Yeah, the servo horn thing was a problem, until you pointed me to the Futaba horns, which (so far at least) have been working perfectly. Another nice thing about them is that they are black, and so look a bit nicer (but I’m much more concerned with functionality than appearance).
I have not yet encountered the self destruct “feature”, and hope not to, but it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if one day they all just explode and shower my cats with servo shrapnel. I may start switching over to Hitecs as these break or burn out, but hopefully that won’t happen.
With a bit of luck, I’ll be able to put the voltage regulator I just purchased from you onto this thing, and maybe post a video of it walking. I’m not sure how busy I’ll be with school, though.
I finally had enough time to make a small update to my site today. The last 6 weeks have been incredibly busy with school, and I only have about a week off before it starts all over again, but I’m hoping to make some significant progress on the RCS before I go back.
With a little luck, I’ll get far enough along that I can also start writing the IK code for my hex, but I’m not counting on that.
Also, I skydived tandem before so we have two things in common, we are both named Mike and have jumped out of airplanes . It is freezing cold up there! I jumped out of a twin otter (I don’t know if that’s the proper name) and it was 13,000 feet. I have it on video and it shows me and the jump master spinning in circles. He never told me how to jump. There was no instruction prior to jumping. We spun and spun and you could see in the video my instructor cupping his hands trying to steer us out of the spin. I looked like a wild man moving my arms and legs anywhere and everywhere. It was fun but I don’t think I would do it again.
Currently the only pictures of my robot assembled are in the Robot development journal, from March 21st.
As far as skydiving goes- temperature drops about 3 degrees fahrenheit for every 1000ft of altitude, so yeah, it is cooler up there. I’ve jumped when the ground temperatures are hovering near freezing, however, and I hate the cold (had frostbite twice in the Army). It’s not too bad, actually. And on summer days, it feels great.
The Twin Otter is the proper name, actually. Thats one of the most common jump aircraft in use today. In fact, I did my wedding jump from one.
In the skydiving industry, at least as far as tandems go, there are generally two schools of thought. The first is that they want to teach the student as much as possible, and instill in them a desire to continue with the sport. The second is that the student is doing this as a one time thing, to check it off their list, and will never do it again. Unfortunately, the people who think that way hurt the sport by not giving the students everything they should be getting. It sounds like your experience was one of the latter, and I’m sorry that it wasn’t as enjoyable as it should have been.
Whatever you or anyone else does, DO NOT ever do business with a companny called 1-800-Skyride. I’ll provide details if anyone is interested, but they are in business to scam customers out of their money. There are class action suits being brought against them, but they are still out there, so beware. If you want to skydive, book your jump DIRECTLY with an actual dropzone. You can find dropzone reviews and information at www.DropZone.com.
Skydiving is what I do for a living, and I love to see people interested in the sport, so feel free to ask me about it if you are interested.
