Know How... 123 (Transcript)

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On this episode of Know How, how to quiet your computer, a little bit about thing clients, quad copters, and… oh by the way, it’s time for the first flight.

Father Robert Ballecer: Welcome to Know How, it’s the Twit show where we build, bend, break and upgrade. I’m Father Robert Ballecer.

Bryan Burnett: And I’m Bryan Burnett. And this is episode 123.

Fr. Robert: We have been told by our producer that this is momentous because it is episode 1 - 2 - 3.

Bryan: And that’s it. We have nothing special about that. Welcome to Episode 123. On this exciting mathematical episode.

Fr. Robert: Today we’ve actually got a very special occasion because this the end of the first Quad Copter Arc. We’ve been doing something for the last 11 weeks, where we’ve been showing you how to build a Quad Copter from scratch. Today we are actually going to make you put it up in the air. We’re going to give you some of the steps to make sure you can fly it safely and then we are moving on. This is the end of this first beginners arc.

Bryan: You definitely want to do it safely because it looks like we are moving up to carbon fiber props.

Fr. Robert: We have gone from the trainer to the more “kill your neighbor size”. You need to have your stuff down before you put one of these into the air. But before we do that, we've actually got a little shout out to history.

Bryan: To history? Is it because of this historic 123 episode of ours?

Fr. Robert: F1 Racing! I’ve actually become a fan of F1 Racing because of Tim Stevens. He finally got me back into it. I have watched a couple events and I am actually on the schedule to go watch a live event. I love the tech and I like what they have done with it. But some of the history is absolutely fascinating. When you think of an F1 car what do you generally think of the design? What does it look like?

Bryan: It looks like a little wedge with an open cockpit and four tires. That is about it really.

Fr. Robert: Way if I were to tell you that way back when, at one cars almost has six tires?

Bryan: Six tires? Like training wheels on the side?

Fr. Robert: Kind of. Now this actually wasn’t just one team that was trying to do this. There were multiple teams, in fact Ferrari wanted to do this and so did McLaren. They tried to do for wills for the tri-wheels. Ferrari wanted to do a dually. And McLaren wanted to do side-by-side, in front of each other. Smaller wheels but for drive wheels.

Bryan: Sounds so strange.

Fr. Robert: I know, right? You just don't think of those cars as big plodding monsters.

Bryan: I guess the benefit would be a bigger contact.

Fr. Robert: Exactly. End out was the idea. So they thought we could put more power to the ground if we had more surface area on the drive wheels. And it didn’t work out so well. Both of those teams killed the design before they made it to competition. However, there was one team that decided to take its design into racing. They didn’t do the four drive wheel concept, they did standard size tires for the back but then they used for tires up front for steering.

Bryan: That sounds really strange.

Fr. Robert: It sounds strange. But check this out. In the 1970s there was a designer by the name Derek Gardener, with support from racing legend Sir Jackie Stewart. When holding the idea that building a car would use the front wheels, the guidance wheels, with smaller tires for a number of reasons. First of all, it gives you more contact for steering which will increase handling. But it was also for more aerodynamic. When you think about the design of an F1 car you've got this big balloon on the front of the car that can mess up the aerodynamics. This is before we had massive computer power and wind tunnels that we could design around those.

Bryan: So the smaller tires were more aerodynamic?

Fr. Robert: You could streamline the design. And you could actually have more steering contact space then you would with two large tires.

Bryan: The downside I can think of is that it would add more weight though.

Fr. Robert: A lot. This is what that thing looks like.

Bryan: Also it looks really….

Fr. Robert: Photoshop? It looks like someone took a regular F1 car in said I’m just going to add these front wheels. This is called HP 34. It was made in 1976. It could have been great. It actually did okay. When it was released in 1976 that had 10 podium finishes.

Bryan: What was its drawback?

Fr. Robert: The drawback was that it also failed a lot. It had 10 podium finishes but also had eight withdrawals. The biggest problem was that you view have smaller tires up front and you are going the same speed as the tires in the back they will wear out really fast. Because they turn 1.6 times faster, and there are four of them. So it takes longer to change them out.

Bryan: I'd love to see that in a pit stop. Did you have to add more people to do that?

Fr. Robert: And the other problem was that because they are smaller tires and because they are spinning so fast, you would burn the breaks out in no time.

Bryan: In the 70s, that was they era of the scary horsepower.

Fr. Robert: No limitations. Put as much horsepower in the cars you possibly can. So you had drivers who would lose breaks. Also they were having issues with the suspension on four tires in the front. So you would get some handling issues. And then the next year they still had podium finishes but they had more withdrawals than they had podium finishes so finally they killed it. They couldn’t justify it. But it is interesting. The rules have changed. But you know how F1 works. They don’t want any one team to have an advantage that would just completely rewrite the sport. Like they did with the blown diffuser. Red bull was running last year. This year they are probably going to do the same thing with that split turbo. Because they like to have an even playing field. And I guess the people at F1 said do we want an even playing field of six wheel cars?

Bryan: So they kind of backed down? It is interesting that they laid out the groundwork, the framework with the rules and then every year someone tries to find a little bit of an advantage inside the rules. For a year it is fine and then they decide to fix it.

Fr. Robert: G-Spin is reminding us that the BMW Engine that competed back in the 80s was 1.5 liters, Turbo and produced 1300 hp. You would need six tires for that.

Bryan: Let’s just be safe and go eight.

Fr. Robert: If six is good, eight has got to be awesome. And those are regular sized tires.

Bryan: I want tractor tires.

Fr. Robert: I want them so that you don’t have to change tires they just switch to a new set. We are making fun of this but can you imagine what they could do with this concept, with the technology we have today? With better brakes, better air cooling, better suspension?

Bryan: They could really crunch the numbers.

Fr. Robert: It is kind of cool. Maybe? Like monster truck F1?

Bryan: What about Destruction Derby F1?

Fr. Robert: No, no. All right let’s go ahead and jump into some feedback. We want to end the year. Because by the way, this is the last live episode that we are going to be doing for 2014.

Bryan: That is why we are kind of festive.

Fr. Robert: That is why we are festive! We are kind of Christmas Eve. He is an elf on the shelf and I am a fat guy in the shirt. What we wanted to do was give you some thanks. And answer some of your questions. We’ve got this first one from Adam.

Bryan: So, his question is he is getting a Norco RPC-430 FU case and installing i3-4130 on a micro tax motherboard and six hard drives. The case has 2 80 mm fans and he’s wondering what we would recommend for an efficient fan but as quiet as possible?

Fr. Robert: This is a great question. I do hear this a lot. There are so many fans that are loud. We have all seen. We had a case and we try to tech it away and in fact that is why we like the Acer predator so much because it is so quiet. But the question is, once you have an FU case how do you make it quiet?

Bryan: I was thinking about the first case I bought for the build I did. It was an ATEC, a silent one and they put all this foam inside of it. It wasn't that quiet and I ended up tearing it all out of the case and I said FU case!

Fr. Robert: That foam used to be really expensive. And you would buy it in kits and you could put it inside and outside. And it helped a tiny bit but then is screwed up all the Thermo dissipation because now your case has become a thermos. Which is awesome. Now, there are a few things that you can do that here are a few things to remember. One: Slower is quieter. That is just how it works. The faster you span a fan the more noise is going to make. It is simple physics. The other thing is that bigger blades can spin more slowly…

Bryan: And still pump out the same amount of air…

Fr. Robert: As a faster fan. Because you got more air space which mean it is deflecting more air.

Bryan: This kind of falls into our propeller talk.

Fr. Robert: Exactly. Because you could spend this really slowly or spend one of these eight ensures really fast and get the same amount of lift. It is the same with the fan. You can either spend a big one slowly or you can spend a small and very quickly back if you are going for quiet you want the bigger one. The last one is that ball bearings tend to last longer and be more quiet than sleeve bearings. Sleeve bearings are basically just plastic sleeves. And they work, but over time they wear and then you get a noise.

Bryan: When I am buying fans I don’t think I have ever seen one specified if it was ball bearings or not.

Fr. Robert: That is the problem. It is really hard to know. Even the ones that are ball bearing fans they don't seem to label them. So you just kind of have to figure it out. That last one is difficult to implement if you actually want to do it. Now, what I would suggest is instead of getting a super expensive ball bearing fan or speed controllers just look into getting something like this. This is a 12 inch fan, it is kind of nice. This is for our Oil PC project. It is actually going to go in the tank and push the oil around the tank. The nice thing about this is that I can basically rotate this that fast. And it will still push is much air as one of those tiny little fans. Which means, you are almost not going to hear this. And it will last longer. So if you’ve got a case, if you’ve got that 4U case and you want to get it a bit more quiet, look into this. This is a Cooler Master, we will put the link in the show notes. I actually got this from Tiger direct. It was something like five dollars and then I even had a five dollar rebate. Look for these deals and when they come up and get yourself a couple of sets. So that if you do have a project that you want to cool down you can just go big.

Bryan: Someone in the chat room points out that it is your biggest fan.

Fr. Robert: I get it. It’s that kind of an episode isn’t it? All right, go to number two.

Bryan: Jason was just watching a BYB and they did a review on the Acer chrome box. Is it bad that his first thought was that it would make a great thin client?

Fr. Robert: First of all, Jason, yes. It is horrible. Very bad. But seriously that is what they were built for. They don’t market it like that but essentially a chrome box is what we would have called a thin client 10 years ago. The idea is you are going to be using what we now call virtual desktop infrastructure. You use a network connection. But if you have a lot of computing power in a data center you could access that computing power and run all your applications. Maybe even run games. That was essentially send client team. Because the box on the other side, all it has to do is just display information. It doesn’t have to do any processing other than the user input and output. Now, these have become incredibly popular for that. Because you can put this into situations where you want something quiet, you want something very power efficient and maybe you want something that you are not worried about it getting stolen. For example, on a thin client like this I am not really storing anything on the box. So if someone were to still this they wouldn’t get all my documents. It is just the controller. That is the thin client idea. In fact I would say that if you know what a thin client is and you are using it as a thin client, kudos for you. Because you are ahead of most of the game.

Bryan: And these are really cheap right? Like a couple hundred dollars?

Fr. Robert: Well, okay. Chrome box right now are a little weird. We don’t know why they are pricing the way they are. When they first came out I think they were trying to sell it for like $800. I could buy a full powered desktop for that.

Bryan: What are the specs on it? This has an iPhone five.

Fr. Robert: It wasn’t a great box. This was sort of like the in between generation. The newer ones all use atom processors. Which are perfect for displaying data. But you don’t need to have a heavy processor memory to just essentially display a web browser. There you go. Good job Jason you are not wrong. Thin client all the way!

Bryan: And you are not bad for thinking that either.

Fr. Robert: Yes you are. You know why? Because it is episode 123.

Bryan: The next question comes from Rob. “Padre, on today’s KH you said the Show notes would include an updated parts list for the 230 and 250. What about the 450? I like to build a 450 to add to my go Pro for video. The 450 on the show the clean and simple with the go Pro”?

Fr. Robert: Rob, yes actually this is my Alien X. It is my Quad Copter that I build when I want to do GoPro video because it is nice and stable. It is a 450 class but as you can tell it is kind of stretched a little bit. It is not like the square quad copter where every prop with equal distance from every other prop adjacent. This one is slightly pulled forward, these are slightly pulled back and it gives it a more stable platform for what I want to do, shooting with the go Pro. Now, you are right. We did not put the parts list. But here’s the cool thing. No matter if you are building a 250, 8 to 30 or a 450 on our parts lists basically come up to the same price. So you just choose the set of components that are going to work for you. This frame is about $16.99. Is the X-Alien Quad Copter frame, it comes with a clean plate so this clean plate actually has little bumper pads.

Bryan: That is really neat. And that helps it so that it doesn’t jiggle.

Fr. Robert: Right. So even if your quad is jiggling it will keep the video from jumping.

Bryan: You don’t want to just strap it straight to the frame because then all the vibration transfers to your video.

Fr. Robert: And it ends up looking really bad. That is the frame. It is $16.99, it is prime and you get it. Frames are cheap.

Bryan: The expensive part is the flight controller and the motor.

Fr. Robert: Speaking of the motorists and the ESP’s. The motor that I would suggest for this are the HT 450. They are 2212-13T motors from readytoflyquads.com. These go for about $18 a pop. They are 980 KV, designed for big props. You can spin this with 10 or 8 inch props. If you are going to use a 4S battery then you use the 8 inch props. If you use a 3S battery you use the 10 inch props. We had this discussion when we talked about motors and props. On the electronic speed controllers I would suggest 30 amp. These are the F-30 Fire Red Series SimonK-Rapid ESC. These are $40 for the set. You can’t go wrong with these. They respond incredibly quickly and are super high quality. The flight controller. I’ve got a KK 2.15 on this. However I am going to be replacing this with a Flip MWC 1.5. You can get this thing for $15. Very well made controller, very inexpensive and so why not? You also might want a power distribution. It is basically a little piece of fiberglass with some copper traces on it. This is $1.99 and it leads to some nice neat wiring. There are people who skip the power distribution board altogether and just wire everything up in a harness. Now here is the nice thing. All of those parts total about $145. You will still need a r receiver transmitter, you will still need a battery but you are going to choose what battery you want. You need a 3S or a 4S battery. I would recommend a 2200 ML Amp.

Bryan: How does it balance out with the go Pro on it?

Fr. Robert: Well, remember we talked about this before. Which is, my center of gravity is right here. So right now I am a little bit tail heavy but that is because there is no go pro and the cage. When I put the go Pro in here it will balance out and if it doesn’t, I can move this battery. I can move it forward and back until I get my balance point. Now, the other thing that you also want to get on this is a charger. So don’t forget that. But, as we mentioned several times once you get a transmitter that you like, once you get a battery set up that you like, you can build more frames, more quads without having to re-buy a transmitter or battery. It significantly cuts down the price if you intend to stay in the hobby.

Bryan: So, would you recommend if you are going to be buying the batteries getting those packs? The LiPo Protection pack that you recommended?

Fr. Robert: Yes. Don't do without a LiPo safety pack. It is a good habit. You also will need to buy props. I am using carbon fiber on this model. You don’t have to use carbon fiber. You can go with nylon. There are some less expensive. They look cook and they actually balance a little bit better. At least in my experience. But, carbon fiber is also very ouchy, so be careful. They can be pricey too. They are definitely more expensive.

Bryan: I would say to fly around until you are very comfortable and you are not going to crash and then get the carbon. Because we had the carbon fiber ones on the DJI and a shattered.

Fr. Robert: Plastic props will take damage much better than a carbon fiber prop. Although, your goal should be to not damage them at all.

Bryan: But it happens.

Fr. Robert: Okay. Now folks, we've got a special occasion because…

Bryan: Episode 123!

Fr. Robert: But because it is episode 123 we do have the much promised first flight video. We are going to show you the last steps to take your 250 class that we have been building up in the last couple of weeks and take it outside and put it in the air. So without further ado…

Fr. Robert: In the last addition of project quad we assembled the airframe, wired our electronics, tested the radio, set the proper rotation of our motors, and calibrated the ESC’s. Today we’ve got one last step before we can take our quad on its maiden flight. Configuring the flight controller. Unlike most other controllers, the KK 2.1.5 has its own screen. Meaning that you don’t have to connect it to a laptop or a mobile device to change the settings. As you grow more comfortable with flying and dialing in your configurations, you can move to more feature filled flight controllers like my personal favorite, the Flip MWC. but for the novice there is nothing like the KK ability to let you power up your quad and the KK board should be added safe screen. The four buttons below the screen are backup, down, and enter. Hit enter to drop into the menu. The first step is to load the proper motor layout. This tells the controller how many motors that has to use and what their positions are relative to the controller. Use the down key to navigate to load motor layout. And hit enter. You will see a menu of preloaded configurations that include single and dual rotor helicopters, try copters, septa copters, opti copters plus mode quads and of course our mode configuration quad copter. Navigate to quad copter X mode and hit enter. You will be asked to confirm your decision and hit yes. The screen should change to show the motor layout including the required motor rotation. If you followed our tutorial in the last project quad segment then your quiet will match the on-screen layout. But this is an excellent reference screen if you ever need to reassemble your quad. Next, we need to configure the onboard accelerometers. Navigate to ACC calibration and hit enter. Make sure that your quad is on a solid and level surface and that it is free from vibration. Hit continue and then don’t touch the quad again until calibration is complete. Now we want to configure this self-level control. Navigate to mode settings and hit enter. The first entry should be labeled self-level and it should read aux. This means that you can use an auxiliary channel on your transmitter to turn the KK self-leveling feature on and off at will. You can also use stick and activate or deactivate the self-level with a stick command. But I don’t recommend it unless you only have four channels. If you wired your quad as specified in the last project quad segment, then channel 5 be the on/ off switch for self-leveling. If you are using the fly sky T6 transmitter and you want to reassign self-leveling to a more convenient input then watch our segment on transmitters. The last setting we want to configure is the auto level itself. Navigate to self-level and hit enter. For most, the default values should work fine on a 250 class quad. But I like to turn down my P gains to between 20 and 60. That P gain will regulate how quickly the controller will try to level the craft and too high of a P gain will cause oscillation. As the craft constantly over corrects its level. Before we get into the air let's do a quick check of our handiwork to make sure that the quad will respond as we think it will. Put your quad on a level surface and turn on your transmitter. Connect the battery to the ESC’s and verify that the KK has booted into safe mode. Position yourself so that you are behind and above your quad, with the front of the craft pointing away from you. Now arm the controller by moving the throttle to zero and pushing the stick to the right. You should hear a beep and see that arming light turn on. Toggle your auxiliary channel number five and see if the self-level turns on and off. You will want self-leveling off with the following test. Take a few steps back and then give your quad about 20% throttle. You want to spend up the props but not take off. If you start to leave the ground, reduce throttle. Look for any uncontrolled vibrations or wobbles. Now move the right stick forward slightly until you see the craft start to tilt forward. Be gentle. You are just checking input and you do not want to flip your quad. Move the stick back and see if it rocks back on the landing gear. Now move to the left and to the right checking to see if the quad leans in that direction. Lastly, move the stick right and left to see if the craft will rotate in the right direction. If any of these inputs fail to cause the expected action then you need to check your transmitter for perverse channels and your wiring for incorrect connections. Run through the last project quad segment again and check those connections. When you are done testing inputs, move the throttle to 0% and to the left. This will disarm the controller. Make sure to do this before you ever pick up your quad, otherwise you risk the props spinning up if you tap the throttle. Once you are satisfied that the quad will respond properly to your input while in the air, it is time for your maiden flight. Confirm that your KK is on and in the safe screen and then flip your auxiliary channel to turn self-leveling on. Once again stand a safe distance behind your quad with the front of the craft pointed away from you. Arms of craft and bring the throttled to about 30%. Let us spend up and then continue to advance the throttle until your craft leaves the ground. Your controller should keep the craft level until liftoff. If it starts to wobble, oscillate or careen out of control chopped the throttle. You can fix your quad, but you may not be able to fix what it runs into. Assuming that there were no problems let the quad rise until it is about 4 feet off the ground. Modulate your throttle to keep your quad at the same altitude while you use the right stick to hold position. You want to use small, constant inputs always be adjusting the flight of your quad without large control inputs. You have probably just encountered the first challenge to flying. The ground effect. The prop wash creates a cushion of turbulence in the ground. The bigger the props, the bigger the cushion. As a result the air near the ground is choppy and unpredictable. You will get a much smoother ride once you are above that layer. About 4 feet. Hover a lot. Use an entire battery or 12 to practice hovering. You can vary your altitude but always keep it low enough that topping the throttle won’t cause extensive damage. Note that your quad will be unstable if you try to bring it straight down. That is because it has to fly through the turbulence that it is creating. If you want a smoother flight always descend while moving. It doesn’t feel like much but you are learning the characteristics of your new quad and your brain is learning how to control your fingers to keep the quad where you wanted to be. At first you should be practicing three inputs; elevator, aileron, and throttle. The yaw or rudder should be left alone. Keep the quads rear pointed towards you and don’t worry about rotating your craft just yet. Mix up the hovering practice with an occasional landing. Landings sound easy but the problem is the ground effect. As your quad gets posted to landing it will want to have her just a few inches off the ground even as you reduce throttle. Pick your landing spot, reduce throttle until you hit the ground of fact, correct your angle to keep your landing spot and then quickly reduce throttled to drop through the ground effect. Once you have mastered takeoff, hovering, and landing it is time to try something a bit more challenging. Walking the quad. Find yourself an open stretch of field worldwide abandoned street. Take off and place your quad in front of you about 5 feet away. Now start walking and keep your quad at the same distance from you as you walk. You are training your brain to handle multi that after special reasoning. In other words your brain is learning how to adjust the flight of your quad while you are moving. Use a nether dozen or so batteries to walk the quad. Once you are comfortable with basic movement practice moving your quad from left to right all the while keeping it within your practice radius. When that becomes easy practice rotating the quad a complete 360° as quickly as you can while it is stationary. Making sure to manage the throttle to keep altitude. Once walking the quad becomes second nature it is time to move on to the circle of death. It is a good way to add yaw into your practice. You have been using the throttle, elevator, and eluron in your practice this far but we haven’t actively rotated the craft while moving. The circle changes that. Take off and push her quiet about 10 feet from you. Now, without moving from the spot that you are standing in start to slowly turn your body while keeping the body in front of you with the rear are always facing your body. In order to do this you are going to have to use all four controls. On the right stick you will have to move left or right to keep the quad in front of you and forward am that to keep it a safe distance from your body. On the left stick you will need to use the yaw to slowly rotate the craft in order to keep its rear pointed at you and the throttle to hold it there as you turn. Start slowly and then pick up the pace as you get accustomed to the control combination. If you start to get overwhelmed, stop your rotation and set the quad a safe distance before starting again. Once you are comfortable with these exercises you can move on to more challenging flight.

Fr. Robert: No props were harmed in the making of that video. Now here is the thing. There are a few things that people disagree on for training. The flight test guys that we are going to have over on Padre’s Corner in a bit, they will tell you to never chop power. I kind of train inside of the city even though I do have a field to myself. My thing is that if I am training and keeping it low within four or 5 feet if it starts to get away from me I will chop power. Just because there is more things that I can damage with a with the quad, than the quad will be damaged in dropping four feet.

Bryan: Right and for me, I was out at my uncle’s ranch and I had plenty of space and no one was going to get hurt. But the quad was so far away I couldn’t tell which direction it was going. And beads of sweat were coming down. And I Thinking don’t chopped the throttle. Don’t cut the throttle.

Fr. Robert: So what I would say is that when you are starting that is your thing that is your go to move. As you get more experience and you start flying, chopping the power no longer is an option. Because once you chop power you lose all control of your quad. You have no attitude control or altitude control. It is all gone. So just remember this. If you start to get into trouble, have a checklist that you can run through really quickly in your head to slow things down. Because what you want, it is you want to give your brain time to catch up. That also means you never put your quad into a situation where it is doing something too quickly. For example, there is one shot where I am spinning it around and I am watching it really closely so I know when I am going to get the full rotation. You don't want to just do that randomly because then you end up with your quad in a position that you don’t know and now your sticks don’t respond.

Bryan: And then you do something that is more reactionary and then it is going the wrong direction.

Fr. Robert: That is the worst part. The worst part is that you do something that you think is going to fix that and it actually makes it worse and then your brain begins to panic.

Bryan: I went back over my go pro footage and it felt like, for me it was forever. But with the go Pro is the mic it was about five seconds. But it was floating out and I was just trying to hover at and figure out which direction to go.

Fr. Robert: Time slows down. The other thing is the guys are big on a flight test. They tell their beginners to learn with this self-level off. That is actually a way to do it and they are right in that once you learn to fly without all the self-leveling you will be golden. I kind of go the other way in that confidence is really what is going to help you. Especially confidence on orientation. So what happens to your perspective and your control input. I like to fly with the self-level on and then I turn it off once I start to feel a bit confident and you get a feel for what the quad will do by itself.

Bryan: Right. Because even starting with this I feel 100% comfortable with this, but it is still a pretty big jump to this. I would like to get a feel for it before I turn off all the computer.

Fr. Robert: Now, the nice medium and this is why we said just at the Flip MWC for this is because it will do horizon. Which essentially will let you go acrobatic. So it is like flying in on full manual until you release the stick. If you release the stick it will default back to self-level, which is nice because for example on the MWC when I was doing that flip in the video as I am going into the turn I just flip a switch and it turns off all the self-level assist. It goes to full manual. I wish there was a microphone in my brain because it was like oh this is going to be bad. It should be easy. But the big thing is this folks. No matter what you build I would suggest that you start with a trainer. Learn on one of these. We still fly these. Right now is raining in California and I fight these indoors. It is a great way to just get your hands on something that flies like one of the big ones.

Bryan: Is the only one that I can fly into Burke without him coming to hurt me back.

Fr. Robert: Learn on that and then move on to one of these. Above all else, just use your head. Don’t be like those DJI fools that you see on YouTube who are flying over a beach of people that have no idea it’s up there. Were people who are flying into the side of the building…

Bryan: Or above the clouds and you lose GPS.

Fr. Robert: My favorite are the ones that are flying through Chicago and then they say we couldn’t have known that the signal would cut out as we went past a building and then it returned to home. That is this sort of stuff that doesn’t have to happen if you are a safe about how you fly your quad.

Bryan: As much as I would love having a pilot’s license I don’t want to have to have one to fly my quad.

Fr. Robert: Stop messing it up. So this is going to be the last quad copter episode. Definitely of the year. We do have another Art coming up because we've got to go into the more advanced topics. Once we start getting up to these six, seven, 12 inch props you are going to have to learn how to balance. And we will show you how to do that. We are going to show you a bit more about power systems. We are going to show you some of the more cool things you can do with aggro mode so if you want to learn how to flip your quad or how to do some crazy turns we are going to teach you how to do that. We are also doing builds. We are going to build the Tri-copter. We are building a junk copter. We actually got a challenge to scrounge through the basement and find something that we are going to turn into a quad.

Bryan: I was wondering why all these styrofoam and stuff was piling up behind me!

Fr. Robert: Actually right now in the studio we’ve Got the guys from game of drones. They made a practically indestructible quad copter so hopefully we will get our hands on that and we will prove them wrong.

Bryan: gameofdrones.bis. Check it out.

Fr. Robert: Look for that. Also in the first episode of the new year which we are going to be pre-recording tomorrow, we are actually going to show you some of the cool things you can do to Aseema. Now we have been telling you to get these trainers and we know that people have issues with range and with motors burning out.

Bryan: But we figured that one out.

Fr. Robert: We got that.

Bryan: Santa came early. I was expecting not motor to come in January 15 and it came in two days ago. So I was happy about that. I replaced the motor and if you notice this controller looks a little different with this antenna on here and it goes far enough that I can’t see it anymore.

Fr. Robert: Which, for all tactical purposes is as far as you want to go. Because then it is just gone.

Bryan: We should run a test. We should go out to the football field and see how far.

Fr. Robert: I’m saying that you need to come over to SR because so far on the weekends, after all the sporting events are over I have free entire athletic fields to myself.

Bryan: That was a good practice space that you had. So hopefully other people that are planning to get a quad have some space like that to practice.

Fr. Robert: In fact I invite anyone who was in the San Francisco area to come down the San Ignatious high school and when you get stopped by the security guards just tell them that Father Robert said it was okay. And we’ll probably fly. Once a week I have someone come over and say what you doing in here? And I can say I live here. You weren’t much help. Because I had to go pro here to show the transmitter and the go Pro on my head. But you know what? We do it for you. Because this is a special episode it is episode 123. We have a parting shot. The parting shot of the year. We have been wanting to do this for the last four or five shows. We are always running long so this is something that you have probably seen on the web. This is a French rider, Francois Gissy Group who is showing off his exotic thermo engineering bike. He went 333 km/h which is 207 mph in 4.8 seconds. It uses a hydrogen peroxide rocket and has three thrusters from the combustion chamber so as the hydrogen peroxide decomposes all that thrust gets converted into just a big whoosh out the back. It provides 4.5 kN of thrust or 560 hp.

Bryan: Strapped to something that probably weighs less than 100 pounds.

Fr. Robert: Exactly. He was racing a Ferrari in one of these videos and the Ferrari was behind him by like 30 seconds. It was ridiculous. This is probably not the best way to get around and if you are in a hurry this would be amazing. People in the chat room are suggesting we could do a hydrogen peroxide powered quad copter.

Bryan: We have been toying with the idea of strapping a rocket to one of the quads.

Fr. Robert: It doesn’t help if the quad copter goes out of sight in under a second. It is hard to control. And the propellers get ripped off in the process. And it goes into space. You’re not exactly a rider, you are just hanging on. He wasn't strapped in. If he let go of the bars it would’ve hurt. Look at this. Put a rocket on the back of a Schwinn bicycle and folks that just shows you that French people are crazy.

Bryan: But I am more than happy to let him try that. And then watch it.

Fr. Robert: Folks, don’t forget that you can always get all of our show notes at our show page. Just go where?

Bryan: At twit.tv/kh and that Is where all of our past episodes live and you are going to want to check those out if you have been following any of the quad stuff. You can also subscribe and we post all the links and show notes that you will need after you watch one of these episodes. Because we do a lot of stuff.

Fr. Robert: We do a lot of stuff. We have a lot of different things. We are not all quads. Quad copters have been accounting for about 25% of the material the last 11 episodes. There are a lot of other projects that we do simultaneously and the show notes are in there so if you want to do it you could do this step-by-step. Also the parts lists for the quad are in those show notes so if you want to build your own rather than buy a kit you can do that too. Don’t forget that you can also get us at our Google plus page. That is gplus.to/kh or just go to google plus and look for us. it is a large and vibrant community. I love those people.

Bryan: Great questions, that is where we get all our feedback questions from and people post their projects and stuff. Speaking of fans. I have to shout out that we did get a Christmas card this year. This is from Molly. I think she is from New York and she is the only one that sent us a Christmas card so we appreciate that.

Fr. Robert: We wanted to show it off on this special episode. Also, don’t forget that you can also find us individually on twitter. You can find me @PadreSJ. If you follow me you can find out what we are going to be doing for every episode of know-how and all the other shows that do on the twit TV network. That includes this week in Tech, Padres corner, and Coding 101. Where are you found again?

Bryan: On twitter I’m @cranky_hippo.

Fr. Robert: You’ve got to follow him because he has Corgi stuff.

Bryan: I think I did post something during the middle of the show. I was just double checking to make sure it was there. So if you follow me on twitter you can see all the behind-the-scenes stuff that Padre is doing when we are doing the pre-record stuff.

Fr. Robert: And also, please follow our TD because he hates it. He hates it when we give him attention. That is Alex Gumple @anelf3. Follow him because he was the mastermind behind episode 123.

Bryan: I wouldn’t be surprised if he changed his twitter handle to anelf123.

Fr. Robert: Until next time I’m Father Robert Ballecer.

Bryan: And I’m Bryan Burnett.

Fr. Robert: And now that you know how…

Bryan: Go do it!