Office FPV day at DIYFPV HQ

After quite a long while, we finally carved out some time to zoom around the office with our whoops again! We got a few packs in with the Air 75 - which, to be honest, is teetering right on that fine line between “safe for indoor flight” and “might take out a monitor if you sneeze mid-turn.” 😅

I also tried firing up our trusty Mobula 6, but the poor thing wasn’t having it - the VTX was acting up. Not completely dead, but the video feed was very sketchy. I suspect that after one of its earlier crashes, we hadn’t noticed the antenna had partially popped off and, well… the VTX probably cooked itself.

So I decided - today’s the day the DIYFPV office fleet (Air 75, Mobula 6, Air 65, and one experimental, ultra-budget 75mm whoop) would rise again!

A couple of months back, I had ordered a TBS Unify Pro32 Nano as a replacement VTX, and figured this was the perfect time to finally put it to use - and also to properly test out the new T90B soldering iron (I’ve actually been meaning to write a post about my research into portable soldering irons - what I looked at, what I learned, and why the T90B ultimately earned its place in my toolkit. Coming soon 👀).

After tearing down the Mobula 6, I soldered everything together… before realizing I’d forgotten the SmartAudio wire 😅. Once that was sorted, it was time to dive into Betaflight and reconfigure the ports. The SuperX ELRS AIO 5-in-1 that powers the Mobula has a built-in VTX, but since that one was toast after the antenna mishap, I had to disable its UART1 configuration entirely. I then soldered the SmartAudio RX wire to TX2 on the AIO, enabled UART2 for the new VTX, loaded up the VTX table, powered on the goggles, found the right channel, and - voilà! Mobula came back to life! 🎉

Meanwhile, the Air 65 had a broken motor wire from its last flight - a quick solder fix later, and it too was back in the skies.

So, after a bit of solder smoke, UART juggling, and Betaflight tinkering, the DIYFPV office fleet is officially back in service. 🚁💪

Oh, and if you happen to spot something interesting in the photos… 👀 yes, that might just be our DIYFPV Builder - the very same tool we’ve been working day and night on to help pilots plan out their builds, pad layouts, and wiring. Totally accidental that it made it into the frame. Totally. 😏

Ready for maiden

Coming to a theater near you. An epic story of two over the hill FPV pilots and their quest to expand to FPV fixed wings. Join them as they experience the pain, disappointment and heartache followed by the joy of their first successful launches and landings! (Not on the same flights 🤣)https://youtu.be/ZO6JluAA3Vs?si=JxyeAF4B-M8ucgWJ

I have started my wing journey 🥰https://youtu.be/HQlb6TkaCxI?si=M5wycFBJQiWO1lfL

I made a great FPV trainer for fixed wing flying. Super easy to fly, pretty durable and very cheap!

https://youtu.be/969ikLoqLzs?si=Lx1seaCmko-gnRr6

OK. Thanks to the TBS Mojito release im interested in FPV wings.

Could anyone recommend best starting kit, and e.g. some good youtubers to watch?

Is there someone like Stu or Joshua Bardwell for fixed wings? 😆

🛫🛫🛫

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/fkVw9oUFLYI

The TBS mojiti just release and it is SCARY powerful. Check out the launch Trappy did when he came for a visit. See if you can notice when it went from 30% throttle to %100

Has anyone tried DIY headtracking?

I want to explore it for use with my planes (not my drone, that feels like it would lead to a world of disorientation and catastrophe!)

I have been on the Head Tracker Discord for a few months now, and purchased a DTQSYS headtracking board to build up to fit on my goggles 3.

I've also bought 2 BetaFPV ELRS lite receivers, one to be flashed with Rx as Tx firmware to provide a wireless link from the headtracker to the other one in the module bay of my TX16s, which will add the 3 headtracking axes as 3 additional channels to be sent to my plane for the camera gimbal.

I haven't decided on what camera gimbal to use yet. I was originally introduced to the idea via the motionsic youtube channel, so I may purchase his 'Badass Gimbal'

My Dragon2 just got a new Nose. Before it had an old DJI Air Unit, with a hard limit to 13.5km max distance. New VTX is a Walksnail Avatar GT, limited only by the Antennas. Should be fine for 40-50km max distance. Let's see how it goes, last flight with the old System was around 35km of travelled distance, using less than 50% of the 6.2Ah 4S2P Liion.

This is a Nemesis, a 3d printed plane designed by Stunt Double. Available for free on Thingiverse, plus several other planes. Great bird, flies super stable and very efficient. Sorry for the messed up OSD, was still configured for DJI.WTF, not for the used O3 Air Unit...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mupEHOt2gL4

Greetings from North of Switzerland, from a fixed wing guy. Hope to find some flying buddies here 😀

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPE2RGZXEyc

Ready to fly my little boy