RC gear saves the day

[RTRyder]

Hurricane Irene has come and gone leaving in her wake a lot of homes without electricity, mine being of the half million plus in Massachusetts with no power for close to 24 hours now. Some of my RC gear has been key to getting through all this sanely, I charged most of my high capacity 3S lipos before the power went out and they are now providing battery power for my wifi hotspot to connect to the 'net and also to run this netbook. Last night we were able to watch TV on my 7 inch LCD FPV monitor that also has a TV tuner built in and once again powered by lipo batteries!

The local power company is saying it could be as long as the weekend before power is fully restored so as soon as the 8:00 am hour arrives I'll be burning up the cell phone lines to try and find a gasoline generator to give us some electriity until the grid comes back online. Since I live on the outskirts of the more populous areas I could well be one of the ones that doesn't see power for several more days, from a drive I just took it appears there are just as many lines down as remain on the poles.

Doubtful the DJI is going to get delivered today, not much I would be able to do with it anyway, I'll have a review later this week or over the weekend hopefully.

Have fun, I'll be back when the power comes back on, for now have to conserve battery power...

Ken

 

[Droider]

Ken glad to here you and yours are ok... still waiting to here from Kilby!

Got to say I am really surprised you aint got emergency power sorted!

Looks like Geoff may beat you to flying the DJI all because of the weather! Mind you there is a bank holiday today in the UK so he wont be getting a delivery either!

Stay safe buddy

Dave

 

[Crash]

Glad you're OK Ken. And it's good that you were smart enough to think ahead and charge batteries.

Where I am at, we were lucky enough to miss all the wind and rain. The internet even stayed up and that tends to go out if you look at the antenna wrong. All the hotels near me were full of evacuees.

I'm planning to go camping on the coast this weekend where the storm went through. I guess we'll have plenty of firewood.

Kirk
PS. Can't you charge the batteries from the car?

 

[Gunter]

Good to know you're okay and had the forethought to get those batteries charged! I do have a generator in my shed, but I'm afraid it's a bit far away to be of any good! Maybe see if you can buy a few 12v solar panels if you can't find a genny!

 

[Kilby]

Good to hear you made it through ok, Ken. By some miracle, we never had as much as a flicker of the lights round our house. That's odd since we lose power very often and fully expected it to go out. We took precautions just in case, but luckily never needed them. I sat at home and worked on a new build through out most of the storm. I should have it in the air tonight after I pick up some last minute things that I was missing.

I'm going to tell my wife your story... it should help when a fresh box of lipos turns up in the post next week. I can now claim they are emergency power backups! ;-)

 

[RTRyder]

Thanks everyone! I now have part of the house up and running on a brand new 5500 watt gasoline generator, once things settle down a bit I'll have transfer switch installed and the generator will find a semi permanent home in a small shed behind the house I'm not going through this again...

Much to my surprise the postman had already been to the house and dropped off the DJI by the time I got back home with the generator, so I have something to do this afternoon. Now all I need is the info on how to build a customer mixer table and the Y6 will take to the air with the Wookong-M controller. Time to grab a bit of lunch and go fill up the gas can for the generator.

Still conneting through a wifi hptspot that's roaming on another network, about as fast as dial up at the moment but better than nothing.

Ken