, comes without all the pins soldered on so you need to get that sorted before anything else.

I could go through and write up what I did but the reality is that I followed this YouTube video and it all just worked.

I have not done a lot of this sort of soldering but safe to say that flux, helping hands to grip things and a nice fine soldering iron are a must.

Baseflight and powering on the FC

With the flight controller ready to go I then needed to power it up so that I could play with the motors though the PC using the Baseflight configuration tool.

Note, Baseflight is being updated all the time so these screen captures are almost definitely out of date so consider this a rough guide only.

Again there are lots of instructions on how to do all this so the short version is that by using Googles Chrome web browser, you can install the Baseflight extension app from here:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/baseflight-configurator/mppkgnedeapfejgfimkdoninnofofigk

This will be used to do all the set up of your Naze32.  There are other options but this is what I used and it works perfectly as far as I can tell.

My PC here is a Windows 7, 64bit workstation which on connection of the USB lead to the FC drew a nice useful blank and could not find or install drivers.

A quick search and I located the correct USB to UART drivers from here: http://www.silabs.com/products/mcu/pages/usbtouartbridgevcpdrivers.aspx

Plug the Naze32 into the PC with a micro USB cable, fire up the Baseflight app, pick the COM port allocated to the Naze, connect and you are now live and ready to play.

Well, almost ready.  Chances are you will be told that you need to do a firmware update on the Naze32 board before Baseflight will let you set anything up.

Flashing Naze32 Firmware

To access the firmware flasher in Baseflight you first need to click "disconnect" from the PC to get to the welcome window with the firmware flasher button located on the bottom right.  Use the button up the top or just unplug the USB cable.

I just left everything unchecked, clicked on "Load Firmware Online" which goes looking on GitHub for the latest firmware, downloads it and shows you the details once it is ready.

Make sure the Naze32 is plugged in and click "Flash Firmware" to do the job.

A nice green bar at the top when it is done and you are ready to move on.

A quick look around Baseflight

Now your firmware is up to date, click connect and have a look around.

The Naze32 will be powered by the USB connection and you will have a nice graphic showing you the movements the board is making in real time.

There is a lot of good reading out there to understand the evolution of these boards and how the accelerometers and gyros work together to identify what your quad is doing but you can also just look at the pretty pictures and see the output from the "Raw Sensor Data" tab and know that it is magic carved from silicon and unicorn dust.

Go to the "Configuration" tab in Baseflight and you can now select the type of motor layout.  This is a MiniH but the motor layout equates to a QuadX - ie: who cares where the arms are, it is the motor positions that will determine how it is controlled.

When you make changes you need to hit "Save" down on the bottom right.  The board will do a quick reboot and you are good to move on.  Forget to hit save and settings you thought you made, well, won't be.

For now, disconnect and power down your Naze (ie: remove the USB connection)

Testing the motor rotation part 2

So now I had the flight controller hooked up I needed to get power to the motors and see which ones would spin which way so I could lay them out on the quad once and once only.

The first job was to understand how power moves around in this thing.

So the dumb version is as follows;

1) Power from the battery is supplied to all four ESCs via the PDB that makes up part of the frame.

2) The ESCs have a BEC connection which stands for Battery Elimination Circuit.

The BEC does two things, it supplies power to the flight controller and in the case of an RC plane, it would stop power going to the motor as the battery dies so that there is still power to the flight controller & servos so you can make a dead stick landing.

Now in the case of a quad, no power to the motors means you are just dead but that is beside the point.  The BEC is how we power the rest of the systems.

3) The receiver can be powered from the flight controller or from another BEC.  I have opted for just take the power from the flight controller at the moment.

Depending on what other toys you want to put in here like video transmitter for FPV etc, the power distribution options will change.

So that is that but we still need to run the motors so time to get back on track.

Fortunately the power leads for the ESCs have nice little bayonet type connectors on them that also just happen to fit the XT-60 connectors on my battery packs.

To make things safe and to prevent motors from dancing on my table I screwed them all to the frame.

The position was not important as I was going to remove them for the final step of soldering the ESC to the power distribution board anyhow.

Finally, NO PROPS.  They look cool but when you start playing with Baseflight and motors, stuff happens and you don't need props to introduce blood into the system.

Anyhow, I didn't photograph it but trust me when I say, connecting the input side of the ESC directly to the battery (correct polarity please) and then connecting the BEC lead from the ESC to port 1 on the Naze32 (Check your polarity or the magic smoke will escape) will allow you to run that motor using the Baseflight tool.

In the case of the BEC line on my Afro 20A ESC, yellow is the signal line, red is power and brown is ground.  I imagine this is standard but just make sure when you connect it to the Naze, the brown is on the connector closest to the edge of the board and the signal is on the connector furthest from the edge of the board and check again each time you connect and re-connect the motors.

So, Motor 1, connected and ready.

Connect the Naze to your PC with the USB cable and we are ready to go.

Head over to the "Motor Testing" tab and select the "Check" checkbox.

If you move the slider for motor 1, the motor connected to channel 1 on the Naze should now spin up.

Reduce the slider until you can see the direction of rotation or take note of it as it spins to a stop.

Job done.  Mark that motor as CW or CWW.  Power it all down and repeat with motors 2,3 & 4.

Next post, soldering the ESCs and final set up.

  

Blackout MiniH Quad Bulid Log - 2

In the second part of the build log I am going to run through the radio gear and other bits before getting into the meat of the build.

It probably sounds pretty obvious but if you can finalize your shopping list all at once then you are going to save a lot of postage charges.

Transmitter:

FrSky Taranis DX9

The joy of owning a real RC transmitter with a thousand buttons is that you own this big chunk of radio gear with a thousand buttons.

I went for the FrSky Taranis DX9.  As luck would have it they had just released a new model making for a well timed price drop on this particular model.

For my level of skill and intended use, I was never going to know what I was missing from the new one so took the savings and ran.

The Taranis is a 2.4 Ghz, 16 channel  radio and uses the Open TX opens source software.  It is not a turn on and go sort of radio.  You have to program everything you want it to do which fit the bill for this project.  More to learn on the go is a good thing in my books.

For that small inconvenience you get a whole lot of flexibility in how you set it up and also allowing it to work with receivers from other brands as well as just the FrSky gear.

The final bonus is that it is arguably as much if not more transmitter than a Spektrum or Futaba while being half the price or better.

Receiver:

FrSky D4R-II

This was momentarily the most confusing part of the purchase list.  I went for the FrSky D4R-II 4ch 2.4Ghz receiver that also includes telemetry.

The confusion was that I had to get my head around CPPM mode and how a four channel receiver actually becomes an eight channel receiver that pipes everything over one wire rather than one wire per channel.

Just to confuse things more, it seems it probably needs to be flashed with new firmware to make the eight channels work properly because of problems with the CPPM frame being too short at 18ms resulting in data loss.  The updated firmware makes the CPPM frame 27ms long so as I understand it, it has time to get all 8 channels of information over the line.

Head spinning yet?  Yeah, I'm learning a lot more than I expected too!

Needless to say I have not got around to flashing anything but have it working CPPM mode and hope that since I am not using all 8 channels at this time that I can avoid issues while I read and learn more.  If not I can blame any crashes on the receiver and me going to full throw on everything at once.

If you have 20 minutes to spare and want to go deep into the Matrix watch this:

If you want the short version, watch this:

Either video will help explain how the magic happens.  You have probably realised by now that there are a lot of very helpful people out there who just love this stuff.  The trick seems to be in working out what the question is before you go looking for an answer...

The other bits

The final piece of the puzzle is to do with leads and connectors.

One thing you need to identify is the connector on your battery packs as that will determine what you need on the quad end of things to get the power into it.

The batteries I bought use the XT60 connector so a pack of Male XT60 connectors was first on the list.

Now while the receiver comes with a nice little harness of wires and plugs, it is not really what I needed since I was going to use the CPPM to link the FC and receiver.  All I needed was a single 3 core servo wire for power, ground and signal.

I also needed a two wire connector for the buzzer, another for the telemetry and a third for sending power to the flight controller for voltage sensing in the telemetry.

Servo lead male connector

The crazy thing is, I thing is I can't seem to find what these little connectors are called and it seems even harder to find a double version as is needed in various places on the Naze32 flight controller.

The solution is to buy a pack of Male to Male servo extension leads and cut them in half to give you two connectors.

You can then remove the wire you don't want, solder them on where needed and even trim the connector down too if needed with a nice sharp knife.

More details on that soon but safe to say a 5 pack of 150 or 200mm extensions will get you out of trouble.

Rapstraps

Some other items in your shopping list will include heatshrink of various sizes - I used 3mm for my wiring and 20mm clear for my ESCs and some liquid electrical tape, solder and a good soldering iron.

The piezo buzzer was bought at Jaycar and was a generic surface mount buzzer that will handle 3 to 15volts.  I soldered this onto one of the butchered servo leads as detailed later.

The final cool thing are Rapstraps.  You can use regular cable ties but the Rapstraps have some stretch making them a nicer way to secure things and they can be undone and re-used easily if needed.

Next post - the build...

Blackout MiniH Quad build log

It has been a long time since I have played with RC planes and decided that it was time to check out the drone game before it all gets banned, legislated against or relegated to the past by the fun police.

After looking at the options including just buying one off the shelf I decided it would be more fun to do the build more or less from scratch and learn how the insides work.

With a lot of sneaky work on Google, a few Gb in youTube videos and a flight of a DJI Phantom 2 I finally decided to go down the path of a mini quad.

The final selling point was that it would be good for first person view flight (FPV) and in the words of Justin Galbraith, would be like proximity flying in a wing suit without the risk of death.

You know you are getting old and semi responsible (read lazy) when you opt for a 220mm wide quad copter rather than allocating 10 years to skydiving and base jumping experience.

Anyhow, this is what I bought straight up to get this party started.

1 x Blackout MiniH quad frame (220mm)
1 x AfroFlight Naze32 Acro Flight Controller
4 x Afro ESC 20Amp speed controllers (SimonK Firmware)
4 x Cobra CM2208/20 2000kv Motors
12 x Gemfan 5030 Propellers - Green and Black, CW & CCW
4 x Turnigy nano-tech 1300mAh 3S 45~90C Lipo Packs
1 x FrSky D4R-II 4ch 2.4Ghz ACCST Receiver (w/telemetry)
1 x FrSky 2.4GHz TARANIS X9D Radio
5 x Male to Male servo leads
1 x Mini PC mount piezo buzzer (3 to 15v)
8 x M3 x 6 screws
12 x Rapstraps (4 would do but I wanted spares)

When buying the frame, I also bought a few spares for a crash kit including nylon screws and spacers. The extra props were also to make sure I had spares as all evidence suggested that crashes are common and props are the first to die. More on that later.

I also already had a good charger on hand for the LiPo batteries but have also added a cell balancer and parallel charging board so I can charge more than one battery at once and also ensure they remain healthy.

Links to bits:

Pretty much everything here can be found at various model shops but from Australia, this was the beptions on price I could find.

http://www.minihquad.com/

http://www.hobbyking.com/

http://boltrc.com/

Explaining what is what and why I bought what I bought

First up I have to thank Justin Galbraith for his input into this shopping list. He flys both a MiniH and a MiniX quad from Blackout so had a good insight into the set up that people are using and what works.

The list is also pretty close to the suggested equipment list on the Blackout website.

The frame:

The Blackout MiniH Quad is a 220mm H shaped quad copter, precision cut from carbon fiber sheet with a power distribution board and LEDs built in.

The majority of fasteners are M3 nylon screws so that in the event of a crash, cheap screws sheer off and protect the more expensive bits of the frame. In theory, in all but the most violent of crashes, a couple of props and screws later and you will be back flying.

I can already confirm that the design works as advertised.

The flight controller:

The Afroflight Naze32 Acro is the basic version of the Naze32 Funfly without the magnetometer (compass) and barometer. 

The acro version can control the quad (and other multirotor designs) without having the more fancy features like altitude hold and direction hold.

I understand it can be hooked up to a GPS but without the magnetometer and barometer it will struggle for useful accuracy.
The amazing thing here is that the whole Naze32 Acro package is only 36mm square and $27.00.

For that price you get the board with a bag of connectors that you need to solder on yourself so it is not the best place to start if you have not held a soldering iron before.

The speed controllers:

The speed controllers take inputs from the flight controller and tell the motors how fast to turn. As such there is one ESC per motor. 

The ESC is a reasonably complicated little computer with on board software (firmware) to allow it to do it's job.

As such when buying them, there are a number of ESCs that are already programmed for use in multirotors. If you get a standard ESC that would be used in an RC plane for example then you will have to learn about flashing firmware that will allow it to work properly with a mutlirotor.

The suggested ESCs for this quad are 12amp but I have gone for a larger 20amp ESC so that I can either move them to a larger quad down the track or if I upgrade the frame arms to the larger 6" arms I can go for bigger motors/props.

The Afro HV 20A multi rotor ESC is supplied with the SimonK firmware for multirotors and can handle up to an 8 Cell LiPo.

In hindsight, I probably should have just gone with 12amp ESCs as this quad will never have more than a 4 cell battery and I will probably just buy new gear for a new quad if I go that way down the track. It is all evolving so fast and is relatively cheap so who knows what will be available in a month or two.

The downside of the 20amp ESCs are their size and weight. On this tiny frame it is a bit of squeeze getting them all to fit and I have wasted about 60 grams :(

The Motors:

These were purchased direct from Blackout as most people did not have them in stock. The Cobra motors are well regarded for their performance and reliability and are half the price of the next best option.

They use a M3 mounting screw however the supplied screws are too short to use with the 3mm thick arms on the MiniH quad frame.

You will need to buy or acquire some M3 x 6mm screws so you can fit the motors.

The other quirk is that the arms have spacing for the M3 screws at 19mm pitch which will only allow two screws per motor. It seems to work fine. If you really want to use all four screws per motor then you will need to drill the extra two holes in the frame.

Finally, they come with nylock nuts for the prop shaft which is nice in a multirotor where the opposite rotation of two motors can cause a regular spinner to well, spin off!

Propellers:

The Gemfan 5030 props are matched well to the motors, are dirt cheap and as big as you can fit on this quad in the 5" short arm configuration. They come in packs of four with two clockwise and two counter clockwise blades.

Because I am starting flying visually, I have split the colours and put green on the front motors and black on the back to help with visibility and orientation.

I was warned that I would trash the props and I have now gone and bought a massive bag of 100 props to keep my flying adventurous and not be too worried about a prang taking me out of the air for a week while waiting for spares.

I can confirm that trees, doors, chairs, carpet, long grass and the Kavanagh Balloons factory building will all chew the props up really quick.

Batteries:

I knew very little about high performance LiPo batteries other than they are great for starting house fires if you are not careful when charging them.


Energy density in these things is impressive but it comes with the above risks. I would recommend doing a fair bit of reading on them if you are looking at playing with this stuff. I started here: http://www.rchelicopterfun.com/rc-lipo-batteries.html

I still have a lot to learn in this area so in the end I went for the Turnigy nano-tech 1300mAh 3S 45~90C Lipo Packs for no other reason that it was what was suggested by Justin. I could probably have gone for a lower discharge rating than the 45~90C but the higher the C rating (in this case 45 average/90 peak) the less chance of damaging your batteries by asking too much of them.

Next post...The radio gear and the build

July 2012...here we are

Indigo

Like many other people, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ have changed my interaction with the web and taken me away from this here outlet.

Life has been shortened to 140 characters or smart arse comments of little import on Crackbook.

I think it is time to write again....we will see if I do :)

So what have I done in the last two years since posting here?  Well I still dance and compete and have done okay at Masters/Champions level in the Modern Jive/Ceroc world.  The cabaret routines choreographed and performed by Charlie and myself have placed well and seem to be enjoyed by people.

We have travelled around the country teaching and having fun.

The big news is my engagement to the wonderful Indigo who was not even on my radar when I last posted here!   This is her for those that don't know.

Obviously this is a pretty amazing time and there is more fun stuff to come.

EX-60 test flight

Work wise, it has been nuts with more product development.  I have designed a new racer, the EX-60 which is the little brother to the original EX-65.  It is not only smaller but has a new profile shape.

The biggest thing though is the development of the new Crossfire burner.  The running joke has been that this burner has been in development for over 20 years but it is here now and is everything we had hoped it would be.

Doubles, triples and quads are running out the door and everyone who has flown with them is very excited.

I just did a quick trip to Cairns for the inaugural flight by Raging Thunder with their new Quads and to do a maintenance training course on the new burner for their staff and staff from Hot Air.

Quad Crossfire - done and in production

August will see me tripping off the Battle Creek in Michigan USA for the 2012 World Ballooning Championship where I will crew for Andrew Robertson. It is going to be a fun week on the crew side of the basket so expect lots of photos and fun stories as that all unfolds.

A little training weekend was had up in Canowindra on the 7th and 8th of July with the Australian team. Lots of fun was with task flying and catching up on the social side of flying which has not really been on my agenda in the past year or two.

It was fun to be back flying with friends and not have it feel like work.  With a bit of luck I will even get around to doing some competition myself some day soon!

Inspiration

A penny dropped for me last week. A light switched on.

I am sure there is other cliché that I could use but I will save you the pain.

Over the last two years a change has occurred in my life. My focus has shifted from all things flying towards all things dancing. It is an odd feeling to say the least.

Dance is not something that I ever saw as a part of my life - I got dragged kicking and screaming into it only a handful of years back and once my eyes were opened I found it was something I needed.

Dance definitely gives me my fix of competition and challenge and does so in a more compact and convenient way than flying balloons ever did.

I still love our business and even flying still makes me smile inside once I am doing it but right now I don't ever wake up wishing I could go for a flight. I wake up wishing I could go for a dance instead.

Modern Jive or Ceroc is where I started in the dancing world. It is easy to pick up, very social and fun partner dance that can be done to just about any music.

Since then I have started expanding and playing with West Coast Swing. A more technical dance in some respects but oh so much fun to play with once it starts to click into place.

I am not there yet but every now and then there will be a moment where I get a taste of what it is about and it just blows my mind. It is a smooth and connected dance that is all about lead and follow and playing with the music and your partner.

So, the moment last week was bought about by two very special people. Benji Schwimmer and Kellese Key who were teaching at an event put on by Nuroc Dance Company.

Benji is the winner of So You Think You Can Dance, USA season 2. Kellese is his dance partner and they were out here teaching WCS workshops for a week and doing private lessons.

There were too many moments, laughs and highlights to touch on except to say that I finally can see myself as a dancer and know that this is a part of my life for ever. These guys made that connection for me, made me realise just how important this is to me.

It was amazing to watch them dance, talk and express themselves and the obvious part that dance has played in their lives.

Charlie and I belted out our 2009 Bond routine one last time to get yet another trophy and best of all, the peoples choice award for it. Not a bad way to wrap it up before we start work on this years competitive routine.

As for ballooning stuff, we wrapped up 2009 with our first ever special shape balloon. From go to woe it was my baby to design, certify and test fly.

It was quite a challenge but good fun. Even better fun because it just worked and is still out there working away, doing it's thing with not so much as a phone call or question from the customer.

The only thing I like more than sending a new balloon out the door, is never seeing it again until it has died of old age and the customer rings saying they would like another please!

2009 Aussie Nationals

I don't know why I am starting this up again. I think it is a procrastination thing....

It has been an interesting week for me. This is the first Aussie Ballooning Nationals that I have missed since 1994.

I really needed a break after the Worlds in Austria last year and so, here I am watching the results on the internet and having to admit I am wishing I was there.

It looks like they are having great weather and lots of tasks. Paul is running away with the competition with Edwin close behind. It would have been fun to be in that fight.

Andrew Robertson is flying my racer this week. Giving my balloon away was one sure way of making sure I could not get suckered into going at the last moment.

Having said that I have been dancing like a freak for the past year and have not had any time for ballooning so I would have been under prepared and out of practice. It was probably better to leave it to those more keen.

On the dance front, Charlie and I have won both of the major Aussie modern Jive (Ceroc) comps at advanced level and placed 3rd in NZ.

We also have a routine we choreographed together that has placed 3rd a couple of times now too. Very happy with that result.

With one more major comp to go this year we are working hard to make it a clean sweep before we are bumped up into Masters for the 2010 competitions.

Denied

It has taken a few days to find an internet connection again. Indeed I am now at Vienna airport and waiting to check in for the flight home.

The last flight that I had been hoping for was on then off again.

Unfortunately for a number of us, it was not actually canceled until we were in the air and getting smacked around in turbulence.

The crazy thing was that I was having fun! Sure it was fast and the cut grass fields between all the forest and maize looked awfully small at 30km/h but it slowed down in places and since we were already flying it seemed a shame not to get to throw our markers.

I did have one moment with the balloon bent in half in a wind shear and was wondering if I was going to get smacked into the trees below. Andrew and Camilla said it looked like I was hung on a powerline because it was all lent over so bad.

After passing the launch site and getting the message via SMS that the flight was now canceled, my first landing opportunity was actually at one of the HWZ goals so I landed there and the target officials helped me pack up.

It was a stand up landing on the road and ended any chance of improving on my position of 49th - the median rank, right in the middle of the pack. Not happy Jan!

It was an interesting week, from not being interested in going at all to all pumped up and ready to go. Intrigued and annoyed at not having observers and using loggers only to convinced that logger only competitions are very bland (despite my inability to fly it well).

I have to admit that not having to stuff about finding and measuring markers was nice and made for much easier days BUT it felt like it was somehow lacking. The lack of fly on tasks and the pressure they bring and also the opportunity to correct for your own mistakes with a good fly on selection have me convinced that observers are a good thing.

It will be interesting to see what time and evolution of the new rules brings or if observers will be bought back into the mix as more and more pilots complain about their absence.

I have to thank Andrew, Yosh and Camilla for all their hard work during the week. They got me in the air and back for breakfast, lunch or dinner every day. Kept me smiling when the results were not what I wanted and focused the moment my mind wanted to wander to warmer, sunnier places. Thanks guys, you are legends.

So what is next? I have a few days once I get home to prepare for the Ceroc Australia Championships in Sydney where Charlie and I are in three events including a showase that we have yet to finish rehearsing. Panicing much???

Having won intermediate/advanced at the Ceroc and Modern Jive Champs a few months back, the pressure is on the back it up with another win before we have to move onto advanced for next years round of competitions.

Go, go, go!

PS: photo was stolen from the 2008 Worlds picasa album - not sure who's it is but it pretty well shows what we were doing all week if we flew!

Wish come true

It looks like the weather may have just opened a small window for one last flight.

I am sitting in the briefing tent having just planned my flight and am waiting for the official briefing and roll call to start.

The tasks are a fly in and hesitation waltz. The fly in is to the launch field and the HWZ has five goals .

We are expecting fast winds to arrive on the surface early so we need to get the flight over and done with as quick as we can.

I am expecting the typical close results on the targets so need to fly this really well to move back up the list.

We need another flight

Friday afternoons flight has been canceled due to high winds.

Results are up from the morning flight and it looks like it was as bad as I expected.

From four tasks I managed to get under 1000 points, putting me back to 47th place. If we don't get another flight in the morning that is where it will end.

Not much else to say really.

Going, going.....gone

Well the lack of blog posts are due to the fact that we have been flying and sleeping and not much else.

After all the canceled flights and a single flight back on Wednesday, Thursday finally turned it on with a full day of flights.

The AM flight on Thursday was a full five tasks. Our results for those were slightly better than they felt from the basket and in the end we had a healthy 3800 points from the possible 5000 including a task win for me with a 1.35m result.

The PM flight saw another three markers on the table at briefing. Again, conditions were challenging and the field was split with half attempting the two hesitation waltz tasks first while the others opted to try the fly-in part of the flight first.

I picked up two great hesitation waltz results, both around the 7m mark for 989 and 988 points for each. The fly-in part of the task did not work for me but the 418 points was still better than nothing.

At the end of the day we were in 13th place, up from 65th after day 1.

Friday morning and we had another four tasks to fly.

Unfortunately nothing really went to plan today and I am not looking forward to seeing the results.

The first task was pilot declared goal which I missed by about 150m - not good when the first 20 places are generally within 10m of the target.

This had me set up too far to the right for the next hesitation waltz goal which I thne missed by 600m. Again pretty depressing when you can see the pile of markers around the target from the other competitors.

The third task was a fly in to the field for a minimum distance double drop. There was complicated little scoring area and the job was to drop two markers as close together as you can but with each in a separate box marked on the field.

I saw it off in the distance somewhere but never go closer than about 4km. Fortunately I think only about 10 people did.

The final task was an elbow where we had to cross a road, fly for 15 minutes then achieve the greatest change in direction we could after flying for another 15 minutes. Flying right back on yourself or 180 degrees change in direction is best.

We had a cunning plan based on all the winds going the wrong direction I had already found during the morning.

It did not work. We achieved about 56 degrees change in direction and have heard of plenty of others who got the 180 degrees.

Right now it is time to get some sleep and hope that we get the last two flights in this competition before the weather turns to crap again. It is already quite windy outside so we will just have to wait and see if we get any more flying.

Competition has started

Finally we are off and flying.

Despite the high winds I was talking about before the briefing, the event director David Levin sent us out for two tasks with the expectation that surface winds would remain reasonable until about 0830.

As this is an observer less competition there is no scope for pilot declared goals like we would normally have. As such all targets are selected by the director and in the case of this flight we had two hesitation waltz tasks with three goals available for each.

The goals all have a Marker Scoring Area (MSA) set that you can drop your marker in for a measured result. If you are outside the MSA your result is the 3D distance as calculated from your GPS logger.

All balloons launched from the main common launch point. Winds right in the surface were slow but quickly picked up speed as you climbed much more than 100 feet or so.

Approaching the first goal, the MSA was a soccer field (Goal 704). I was located a little to far to the left for a good approach so opted for one of the second two targets (705 & 706) where I could keep the approach nice and low. A small shift in the winds had me fighting to get to either of the targets which were located about 190m apart.

In the end I flew pretty well right down the middle of the two for a GPS scored result. Not really what I wanted while watching markers pile up on the other targets.

The screen capture from my tablet shows it and the photo at the top of this post is it in reality with goal 706 in the foreground and 705 behind it.

Once clear of task one, I climbed into the faster upper winds to set up task two.

The first available target was rushing up and was off to the right of my track. A quick descent to ground level put me into a wind direction that took me right to the goal for an approximately 8m drop.

Was it a good morning? Not really results wise but bloody good to be flying after all this time. The full track log is shown below with goals 721, 722 & 730 making up task 2.

Austria 2008 Flight 1 - 17th August AM

Wednesday Morning

Time for some live bloging.

We have just arrived at the briefing tent on day 4 of the competition. It is 0521 and the briefing starts at 0530.

During the drive down the hill we watched the trees thrash about and wondered if it could really be calm in the valley.

It is calmer but not what I would expect to be flyable right now. It will be interesting to see what happens, if anything in these conditions.

As a team we are having fun. I have never traveled so far or paid so much to play Yahtze but such is ballooning.

Pardon the crappy picture, it is from my web cam but shows the crowd of bored pilots :)

Austria = rain

Right now there is lot of things I could say about Austria and ballooning but none of them are nice so I am going to try and explain what is happening here as politely as I can.

I would love to say that the photo of Edwin to the left was from today's flight but it was actually from the practice week.

We are now at day two of the competition and have yet to make a flight. Two SMS messages from the event director, one at about 4am canceling the morning briefing and another at 9.30am canceling the afternoon briefing have given us the day off to enjoy the area, all be it under a layer of cloud and rain.

Day one of the competition was also washed out by rain. We arrived for the morning briefing at 0530 with light rain falling on the windscreen of out van. Two markers and a task sheet were waiting for us with the flight to be two hesitation waltzes. Due to the rain we were put on hold for 45 minutes but finally the flight was canceled.

After a long morning of drinking coffee and hanging out we had a group photo with all of the teams and officials, probably about 500 people in total and taken by the most bizarre photographer I have ever met. His large format camera was poised on top of a massive tripod that required a ladder and much fiddling to set up.

To his credit he kept the whole crowd in place and entertained with his balancing act on the ladder and repeated calls for the crowd to "looooook to meeeeeeee!"

The afternoon flight was also put on hold multiple times as we waited for showers to pass the area. Eventually with many balloons half set up on the field the black flag was raised as more rain arrived. Interestingly two fiesta balloons were wandering into sight further up the valley and heading in the wrong direction for the goals that had been set.

The reasons for cancelling were pretty obvious. Despite some light rain, the low cloud base and massive change in direction would have put the field of 100 balloons into a dangerous situation, looking for the right direction in cloud. Not fun at all.

To entertain ourselves we got an invite to the team USA dinner and had lots of fun chatting to them all while Al Nells chatted on about taking 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in the competition. I have to admit I like their enthusiasm but intend on only letting them have places 2 and 3 at the end of the week.

So here we are back to this morning and more wind and rain. As I type this Andrew is Googling for a go kart track or paint ball so we can go and do something energetic before we go nuts.

Keeping busy

Ok, as I seem to be having problems finding time to blog right now, I am going to point you to Andrews blog for more words and photos....

I will lift my game, but for now Andrew is doing better while I get ready for the competition.

Practice Friday

We did another practice flight today. The organisers put ran a briefing and set two goal this morning. It was a great lesson in how the valley flows and changes as the morning develops.

We flew in from about 3.5km north west of the launch site and from the moment I was in the air it was obvious we were in the wrong side of the valley flow. I had set up near the center of the valley and as such had good speed and direction to a any other place than the actual goal I was trying to get to.

With that lesson learnt, I kept working at it despite being over time. Interestingly, the second goal proved to have the same issue for pretty well all of the other balloons. As the morning wore on everything in the valley stopped and went to waffle leaving only the gradient wind at altitude of any real use.

Weather wise it seems like we are in for another wonderful event in Austria with an amazing week of practice followed by a week of rain and wind during the actual competition. We are expecting it to turn bad on Saturday at this time but hoping to be proven wrong.

I am taking photos but so far the access to internet has been below average and with all the running around getting ready I have not downloaded any yet.

Also the link to the Worlds site for results etc. is now on the right or use this link.

Practice Time

After a few days cruising around Austria in a 3 series BMW it is now down to serious work for the World Championship.

We arrived in Hofkirchen on Wednesday afternoon and had a wonderful afternoon watching about 50 or so balloons fly out of the Schillieten Castle, the location of the Worlds back in 1987.

A quick trip Hartburg train station had our team swell to three with the arrival of Yosh.

Thursday morning was my first practice flight, launching from the Schillieten and flying down into the valley and lake at Stubenburg. Winds here have been very light and variable. There is great options for steering but you need to be patient and I think more importantly, into the sky early and working with what ever looks to be the fastest winds.

Camilla arrived on Thursday morning and it was off for another flight that evening.

This time I launched from the common launch point for the Worlds to have a look at that valley. I picked two goals and with a lot of work managed to score well on both.

An interesting thing is that I am flying this even solo for the duration. As such all of these practice flights are solo so I can get used to the performance of the balloon and my own company. I am loving the space in the basket and having the freedom to talk to myself with out anyone having to know that I do....

2008 World Championship - Austria

Well folks, it is that ime of the year again when I pack my bags and balloon and head to the other side of the world for the Ballooning world Championship.

2008 has us in Austria, about half way between Vienna and Graz.  You can find it on google maps right here....


View Larger Map

The team this year is Andrew Roberston, Yosh Shigyo and Camilla Sorensen.  I am keeping it compact and simple.  With all crew as pilots (or nearly in the case of Yosh) it shoukd be a nice effecient team with everyone knowing what is going on.

I am not sure how I will go for updates during the event but will see what we can do to keep the information flowing.

Right now I have about 28 hours of movies and back cramps to deal with so see you on the other side of these flights.

The landing

Well the story has gone to air on 60 minutes and here for those who missed it is the final part of the story showing the balloon landing.

I will have to try and get the full scene from Glenn and Heather and cut that together some time because there should be more to it than was used on the show.

Anyhow, it shows most of the action including the tree that I was using to slow us down a little (well that is what I am saying after the fact...) and some of the final drag once we made it into the clay pan, then back out the other side.

The interesting thing was that a few hundred meters past that tree, the ground dropped about 60 feet into the clay pan I was aiming for. At the time we were doing somewhere between 15 and 30 knots. 32knots was the number I last saw on the GPS at about 100 feet.

Truth be told I wanted to just clear the tree and the little cliff and touch down on the near side of the clay pan. With the balloon so lightly loaded (you can see how empty it is in the shots) if I had started a climb to get over the tree we would have been off into the sticks again before I got it on the deck.

Once it became apparent that we were going to skim the ridge and had lined up the tree, there was little choice but to hang on and just go through it and make sure that we flew over the cliff rather than drag down it.

The rebound threw us up a bit higher than I hoped and while venting the whole way we overshot the first half of the clay pan before touch down with the Lite Vent fully open.

The final drag was about 200m with sticks, bushes and rocks going everywhere.

Great fun.

I expect the full story will be available on the 60 minutes website in a day or two and I have a copy here that I will probably put on line in the near future with fingers crossed that Channel nines lawyers don't come after me :)

It's a long way down...

With the clock running down we finally got the break we had been looking for.

As always happens, last week we thought that Thursday would be the day and guess what? It was.

Truth be told, tomorrow would have been better but the flight is in the bag and there was no option to wait another day.

Assessment of the met on Tuesday night had us decide that the 25,000 foot flight was going to end in tears with a fast landing in a potentially remote area. Not being able to retrieve the balloon or damaging it would put paid to the main flight to 39,000 feet so a Cessna 207 was booked for Wednesday so Glen, Heather and Greg could jump their buns off all day.

I had a great day flying around them in the R44 chopper shooting video and even got to have a play on the controls. At the end of the day I hitched a ride in the 207 jump plane from Curtain Springs to Ayers Rock and with in minutes of take off had the controls and flew all the way in to the circuit.

The guys got some amazing shots over Mount Connor but unfortunately Australian Geographic have first bid on them so we can't publish anything until it is all released.

All in all a great day of aviation.

After a late group get together Wednesday night, it was into bed before the alarms started going off at 0250 when the alarms started going off.

While not totally calm on the surface, it was enough to give us a shot. The upper winds were still not strong enough and the direction also was not great but again, it was within our minimums for a flight attempt. A chilly -53 deg. C and 80 knots was on order for the top end of the flight.

Glenn, Heather, John and myself sat in chairs pre-breathing O2 for an hour while the crew inflated the balloon. It was soon obvious that the ground wind was picking up at the nearly empty 400 bounced around on the launch rope.

Once our hour was up it was into the basket and soon away for the flight. It was a good hour before sunrise as we slipped into the dark sky with hardly a line of light on the horizon.

I was flying the balloon while John chatted to ATC for out clearances. I kept the climb rate at a pretty solid 800 to 1000 feet per minute and in no time the temperature was dropping as we cruised past 24,000 feet.

Around this time the only normally aspirated pilot light failed but the two on O2 feed burned quite nicely.

At just under 31,000 feet we had a total flame out and some quick and practiced hits with the striker had the main burner re-light and the pilot lights running again and we were on our way.

By 34,000 feet I was tweaking everything on the burners to keep the happy and one tweak too much had another total flame out. Again, re-light was not too much of a problem.

In the end we aborted the climb at over 37,000 feet indicated. A really rough adjustment from the logged data indicates that it might have been as high as 38,800 feet but none of that can be confirmed until the record is actually ratified.

The landing was as wild as expected with around 32knots down to about 500 feet before easing off to 16-17 knots on the surface. Not a lot of fun in a lightly loaded 400 I can tell you.

The good news is that it was filmed from two helicopters and from what I have seen it looked every bit as exciting from outside as it looked from my end on the burner and vent. Expect some Youtube video as soon as we are allowed to play with it.

As for the Jumpers, well that is their part of the story and is owned by 60 minutes so I can't really say much else at this time. Look out for it and some spectacular vision of the whole project on Sunday night in a weeks time (3rd of August I think).

The total flight time was 2 hours, 18 minutes, for a distance of 76.9Nm. Peak speed was about 92 Knots. Altitude is still to be confirmed but is probably in excess of 38,000 feet. Maximum climb rate was 1161 ft/min and a the fastest descent rate was 1575 ft/min. All in all great stuff.

Groundhog day...

The weather is still kicking out butt out here at Uluru/Curtian Springs.

Every morning we get up at 3am, kick around in the freezing cold for a bit then go back to bed because it is either too windy, too cloudy or both. It is getting a little depressing to say the least.

Thursday is our cut off day as we loose our chopper pilot that afternoon and other members of the team all have commitments to get back to civilisation for as well.

Despite bad surface conditions, the jetstream has also prevented a successful flight from Glenn and Heathers perspective so it is not all the balloons fault.

The good news is that despite being down to the last two days, conditions are improving and Thursday is looking the best from all angles. Depending on what we get in the morning we may just go straight for the high flight.

Yesterday we had a run in with the park rangers while trying to scam our way into Uluru National Park with a pass donated by a departing tourist. They want $25 per head to look at a bit of rock!!! The passes are not transferable but you have to buy a three day pass despite most people only going for the one day.

At the gate we got the third degree over where the pass was purchased, which car we were in a few days back, how many people were in the car, where was our receipt, was it sold by a man or a woman etc, etc.

As a group of six likely looking suspects we failed the lie detector test by fumbling and pointing at each other while making up the worst possible story that made no sense what so ever and had us ejected on our ear.

We could have paid the money but with two professional photographers in the truck, poor light and only an hour to do a walk we decided that $150 was a bit over the top.

In no time at all we were back at the resort with our tails between our legs to buy some beer. We then headed out to the closest sand dune look out we could find and took in the view for free while laughing about the gate keeper and her little inquisition.

Right now we are trying to organise a plane or chopper for the guys to jump out of so they can get more vision over the desert.