G'day from Guess where?

[Stu]

I reside in NW, NSW Australia.

I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to RC. My Dad kick started me way back in 1957 when we both built a non-RC plane. I flew the wings off that plane. I just love anything controlled by RF, plus I have this thing about building. My wife complains that I should have built us a new house, but I'll need 40 hour days before I'd tackle that. Plus being laid up in bed 24/7/365 it would be a tad awkward. I sure could do with a new house though, this one's full of my toys and every room apart from the Bathroom, and kitchen (that's wimmin's territory). has a different section of RC in residence. I tried selling a few off, but succeeded more in swapping various vehicles for different vehicles. Every room also has it's fair quota of large plastic bins full of spare parts.

I still have around 40 planes, 35 RC boats, about the same in RC cars and trucks and of course around 50 quadcopters (drones) 10 of them are DJI variants and the remainder a mixed bag, HobbyKing, Potensic, Xiaomi, and too many others. Almost forgot, 15 self designed and built 450 sized mongrel quad types and a couple of Hexcopters for good measure.

I still have 15 boxed planes, mostly big'uns which my wife refuses to let me build until I wreck a few. I just hope some manufacturer doesn't suddenly invent something else which operates via RC.

My other hobbies consist of 3D Printing, Epoxy resin Jewellery, Laser Engraving, Amateur Radio, Digital camera collecting, and when I get some spare time, electronics. Oh and computing. Luckily I'm retired and disabled due to service in Vietnam. I've become adept at building and repairing things whilst in bed. Although I often get complaints about my ability to glue the bed sheets to blankets thanks to the SuperGlue fairy.

A question, do we have any Aussies here. Most of these forums are predominantly American, which makes things awkward when tackling the classifieds. With the state of our dollar and the cost of shipping from the US, it's rather expensive buying from over the pond., even though the prices can be very attractive.

Anyway, that's enough from me, hopefully I'll run into a few of you in the near future.

Regards to all, Stu

 

[LoudThunder]

hopefully I'll run into a few of you in the near future.

Stu,

What an epic novel you wrote, I'll tell you this, even though I started flying U-Control place in the mid '50s, and even flew Pulse Radio Control in the early '60s, I never went to the extreme you have and if I was your wife, I would have kicked you can to the curb long ago… L L . . .

With that being said, yes there are Aussies on this site, but it does not get much traffic. I would suggest you log onto MavicPilot (a very DJI intensive Web Site), a sister site of DronePilot. If you scroll all the way down to the bottom, you will see all the sister sites (dedicated to various makes and models of drones).

But by far, the most active (with the most Aussies) is MavicPilot.

DJI Mavic, Air & Mini Drone Community

DJI Mavic Mini, Mavic, Air Drone User Group, Discussions, Support, Forum and Online Community

mavicpilots.com

By the way, on the first page of the Pilot Check In are two new members from Down Under…

Good Luck!

LoudThunder

 

[Stu]

Thank you for the information.

What is it with people these days? They appear to be unable to communicate with anything consisting of more than one or two lines of text. I've had numerous people asking to be a friend (whatever that means today) I take the time to answer their questions and all I get back is perhaps a few words. In fact I attempted to answer a question someone posed on this forum. I find it impossible to do so in less than those two lines, mainly because there could be so many answers to their problem. All I got back was "Wow" no thank you or even a reference to what I wrote to help him, just "Wow" My aim in attempting to help someone is to avoid the inevitable further questions.
eg. Question - Did you plug it in?
Answer - Yes
Question - Did you check the battery?
Answer - Yes
Question - Did you check the cable?
Answer - No, but it's new.

And so on. This type of help tends to tie me to the computer waiting for a reply. Or if I have to leave the forum the whole exercise could take days, by which time the person wanting help has figured it all out for himself or simply given up. Sadly people expect a "magic wand approach" where their question is answered by the precise answer and in as few words as they can handle. I've actually had some tell me they ignored my answer because it was too long.

Maybe it's because I spent many years running my own TV/Video repair business registered as Mister Fixit in a small country town of Wee Waa in Australia. Plus working at Marconi Avionics in the UK wrecking and repairing Head Up Display Black boxes for the F16 aircraft. Repairs are never simple and I taught myself my own fault finding routine. This is what I use in an attempt to help people with their problems. I guess the only reason I continue to help people is the satisfaction I get when my answers actually get a good result. Basically I refuse to "dumb it down".

As for your next comment, if you were my wife, I'd probably be filing for a divorce well before you thought of kicking me out . My wife happens to be the most understanding woman I've ever met. We can have an argument and within a short time afterwards she'll make me a cuppa and acting as if we never argued.
She'll tell me not to buy another quadcopter and when one turns up she wants to know all about it's features, plus be there when I fly it. She knows what makes me tick, unfortunately I've never been able to figure out what makes her or any other woman tick, but I'm getting there.
The fact that numerous friends have commented that they wish their wives were like mine or that they'd like to swap, gives some idea of what she's like.

So there's another novel for you, but maybe not as epic as the first. Thank you for your advice to join a Mavic forum, Why? the majority of my quads aren't Mavics, by far the largest contingent are home designed and built. Sadly, due to my physical drawbacks they are all becoming more of a collection than flyers. Although a very recent donation of a new disability buggy may solve that problem. Oh yes, I've been a member of a Mavic Forum for quite some time.

Thankfully I've often helped someone else who had similar problems, sometimes months and even years later.

A word of warning, never ask me to tell you where I've lived or worked or what I've experienced during my life and expect me to tell you in two or less lines of text. I've had two writers asking to ghost write a book on my life. I told them to ask again in 20 years.

 

[LoudThunder]

A word of warning, never ask me to tell you where I've lived or worked or what I've experienced during my life and expect me to tell you in two or less lines of text.

Stu,

What a wonderful "novel" you wrote, I turned it into just "two lines…" I copied it into Microsoft Notepad and turned off word wrap… L o L . . .

My wife is also quite understanding, but not to the extreme your wife is… I served in the US Air Force for over 30-years, I was a computer programmer and a network administrator and a whole lot more and I collected computers and built networks at home… and I built computers and rebuilt computers and donated these to the patients at our local Veteran Administration Hospitals.

Over the years my hobbies have included R/C planes, cars, and boats. I also had various Real "Hardware" hobbies, I built and shot Big Bore Black Powder Rifles, I am an accomplished and college trained Blacksmith and Knifemaker and all of these "hobbies" have taken space., I do not believe I ever approached your threshold…

As for the MavicPilot web site, there are lots of members like you who have numerous brands of drones and since there is a lot traffic and sub forums on that site, you can probably find the several sites with folks who share your passion for the various drones. Plus, like I wrote, there are the links at the bottom of this web page to get you started…

Like you, I share the irritation when I respond to a member's request for help and I get back the least response of "TU" (Thank You…) and that's it, or they complain that the response was so long and they did not have time to read it…

If you look at some of the other new members who have Checked In, you will see that I offer, especially new members, a long note to help them get started and if they mention which DJI Drone they are using, I include a link to that Drone's downloads and User Manual.

Well, I'm going to cut this off now. I had cataract surgery two weeks ago and I do not yet have my new glasses and I am typing this up In Microsoft Word in 24-point font so I can see it nice and large, but I am still squinting to read it and my eyes hurt… I then copy and paste this into my reply.

Take care and keep those long-winded answers coming because they really do help some folks and they appreciate it…

I subscribe to "Pay it Forward" and hope it pays dividends…

Bruce

 

[Stu]

Coincidence? I also collected large numbers of computers from schools and local businesses. Then repaired them, joined them with missing parts. monitors, printers etc and gave them to local disabled kiddies and later to single parent children. In all I donated 108 full systems which for a small country town wasn't bad. I asked everyone who was given a system to return it if it stopped working ot they upgraded, out of 108 only one was returned, but in such a condition as fit for the tip only. I only ever received one thank you from a young Downes Syndrome girl for which I was grateful, but I quickly discovered our local paper suddenly had a large increase of computer systems for sale. The parents or parent of these children were selling the systems to buy alcohol and smokes.

I eventually gave that idea away and switched to making wooden toys from kits. That was fun, lying in bed sanding wood for days on end and gluing bedclothes with superglue. My wife insisted on vacuuming my bed every evening, even though I used a plastic sheet to collect the dust it always managed to get underneath. Nothing I used was donated, nut my supplier did give me a small discount on a bulk buy of 100 kits. The only problem I encountered was, due to the time I spent on those kits, sanding, building and varnishing, the parents were putting them on shelves or in cabinets as display items and the children never got to play with them. These days I've given up giving away "Material Things". Now I can't afford it and I'll stick to giving away my knowledge. It's not always complete and sometimes I could be wrong, especially when I've spent many years learning from YouTube. But I'm still learning and hopefully I've also learned how to sieve the BS from reality.

When I'm not 100% sure of something I'll do what so many people don't, research, which involves "Reading", lots of it. When I feel like buying a new quadcopter or accessory I may spend 4 or 6 hours reading reviews and watching as many videos as I can to make sure I'm spending my money on something worthwhile. It does pay off and so does reading the feedback buyers leave on Ebay. I've passed up many bargains simply because of feedback. But that's another story. I've been buying from Ebay since before they arrived in Australia and combined with that is the 25 years I've been buying from China. I think I now have enough knowledge to avoid the many pitfalls associated with buying on line. But dammit! I still, thankfully rarely, get caught.

As for other forums, I spent 4 years helping HobbyKing customers with advice on how to build the planes. boats and helicopters they purchased. Plus giving thousands of tips for up and coming RC enthusiasts. The entire help system was abandoned by HobbyKing when it was discovered some people were scamming the points system which accompanied every piece of help given. Not that the points meant anything, but as in almost all such systems there's always those who will do anything to have more points than anyone else.

With each of my forays into helping others I had an ulterior motive, to stop myself from going stir crazy. After a lifetime of travel around the world and being involved in many professions, plus the 20 years I spent reporting TV news stories from a very large chunk of NSW. I found being stuck in bed 24/7 was the epitome of BORING. I had to keep busy. But that was mentally busy, not physically. So I put on weight and that brought on Diabetes, which eventually brought on lack of nerve impulses in my legs or "neuropathy". How this and extreme pain can exist at the same time is rather confusing, but it's not fun, that's for sure. I liken it to some mongrel sticking a sewing needle in my foot every 45 seconds. Usually at 3 am and stopping any thoughts of going back to sleep. A good reason to power up the PC and write some "long winded" message in an attempt to bury the pain. Thankfully my wife will wake up and see my light is on and get up to make me a cup of hot chocolate, which ironically isn't good for diabetics, but it tastes good

I also know all about failing eyesight and that is probably down to many night time messages on the PC. Because the local optician doesn't do house calls I haven't had my glasses updated for well over 7 years, plus a double lens replacement didn't work too well and I now have what's known as floaters. Small patches of blurry stuff floating around inside my eyeballs. When I'm editing my photo collection I have to give up when photos look as if they're out of focus. It also doesn't help whilst soldering SMDs to a circuit board. but I've managed to avoid that by wearing a ridiculous piece of headware with magnifying glasses and headlights fitted.

It's unknown how many of my ailments (the above is only a fraction of these, the remainder are best left unsaid). are due to severe gent Orange poisoning I copped whilst in Vietnam. Everything we ate was cooked in contaminated water, we drank it and showered in it and because our "fresh" water was gleaned from salt water it was enhanced in the distillation system we used. Originally built prior to 1948 when there was no knowledge of Agents of any colour.

I find it rather comical to hear a person say they don't have time to read a message trying to help them, especially when that person is often unemployed. I often spend well over an hour writing my messages and to have such a comment thrown at me is somewhat of an insult. Check my messages left on this forum and count how many people even acknowledge them. No, I won't be forced into replies of a few words or one littered with home made, dreamed up abbreviations. Why do people still use that old fashioned, cut to pieces wordage used when texting was charged Per Word.

Today it's free and still they insist on "Saving Time" by chopping the heck out of the English language. It often hard enough to fight through the bad spelling and lack of punctuation, but to be greeted with "idk" instead of "I don't know" LOLS galore and the many uses of the letter F makes me think I'm reading an foreign language. Language is a precious thing and should be cared for, yes that sounds rather soppy, but to bastardize it the way we are, it will eventually leave us with a language few will understand. It's simply laziness and a need to be one of the gang in my opinion. Perhaps they don't realize it often takes them more time to stop and think what those abbreviations are than it takes to write the complete word.

Anyway, enough moaning, I have a few replies to make elsewhere. Hopefully replies someone will read.
By the way, I've subscribed to "Pay It Forward' ever since I read the book, many years ago. I think they even made a movie based on it. I reckon I'd be batting about 7%. My returns tend to get lost somewhere. Maybe one day it'll pay up. Stu

Novel 3. Enjoy or Ignore.

 

[GFields]

I reside in NW, NSW Australia.

I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to RC. My Dad kick started me way back in 1957 when we both built a non-RC plane. I flew the wings off that plane. I just love anything controlled by RF, plus I have this thing about building. My wife complains that I should have built us a new house, but I'll need 40 hour days before I'd tackle that. Plus being laid up in bed 24/7/365 it would be a tad awkward. I sure could do with a new house though, this one's full of my toys and every room apart from the Bathroom, and kitchen (that's wimmin's territory). has a different section of RC in residence. I tried selling a few off, but succeeded more in swapping various vehicles for different vehicles. Every room also has it's fair quota of large plastic bins full of spare parts.

I still have around 40 planes, 35 RC boats, about the same in RC cars and trucks and of course around 50 quadcopters (drones) 10 of them are DJI variants and the remainder a mixed bag, HobbyKing, Potensic, Xiaomi, and too many others. Almost forgot, 15 self designed and built 450 sized mongrel quad types and a couple of Hexcopters for good measure.

I still have 15 boxed planes, mostly big'uns which my wife refuses to let me build until I wreck a few. I just hope some manufacturer doesn't suddenly invent something else which operates via RC.

My other hobbies consist of 3D Printing, Epoxy resin Jewellery, Laser Engraving, Amateur Radio, Digital camera collecting, and when I get some spare time, electronics. Oh and computing. Luckily I'm retired and disabled due to service in Vietnam. I've become adept at building and repairing things whilst in bed. Although I often get complaints about my ability to glue the bed sheets to blankets thanks to the SuperGlue fairy.

A question, do we have any Aussies here. Most of these forums are predominantly American, which makes things awkward when tackling the classifieds. With the state of our dollar and the cost of shipping from the US, it's rather expensive buying from over the pond., even though the prices can be very attractive.

Anyway, that's enough from me, hopefully I'll run into a few of you in the near future.

Regards to all, Stu

Greetings from Birmingham Alabama USA, welcome to the forum! We look forward to hearing from you!

 

[gmac1]

I reside in NW, NSW Australia.

I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to RC. My Dad kick started me way back in 1957 when we both built a non-RC plane. I flew the wings off that plane. I just love anything controlled by RF, plus I have this thing about building. My wife complains that I should have built us a new house, but I'll need 40 hour days before I'd tackle that. Plus being laid up in bed 24/7/365 it would be a tad awkward. I sure could do with a new house though, this one's full of my toys and every room apart from the Bathroom, and kitchen (that's wimmin's territory). has a different section of RC in residence. I tried selling a few off, but succeeded more in swapping various vehicles for different vehicles. Every room also has it's fair quota of large plastic bins full of spare parts.

I still have around 40 planes, 35 RC boats, about the same in RC cars and trucks and of course around 50 quadcopters (drones) 10 of them are DJI variants and the remainder a mixed bag, HobbyKing, Potensic, Xiaomi, and too many others. Almost forgot, 15 self designed and built 450 sized mongrel quad types and a couple of Hexcopters for good measure.

I still have 15 boxed planes, mostly big'uns which my wife refuses to let me build until I wreck a few. I just hope some manufacturer doesn't suddenly invent something else which operates via RC.

My other hobbies consist of 3D Printing, Epoxy resin Jewellery, Laser Engraving, Amateur Radio, Digital camera collecting, and when I get some spare time, electronics. Oh and computing. Luckily I'm retired and disabled due to service in Vietnam. I've become adept at building and repairing things whilst in bed. Although I often get complaints about my ability to glue the bed sheets to blankets thanks to the SuperGlue fairy.

A question, do we have any Aussies here. Most of these forums are predominantly American, which makes things awkward when tackling the classifieds. With the state of our dollar and the cost of shipping from the US, it's rather expensive buying from over the pond., even though the prices can be very attractive.

Anyway, that's enough from me, hopefully I'll run into a few of you in the near future.

Regards to all, Stu

aussie here.....far south coast nsw... just joined up..posted reply about an illegal subject...height limit on a potensic se....i get 800 metres ...waiting for the flack

 

[gmac1]

i thought i would update from my last post ...living in the bush i rarely see any aircraft and on the occasion one does come, i can hear it from miles away (kilometres) away...am very aware what a drone could do to an aircraft..i do not fly distance at this height and only for a couple of seconds then down again... i would urge any-one else to follow this practice .....boy i do love this drone...cheers greg