Hey george. goto walmart in the camera department they should (at least they used to) have a USB battery box for $10
its a small black box about the size of a remote control. you put 4 AA's in it and it has a USB port on it. Thats it you can charge up your cams on the field.
radioshack also has DIGIPOWER cell phone boosters for $5 on clearance if you can still find them (good for maybe 1 or 2 charges but TINY and rechargeable.
Using one card for multiple flights is USUALLY a bad idea. with you its probable ok since your doing RC glider flights for others remember you get NO VIDEO without returning an undamaged memory card. SO I download between flights if not that I use a different mem card for each flight so I always have the flights before "the one" that crashes or gets lost etc..
WHen you shop on ebay guys IGNORE the shipping. Just add the two numbers together. IS that ok with you? the reason they are sold like this is simple. ebay gouges them so they transfer the cost to shipping for which THEY DO NOT have to pay ebay fees on. thats why the price is cheap and shipping is high.
so its NOT $1.45 and $6.47 shipping. its just $7.92 each cam shipped. thats how you have to look at it IE don't get greedy
hehe
what is dying in the cams is the charger voltage control circuitry. not the batteries. ie cheap components
To kill the "spin" video or vomit video as I call it on recovery you need to harness the rocket. attach a shock cord and second parachute to the tail of the rocket so it comes down on TWO parachutes. make the rear chute a little smaller than the main chute so it comes down tail down a little (you want around a 45' angle)
Like this
no more spin and you get good nice video all around. Thats a 13pound rocket wet and almost 8 feet tall 5.5" tube but it works just the same on the smaller rockets. Its what I use for my D through G rocket and what I use on my B and C engine rockets (thats my L2 cert flight btw) sadly no recovery video only 3/4 boost video (the cam g/vibe locked on me with the J381 Skidmark.
you need to pack the rear chute TINY and TIGHT and ROLLED so it does not open right away. so it has time to "get away" from the main chute before opening (stops tangles)
Chris
Reason I am thinking of 8 Gig, is that I probably will not have a laptop at the field to download files to it flight-by-flight, like a lot of people do. So, I’d get a lot of individual flights onto the 8 Gig card, then download at home later.
Indeed charge-wise at the field (to re-top it off), I have tried to find some cheap way to use some kind of battery hooked up to a USB cable. I have found lots of 110 Volt AC items that can charge USB devices, but I’ve not yet found the dumb-simple battery based version of the same thing.
- George Gassaway
