Review 3

I have been aeromodelling for only a few years more than I've had an amateur licence, seemingly two separated hobbies, but over the years it's been great to gradually merge them. The latest development was the opportunity to use some neat electronics in my models in the form of a vario.

The Picolario is a small vario which will fit in most model aircraft, or in fact anything which rises in the air! It's probably most useful to glider flyers, but I have used it for aerial photography with my power plane too.
And the link with ham radio? Well, it operates under LIPD provisions on 433 MHz, and it does a good job too.
Measuring 97 x 36 x 13 mm, this tiny package sends data to a supplied 433 MHz transceiver resting in your shirt pocket.

What can it do? First, you get tone variations indicating whether the aircraft is gaining or losing height. These tones run while the vario is switched on. You also get an altitude reading every 50m, and a voltage indication whenever it drops by .1 volts. You can also request an altitude reading with an accuracy of one metre at any time. The quoted operating range is -500 to 9000m, but I only took my biggest aircraft to just over 500m which was my visual limit of confidence for the 3m span aircraft. And it takes a while to get down from there without breaking something, even with the engine idling.

The vario will also keep a basic record of the flight profile which you can play back and note after a flight.
I regret that I can not identify the chips that are used, but there are many multi-legged chips combined with surface mount components on both sides of the board, which produces a device which senses the data, processes it so it can fed into the voice synthesiser, which is then used to modulate the uhf transmitter, which can be programmed to one of 16 frequencies. Simple.

The vario is powered by your usual radio control flight pack, drawing 45 mA. If you fear shortened flight times, just rely on the regular voltage calls and land when necessary. I only use 600mAh packs, and flew as much as I wanted with no problems. A quick zap from that other modern wonder, the field charger removes all doubts though.
The Picolario plugs into an unused auxiliary channel, or can be run from a Y lead in parallel with, most likely, the rudder servo, thereby getting its power.

My radio control is on 36 MHz and although I could only get the tx antenna about 100 mm away from the r/c antenna,I didn't get any noticeable interaction or loss of range.
To control it, you need to plug into a channel with a three postion switch, or a pot that you can use at both extremes, and centre.
One extreme is the "off" position, and centre position switches it "on", and can be left there for the duration of the flight. When the control is moved momentarily to the other extreme position, the present altitude is announced. In the normal "on" mode, you hear the tones indicating the aircrafts climb/sink behaviour. However, announcements in a female voice (Christine?) telling you of voltage changes and height as you fly through levels every 50 metres are mixed in too.

Someone once said "knowledge is power", and knowledge about what your aircraft is doing before it becomes obvious gives you an advantage over the forces at work on your plane!
Anyone can get lift on a "boomer" day, but I get a buzz from sniffing the lift out on light lift days, whether on the flat or slope. Like the time I was lining up to land, then Picolario told me I passed through light lift. In ten minutes of careful flying, I was back to over 100 metres high.
True, a skillful flyer will read his aircraft, but Picolario found lift that I missed! It truly added a dimension to my model flying!

I have never regretted buying quality equipment, and this manufacturer also builds instrumentation for man-carrying aircraft, so you can feel confident of the reliability of an investment like this.

Review Index