[Paparazzi-devel] beginners questions

[Tilman Baumann]

Sorry if these questions are welcomme on this list.
I see there is a forum somewhere, but I find forums totally inadequate 
for discussions.

I was fascinated by Paparazzi and UAVs for some time. And now I like to 
take building one in serious consideration. Money will be a issue, so I 
need to start small and cheap.

I see that small airframes like the FunJet are pretty popular. But I 
guess this is mostly because it is a bigger challenge to make a small 
and fast plane fly stable.
I guess there is not much room for payload like digital cameras.

Can anyone maybe suggest a bigger and flexible and of course cheap 
solution? Maybe some easy DIY plans. Optics are irrelevant. :)
And how difficult is it to scale things up? Maybe they get unreasonable 
expensive... I have no idea, I'm not a RC guy.

Apropos RC. I guess I will need some RC equipment? I'm thinking about 
leaving the RC stuff out and controlling the plane via the telemetry 
link. But buying some used RC stuff via ebay is probably a more 
reasonable approach. :)

Do I understand correctly that the Tiny v2 has no sensors other than GPS?
Is it reasonable to start only with IR sensors and add IMU 
functionalities like accelerometers and gyros later? What makes the most 
sense to have.
How well to the IR sensors work near big hills and urban areas?

And something completely different. The XBee modems seem to be pretty 
popular. How far will they work?

Regards
 Tilman Baumann

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