ZMR180 [BUILD]

Hi , after a long time watching the cool youtube videos of the amazing mini quad, wanted to get down to building a quad myself. This is a cheap mini quad build, with decent parts and as builds go, this was my first and it was more of an exercise in teaching myself to actually build this machine. The parts used are here:

ZMR180 frame

1303 3100kv motors

DYS BL20A 

Frsky D4R-II CPPM

Naze 32Acro

Gemfan4045(3s) / Gemfan 3030(4s)

Tunigy 1300mah 3s 

Dinogy 1000mah 4s 65C 

As you can see these are not the high end parts you would find on the pro racing quads, but its a tidy setup. The build was a learning process for me, although you can find so much information on the internet, its different to when you are building something yourself. These are just some tips when building these things:

• Insulate the electronic parts from the frame, proper carbon fibre frames conduct electricity 
• If using heat shrink never shrink the casing before testing everything. 
• Use a clean soldering iron, and move quickly with high powered ones.
• Loctite all screw and nuts.
• Don't apply loctite before finishing the build, otherwise you will have a bad time trying to open up the quad again.
• When ordering parts , always order some spares just in case.

The final quad was not so bad, even if I was not entirely happy about the result. I have done basic programming and tried it out on hovering. Unfortunately one of the motor did not last long and , during bench testing it was already showing bad signs, and after a couple minutes of flying it gave up. Lesson learned, always buy spares, otherwise you will get stuck just  when things are getting good. 

On another note, the ZMR180 frame is not so bad, but it has some thing that I do not like very much. It does not have an adjustable fpv camera mount, it is fixed inside the frame. The anti vibration mount for the recording camera, is a bit flimsy, the carbon plate is enough but rubber mounts will be ineffective in my opinion. also it comes with a flat mount and no option of changing the angle again. those are the only real grumbles about it. 

The good points are, its very cheap to buy, it has different motor mount holes for larger motors if needed. The carbon parts are clean cut and seem quite tough which is good as its my first mini quad and I am still trying to learn multirotor flying properly. For a frame this size, there is enough space to place all the component onboard without any issue.

Later on I will update this with some maidens and my programming experience, this is the first time tuning these boards. Until then Happy Flying!!

Ugly Wonder [BUILD]

Hello everyone, this will be a round up of my build of the Ugly Wonder foamie. As usual in my case, I use what i have available. the foam board used is 3mm thick, very light and when covered actually durable. the plans were downloaded from the FliteTest forums, from a thread belonging to a member called SPONZ,  this guys is great, very helpful. he usually improves the plans and makes them easier to use, or in this case the an original design.  

This is the link

http://forum.flitetest.com/showthread.php?17136-SP0NZ-Plans-Index

So basically its as usual, get plans printed, pin them to the foam mark and cut, there are not really that many parts, that make this plane. It came together really fast.

THe Major Components of the plane

Completed airframe

Assembly is really easy, the plane was made without the power pod design and with a permanent electronics.Speaking of which here is the list:

• Amax G2822 2600KV motor, 6x4 propeller
• 30A Plush Esc
• 2x9g servos
• 1300mah lipo
• Frsky V8R4-II

All up weight is 450 grams with battery. A small modification was made to the bottom , were a flap was cut to give access inside the fuselage. The flap was beveled all round to seat the flap in place, something that I saw previously but alway forgot to do when building. Below are the pictures of the result. The weather has been quite bad lately and will wait for a decent day with no wind before the maiden flight. If it flies it gets painted.  Until then Happy Flying!

The bevel cut on the flap

Ready for the maiden flight

FPV Finally [BUILD]

Hi everyone, here's a little update of what I have been doing lately. Starting off with good news.  I have finally used a setup for FPV that works for me. After many failures in building a good reliable FPV setup, I have found a good setup that works incredibly well. The components that I am using right now are:

• AOMWAY FPV 5.8G 200mW AV Transmitter Integrated 700TVL CMOS HD Camera
• Quanum V2 FPV goggles and RC832 Vrx
• PNP Skysurfer plane(changed to 6x5 propeller)
• Cloverleaf antennas 

Simple FPV setup

That's it , incredibly simple, but the joy of it, is, that it works so well. I am quite pleased with the video quality, the weather was not at its best here very cloudy, but the camera is more than workable, the colours are still visible and the image is very clear. although it is a 700tvl Cmos camera, it can handle low light conditions decently. Flying is not an issue at all. Its also a very light system, 20mins fpv flights are easily achievable from a single 2200mah battery powering both the plane and the FPV setup.  I am quite pleased with that. 

Some other parts that worked but I am not using right now.

1. Tarot300 OSD, this was used on some of my failed FPV setups, it offers enough information to help with flying FPV, it offers basic information such as Engine and video voltages and home position, speeds and altitude. which is enough to fly in my opinion and for less than €30 I think its works well.
2. NTSC HD 700TVL Sony OSD CCD D-WDR, this is a basic board camera which cost less than €15. Came with all necessary cables and that's it. It has the option of connecting a control board to change settings, but I bought mine without it. The thing that I liked about this camera is it excellent low light video quality, and the clear image is amazing. I will use this at a later stage for sure. This was not used because of the issues I had with the Vtx I had.

Now for a low point in this, I started out using the TS832 Vtx. I don't know but I never got to use these properly, here are some issued I found on my units. To be clear, I have bought this unit 3 times from 3 different online shops. 

• Sensitive to vibrations, for some reason these units are sensitive to vibrations from the airframe, even slight ones. I have tested these extensively, and they suffer badly from this, using multiple types of  vibration insulation and so on, at a certain point they start loosing video, which is not good. 
• They heat up more than you think they would. I understand that these unit will heat up  when they are on. Yes I have checked for proper antenna connection and all the usual suspects, in just a minute or two of operation they become very hot. 

I am posting these because they what I have have experienced and it is frustrating, when things don't work one time after another.

One last thing, my simple Tricopter has met its end, while flying aggresively, I made the mistake of flying through the direct sunlight, at which point I overturned my tricopter into an unrecoverable fall from a good hieght, this is what I managed to scrape up. Lesson learned. Onto the next build. 

Remains of my tricotper