The rest of the plane side FPV equipment arrived in the mail today.  If you click on the picture below you can see each component of the airborne system with labels. Here are some more detailed descriptions of the hardware starting at the top left.

HK = Hobby King.com   DPCAV = Digital Products Company A/V

Half-wave dipole antenna: (DPCAV) (included as part of the TX905-Pro transmitter kit)
900 Mhz low pass filter: (DPCAV) (also included as part of the TX905-Pro transmitter kit)
900Mhz / 500mw Audio/Video Transmitter: (DPCAV) (The TX905-Pro tranmitter)
WDR600 Camera: 550 Line Sony Super HAD II with OSD programing from HobbyWireless.com
Eagle Tree GPS v4: (HK) – Integrated with Eagle Tree OSD + eLogger v3
Airspeed Expander: (HK) – Adds airspeed to Eagle Tree OSD + eLogger (pitot tube not shown) (airspeed function also provided by GPS)
Altimeter Expander: (HK) – Adds altitude to Eagle Tree OSD + eLogger (altitude function also provided by GPS)
eLogger v3: Had already (HK) – eLogger logs flights and provides many monitoring features
OSD Pro: (HK) – Provides an On Screen Display with info from sensors, eLogger and GPS. Overlays video onto the video sent back to earth
Battery: (HK) (DPCAV) – Turnigy 500mAh 11.1v 3s Li-Poly battery pack (2 of these, one shown)

I already had the eLogger v3 from a couple of years ago when I was monitoring the Mini-Titans power system. Since I now have an ICE electronic speed controller(ESC) on the mini-titan, this left the eLogger v3 sitting in a box for a few months.

The Altimeter expander and the Airspeed expander are not absolutely necessary if you have the GPS module. They are nice in that they can run standalone without the OSD, and after a flight they will blink out the maximum values on a single character display. They will be easy to move plane to plane for curiosities sake.

I spent a couple of hours this evening setting up all of the components to test them. The eLogger v3 and OSD-Pro and GPS both needed firmware updates which were easily done with the USB cable that comes with the eLogger v3 and the instructions are clear. The software for Eagle Tree is available from their website. Some of the features of the OSD are setup with on screen programming from the RC transmitter. You attach two spare channels to the Aux 1 and Aux 2 inputs and uses switches on the radio to navigate and enter data. The layout of the OSD display and programmable alarms are set through the Eagle Tree Flight Recorder software through the USB port.

The GPS would not link up inside the house the first time I tried, so I took it outside. Once outside the GPS module found the satellites in less than a minute. I then came back inside and the GPS would be in constant contact with 4-6 satellites while displaying information the OSD display.

I’ve tested all of the components and they seem to work great. I will be working on installing them into the Guan-Li Catalina over the weekend and hopefully I will have everything in place to try a non-FPV video down-link flight first and once that is done I will have a buddy fly with the main control, while flying FPV with a radio set up in trainer mode. This way if I get in trouble he will have constant Line-Of-Sight(LOS) view of the airplane and be able to recover it (hopefully!).

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