FPV Cobra; Ready For Combat
Posted on August 9, 2010 by aaronredbaron
I felt the only thing missing in my FPV experience was having the perspective from a military aircraft. I’ve been fooling around with trying to put the camera in the cockpit on the bench, but I haven’t been happy with the results. While trying to come up with a good way to convert my Mini Titan for FPV, I decided to take advantage of a Super Cobra conversion kit I already had. The raised tail is put to good use to help keep the tail out of the grass while landing FPV, and I wanted to put the cannon in the camera view. At first I tried the cannon under the camera, on the nose of the heli. I wasn’t happy with this arrangement and the cannon was out of focus. After going back and forth about how to mount it, I decided on a side mounted location which keeps the nose of the heli in view on the far side of the screen. I get to see just enough to add some realism, without taking up a lot of valuable real estate on the screen, and I kept the cannon in focus!
To tame the Mini Titan down from its wild 3D setup, I added the heavier paddles which came with the Cobra conversion, and I also added some Trex 450 flybar weights. I choose the Mini Titan from the onset not only because I have one, but because they are very stable, very smooth little flying machines, and I have always liked the “big machine feel” they posses. I am happy to report I have no issues flying the little gunship watching the video feed the entire flight, from takeoff to landing, and I’m finding additional stability assistance unnecessary. Even in a low hover, I have no problem maintaining complete control of the aircraft.
Using an old Sharp board cam with a ~100 degree lens, no OSD and a 1.28 gHz video transmitter I’m getting great results with my home-made dipole antenna. (please note you must have your HAM licence to use 1.28 gHz in most parts of the world) Please click here to see IBCrazy’s thread here for info about building your own FPV antenna. I’ve been trying to integrate everything I need for my base station into my TV case, and I’ve added a power distribution box to filter the power going to the TV, eliminate ground loops, and provide 5 volts to the video recorder.
That’s a very cool perspective. I think it’s just begging for a little battlefield of army men to be set up on the ground for low fly-bys, and some bottle rocket launchers.