AR Pro Prop Test (Didn't go according to plan)

[@cobra4829]

thank you for reminding me why I threw away my AR Pro. I loved and I still do love the behavior of this wing in the air but not the random crashes on launch ruining the perfect flying day

[@bluefish3607]

Yeah I have had my share of frustration with this wing but always managed to figure what I was doing wrong. Same in this case I know why the ESC failed on launch. But when you get it sorted it flies great and | really love it. I bought one kit a purely a test plane to try everything on and then put all I have learned into a nice new build. Fingers crossed that shiny new one doent face plant into the dirt on maiden. 😃

[@cobra4829]

@@bluefish3607 " AR Pro Crash " my video , it was supposed to be my third flight that day, I was so happy after the first two, happy that finally everything is perfect, and BAM that was the last time NO MORE

[@MrHitman1966]

Really interesting to watch - great video

[@bluefish3607]

Cheers Chris, I really love that wing and had two brilliant flights before the servo failure.

[@SteffenRC]

Glenn, Funny how a plan gets interrupted by something like this. Wonderful video as always. Glad you got the ARWP Test plane up and running. Looking forward to the data on the props as I'm flying the same power system you have. Take care, Will

[@bluefish3607]

After the first two flights I was getting super confident that I was going to get some very useful data from the day, then that big spanner got thrown in, I will do it again for sure and share the results Will.

[@blueskyfpv]

Thanks for the information and videos. I'm about to build my first wing (ar pro) after years of quads. Nervous, but excited too. I would suggest getting a smoke stopper for use on the desk when testing new esc's and new soldering work. Cheers.

[@bluefish3607]

I flew quads for 5 years then got into wings and I will never forget my first wing maiden flight as long as I live :-) I do test all my electronics, I did learn that the hard way, this ESC has been in the plane for quite a few months and has been rock solid. I think the problem was caused by me overtightening the zip ties on the ESC mount and damaging the board. I have redesigned the mount to avoid this possibility in future. I still get that nervous excitement every time I fly, best wishes for your build and maiden. I think you will love wings and the AR Pro.

[@shadofpv]

Shame you had an esc failure mate, i feel for you, when the weather's nice and we finally get out to fly then something always happens ey :') but that's the fun of the hobby :) it's almost more fun taking things that are broken completely apart to find out what went wrong and gain a deeper understanding, i now even resolder and recap some of the esc's on my more exspensive models now as i want them to have the best chance possible of maiden survival 🤣 great to see you up in the air in this beautifull british weather we are having :D

[@bluefish3607]

Yeah it was a shame as after the tests I was really looking forward to a good blast in those zero wind conditions. The weather really was gorgeous that day and in the HD Goggles the world looked abaolutely beautiful. I think I found the cause and am loooking forward to doing it again and hopefully getting some decent results.

[@davehrcfpv]

An interesting video - in-situ testing is different - I've not tried that yet. I do my motor, prop, amp, power, thrust testing "in the lab". Power meter plus having a wing or EDF vertical held on the kitchen scales and so recording thrust, power and watts draw for 50% and 100% throttle for each test. How come you are not using folding props? No breakage on landing and minimal drag when gliding

[@bluefish3607]

I do the static amp draw and thrust tests on the bench but I find that doing live tests in the air gives me a better feel, besides which those static tests give difference results to when the plane is in motion through the air. In addition to that I just like trying new things, my videos are not instructional nor to serve as a ghuide to do things in the best manner but rather just a dairy of my experiences and journey of personal discovery in this amazing hobby. I am not keen on folding props, I find them harder to balance, they can be prone to vibration and have multiple points of failurecan imo only. I actually like the air braking effect when I kill the throttle and have got used to it now and its part of the feel I get when flying that I would miss. A bit like car engine braking or regenerative braking on an EV it becomes part of your driving style.

[@davehrcfpv]

@@bluefish3607 The most robust and durable props are those designed for quadcopters: I'm sure you most know that. So I am surprised you've translated that knowledge onto flying wing motors. My Vantac AR+ Wing came with uprated motor and GemFan 51x52x3 props as OEM. That gave 1300g thrust. I use DalProp 50x45x3 on my Mini-AR Wing. My EFX Racer never once landed without a broken prop. I found that HQProp 7x4x3 quad prop was direct equivalent to the OEM 8x6. It was quieter and surprisingly more efficient, running on 4S I could get 2300g thrust, but ran on 2000g to protect the power train. Never had a prop break since! So the 9x6x2 equivalent 3-blade would likely to be Gemfan CL 8040 Cinelifter 3-Blade Prop (HobbyRC), which is what I'll fit to my Zohd Dart EXL to start with.

[@davehrcfpv]

I have had a fire in flight - burned and crashed you might say. Came off the top of a tall loop with my upgraded Ruckus, as LoS I noticed a smoke trail and thought: strange, that's for IC engines.... By the time the plane reached 4 o'clock telemetry was lost. Foam fire crash: destroyed motor, ESC, battery and the fuselage. The evidence trail suggested the Hobbyking SK3 motor let go first with the flames ripping thro the cable hole in the firewall as far back as the servo bay.

[@bluefish3607]

Wow that sounds pretty nasty, I was fortunate mine happened on the ground, I think I have worked out what happened so another lesson learned. Sorry about your plane, I have had a few crashes myself but pretty much all were to to pilot failure rather than harware failure :-)

[@vanrcmodelucak6565]

Pır cuwane balefırate

[@bluefish3607]

Destpêkên min tirsnak in ez mîna keçikek piçûk diavêjim :-)

[@fpv_wing]

Impressive stability!!, the AR WING really likes that. Greetings

[@m3chanist]

What an absolutely beautiful day. Stunning. Motor physically stopped hard at high revs when prop hit=massive back emf spike into esc.

[@bluefish3607]

Yes it was a beautiful sight from the air with all the ice crystals reflecting in the low sunlight. I am also thinking that the failed launch contributed to the ESC failure. That said, just before the crash I had just swapped the motor wires around as the next prop had opposite rotation. The ESC mount I made holds the ESC in place with zip ties and I may have been over tightening them and causing some crush damage to the board. I am re-designing the mount so that the ESC does not sit above the edges so the zip ties just hold it in place and not put any pressure on the pcb. I replaced the ESC with the same one and went out and flew 4 5000mah packs really agressively and it didn't miss a beat.

[@dronepilot260rc]

Have you thought about trying an 8x8 airplane prop? That's what I'm running on my Ar900 classic. Couldn't tell you all the amps, ect but it's definitely got some speed on a 2807 1300kv emax eco 2

[@bluefish3607]

I have burned out two of these SunnySky MKIII 2216 1400kv motors with APC 8x6 props so thats why I am testing some others with slightly lower pitch. The APC 8x4.5 multi rotor props have been brilliant and if I am to be honest I don't really need to look at anything else but just for the sake of curiosity and to have a bit of fun I decided to test some others.

[@MisterDonkey]

I wish I had the confidence in inav or auto launch that some of you guys have, launching a wing without a transmitter in hand. 😬

[@bluefish3607]

I have never launched with transmitter in hand, I have never had the confidence to do that 😄

[@SonAndDadFPV]

@@bluefish3607 🤣

[@garretpickens5745]

I feel ya on that. I launch over head but have my radio hanging on my lanyard.

[@schwarzflieger]

how the aero=naut CAMCarbon 8x4.5 performs compared to a 8x4.5 nylon prop of the same dimension? That's the only thing I wanted to know

[@bluefish3607]

I think the Aeronaut is better personally but they are brittle and break more often on landings. That said the performance advantage on the Aeronaut is only marginal. I tend to use the APC 8045 MRP multi rotor props most of the time.

[@paulhernandez21]

Wow, lots of good info here. I just got my first AR Pro kit and thought the Sunny Sky MKIII motor and APC 8X6 prop was going to be what I wanted. Looks like I will prop down a little bit. Thank you for your videos buddy. I see you are running CHNL lipos. What size and C rate are those 4s lipos that you are squeezing in there?

[@bluefish3607]

Hi Paul I will be doing the prop tests again as soon as we get a weather window. I am running the APC 8x4.5MRP multi rotor pusher and it is giving good all round performance. The CHNL I am running are 4S 5000mah, I have 55c and 70c variants. Height wise I need to trim a slight amount of foam from under the hatch lid if I want to get it completely flush with the fuse.

[@boactech3076]

No smoke stopper for test on the bench? May be a lab power supply so you can limit the current. You will never disconnect fast enough in case of a short, so you risk burn your lipo 😅

[@bluefish3607]

I have burnt two more of those ESC's since all after a hard landing or impact, someone told me they have a tendency to do that so I have switched back to T-Motor and won't use them again.

[@OZSCQUADS]

wow. that sucks. any more videos with results about the prop testing?

[@bluefish3607]

Doing a new video when weather permits with an additional prop to test. Starting again so all props are tested in same conditions.

[@blackbirdboy1]

Was it the stock 40A esc? Because it pulled 49A max on the previous flight. As for the failed launch, a bit of a poor throw. Put down maybe to cold fingers letting go too soon? Also, the esc will have had a hard time trying to spin the motor on the ground when the prop couldn't move. I've burnt motors that way. So maybe that damaged the esc?

[@bluefish3607]

Too be honest I do not feel comfortable launching the AR Pro, I used to side launch my AR 900 with ease, but I found the ARP difficult to grasp and the first few attempts did not work out. I then switched to the overhead launch and am paranoid about getting a haircut so tend to throw it high at an acute angle. I get about 1 out of 3 thats decent, maybe I will try the side launch again now I have the setup really sorted. I am inclined to agree with you that the failed launch may have contributed to the ESC failure, I fitted a new ESC the same one and flew 4 packs very agressively with no issues. I use the Hobbywing 50amp ESC's but will maybe up to the 60amp as I noticed myself I hit the 50 amp mark on a few occasions.

[@blackbirdboy1]

@BlueFish A friend has the AR Pro & I've overhead launched his a few times, but I've long arms & no sense. lol Also his has a 1800kv motor & 7x6 prop, so I have an extra half inch of the prop away from my head.

[@bluefish3607]

@@blackbirdboy1 I am 6ft 2 with quite long arms but feeling the prop thrust on my head is never pleasant 😳

[@blackbirdboy1]

@@bluefish3607 Be REET. Just wear a flat cap. You'll be fine! I think it always FEELS closer than it actually is.

[@crog9750]

i know those esc are fragile they cant take a nock

[@bluefish3607]

Thanks for the heads up I will need to be more careful in future and improve my launch technique.

[@andron1967]

Какая дальность полета ?

[@bluefish3607]

Максимальное расстояние использования очков DJI V1 Goggles составляет около 13 км, но я редко летаю на этом самолете более чем на 5 км.

[@johnd1841]

Hi, Absolutely fantastic flying and great testing setup!! Sorry to see that you had the mishap with the esc. During a crash when the motor/prop hit the ground and the motor probably gets stuck for a few seconds without being disarmed or the throttle not being reduced immediately, if the throttle is at a fairly high setting when the crash happens, like in autolaunch, the stuck motor basically shorts the battery. With those big 5,000 mAh LiPo's it's like shorting a car battery. There are 3 sets of (usually multiple in parallel in each set) mosfet transistors in the esc that control each phase of the power to the motor. When the motor becomes a shorted load, several hundreds of amps can momentarily rush through that set of mosfets that are switched on at that exact moment, and even when they are switched on, they still have a few to a few tens of milli-ohms of on-resistance, the heat generated is I²R, so even with very low on-resistance the heat generated in Watts is humongous with that much current, being proportional to the square of the current, that much heat can't be dissipated quickly enough, so the one row of mosfets will encounter a runaway effect of increased heat being generated and will catch on fire and burn very quickly, usually in a matter of a few seconds or less (if they don't burn out fast enough the excessive current can eventually butn out the motor windings). The temporary short is probably what caused the fire. Luckily it didn't damage the motor or anything else too badly, but sorry to see it happened for no reason, from a crash that seems like it shouldn't have happened anyway. I hate those failed autolaunches, ruins the day. Your video/osd combo looks stunning. I thought at first it was recorded on the air/vtx unit, but then I saw some grainy low-bitrate video in one of the changes of scene in the video when you were turning, so I'm guessing it's an HD vtx combined with iNav, recorded on the goggles side? From the amount of data in the osd it can't be DJI HD, so I'm guessing it's either HDZero or Walksnail HD? I'm not 100% which though, I think only Walksnail allows for the color osd with iNav, right? Just wanted to ask to confirm and be sure what osd/fc and vtx / camera combo you used, if you don't mind sharing that info. The video and osd quality is absolutely stunning!! Good luck with the prop testing when you continue.

[@bluefish3607]

Hi John, I discussed the crash and subsequent ESC issue with a friend and fellow pilot and I think you are absolutely right in your description of what happened here. I am glad it happend on the ground and not 2km away in flight. I have fitted another brand new ESC same make and model and been out and flown 4 lipos very agressively and all went perfectly so no motor or FC damage it would seem. I really need to change my launch technique it is pretty poor, I used to side launch my AR 900 consistently well but the AR Pro I find hard to grasp this way and subsequently switched to the overhead style. I have had some great tips on improving the launches and will be trying them out next time I go flying. I am using DJI Air Unit and recording the DVR on the V1 DJI goggles but I have rooted the goggless and air unit and am using the WTFOS mod that allows full iNav OSD and lots of font options. This mod produces a .OSD file file as well as a .MP4 file and you use an online tool to merge the two together into a new OSD embedded video file. Here is a link to the tool: knifa-develop.fpv.wtf/osd-overlay Here is a link to a setup video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/p6atZpl9nb2sjq8 Here is the Github page link: github.com/fpv-wtf/wtfos

[@johnd1841]

Awesome! Glad to hear there was no damage to any other component and that you were able to get back to flying it after replacing the damaged esc. Excited to see more of your great videos. I've watched a lot of your videos both on the AR Wing Pro and Dart XL Enhanced version. All of them are so good it's difficult not to watch all the way to the end each time! The 33-km round trip video was really edge-of-the-seat exciting. I was hoping you'd go all the way to the other side of the river, although battery capacity would make that a little scary, but still happy you went half way across the river before you turned around. What great scenery. Really good video. Excited for more videos. Thank you for sharing the info on your HD vtx setup. Lol, it was exactly the one option I guessed it wasn't. That's amazing quality video, DJI with the root mod and custom OS seems amazing then, I wasn't aware it would be that good. Thank you for the links for the mod and video/OSD merge tool. I will check them out. I too have a hard time hand-launching models, especially wings. It seems that no matter how much you trust autolaunch and no matter how many times you have done it successfully to the point where you'd be considered an expert, it still goes wrong once when you don't expect it. I'm excited to learn more about how to do it as to reduce that unknown factor to avoid random botched launches. It is really annoying when it happens. I've even done it on models with landing gear when the grass is too tall, and even though it goes well 99% of the time, I've ruined landing gear and nose gears badly because of that 1% rate. It's very difficult and time consuming to repair those landing gears. Hopefully we can figure out how to avoid those bad launches. It's such a waste of a good model. Hope to see more of your great videos.

[@bluefish3607]

@@johnd1841 I will persevere with my launch technique and my next video I will show the outcome of my efforts. I have just ordered the DJI Goggles 2 and an O3 air unit now they have announced that they will develop an OSD for iNav. My eyesight is not great I wear glasses and use contact lenses when I fly thats why I love HD so much over analogue and I am hoping that the Goggles 2 are even better than the V1's I have now.

[@Ryan2428]

the joy of flying RC

[@bluefish3607]

Yes we all have our ups and downs in this hobby for sure :-)

[@SonAndDadFPV]

in 2015-2016 we did drone races and almost every time we crashed, we had an ESC fire if you did not disarm fast enough. Even after cleaning the CF frame with aceton, you still could smell the burn on the arms... good ol'days...lol

[@bluefish3607]

I never had an esc fail on a quad you must have been pushing pretty goddam hard. Drone racers love the smell of burnt arms in the morning 😁

[@szczery_fpv]

The smell of burnt ESC stays in the model for a long time ... Every time I open the wall in my glider, unpleasant memories come back, hehe. Thanks for the video :)

[@bluefish3607]

Its been over a week and the smell is still lingering in my hobby room. ESC has been replaced and I have flown 4 lipos and all seems good. I need to practicve my launch techniques, they suck :-)

[@szczery_fpv]

@@bluefish3607 True, the smell is very difficult to remove. As for the autolunch start technique, I use a slightly different technique. First, I arm the Ar Wing, then the throttle to the max and with one decisive jerk I throw it behind me. I'm not waiting for the engine to start... My video kzbin.info/www/bejne/g3ncqa2Ee85ob5o, INAV 4.1 configuration currently 6.0.0 All the best my friend.

[@bluefish3607]

@@szczery_fpv I watched your video and that AR Pro just went straight up no problem 😁 What a fantastic place to fly I love the green fields river and tree's. I assume that is somewhere in Poland?

[@szczery_fpv]

@@bluefish3607 That's right, I also like such places away from people. Then you can calmly fulfill your dreams. This place is Poland :)

[@szczery_fpv]

PS: I can share settings with "AUTO LAUNCH"

[@hendmei7066]

Привет Здорово получилось Слушай Покажи пожалуйста на вкладке режимы какие у тебя настройки сделай пожалуйста скриншоты

[@bluefish3607]

Sorry for the delay I have been busy, I hope this is what you need. drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CsbxlUKpMsfFafiHMnV9ZDnepxsk2wKQ?usp=sharing

[@hendmei7066]

@@bluefish3607 Thank you very much friend I am very glad that you are helping me

[@hendmei7066]

@@bluefish3607 When there's a new video, buddy, I'm looking forward to watching your new videos.

[@bluefish3607]

@@hendmei7066 Maybe be this week depends on weather. Testing the new DJI O3 air unit and Goggles 2

[@hendmei7066]

@@bluefish3607 You take your time with updates, just shoot as before, it's very exciting!

[@jasonchampion856]

Hi, can you tell me why fpv System you use.

[@bluefish3607]

Hi Jc, I use DJI O3 air units and original air units with DJI Goggles 2 on my AR Pro’s and for longer range on my ZOHD Dart XL I use analog, Solo Tank VTX and DJI V1 goggles with analog input.

[@jasonchampion856]

@@bluefish3607 Thank you for that I don't have a DJI goggles V1 but not sure which way to go.

[@bluefish3607]

@@jasonchampion856 I guess it depends what kind of flying you do and what is important to you. I would do some research and watch some DJI and Walksnail reviews on KZbin if you want to go digital on a wing.

[@jasonchampion856]

@@bluefish3607 Ok I will have a think but thanks very much for your input

[@Caroline_Tyler]

Yes, flamey planes are the best!!!! Some beautiful views in the FPV!

[@bluefish3607]

I still cant the burning smeel out of my hobby room, I think I figured out why it happened. The low sun reflecting off the ice crystals on the ground and trees was paticularly beautiful in the goggles.

[@Caroline_Tyler]

@@bluefish3607 I had an ESC decide to burn out mid flight, that was fun. All cleaned up and replaced but that electrical burning smell never fully went!!

[@bluefish3607]

@@Caroline_Tyler I bet it looked like it had been shot down with a trail of smoke behind it 😅