Hi all It doesn't have to cost $800.
A couple of years ago I bought a Chinese quadcopter, complete with video camera, 2GB micro-SD card, card-reader, spare propellers, 2.4GHz remote controller, and including shipping - all for $68. But I think the price has come down now. The total "diameter" of the thing is only 35cm or so. The quadcopter at time of purchase, had various optional attachments you could choose, not just the video camera. There were things that fired little darts and stuff like that. So basically there is a spare channel which is operated by a button on the remote control, no need for an additional radio transmitter. Of course it doesn't have things like GPS hovering and you don't want to fly it in any kind of wind, any at all. I have a plan to hoist a wire over my next door neighbour's tree. My previous attempt to THROW it over the tree by standing on my rooftop did manage to land in the middle of the tree but was hardly OVER it, and in hindsight trying to throw it while balancing on the roof didn't seem like it would increase my life expectancy any. A storm took down the wire. And the quadcopter seems a better solution. A few weeks back, I did go out one morning early, before the sea breeze started up. I was all ready to give it a go, but I discovered that the fishing line I have is a little too short. Then I remembered how one earlier attempt at throwing fishing line into the tree from the roof had resulted in a lot of tangled up line which had to be thrown away. Now I have bought some more line and yet to get around to a retry. Even that tiny cheap quadcopter had plenty of power to lift the fishing line to around twice the tree height (I guess about 60 feet), and it had still enough power to lift the plastic reel that the end of the line was tired to. 73 Hans G0UPL http://qrp-labs.com ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to [email protected]
