Absolute NewBee has questions

Sam Raddar

Junior Member
Hi, I am VERY new to the hobby, and I am reading and watching a lot of videos to have a good knowledge about everything before I spent a lot of money on it - since I get a sense of how addictive this is, especially FPV.

Now, reading for weeks, watching all FliteTest-HowTo-Videos I am still left with 3 questions:

1) The power of the motors/rotors should be good enough to take twice the weight of the Quad, from what I learned.
Now, just to be sure when I want to put additional payload as weight like cameras etc on it...
Can you OVERpower it as well f.e. adding to big rotors/motors? If so, which are the consequences?

2) To have a longer flight duration the key value seems to be the mAh-value and the xS on the lipos, is that right?
Is there a way to add 2 of them to extend it, or am I completely wrong on that idea, because I havent seen this anywhere... I guess the extra weight will not really make the duration capabilities double, but ... Is there a way to add them up, and a way to calculate how it will effect flight duration?

3) The radio control seems to be one of the expensive parts of the hobby. I read here in Europe there is a different standard for it. But if I keep an eye on that while purchasing an RC, is there anything else or do they match. How many channels would you experienced users say it has to have as a minimum, which number will be save for my multi-rotor-fpv-future?

4) And the last, just for interest: I know nobody really cares about the humming sound a quad makes. But - just give me a push - in which direction I have to think to reduce the sound emission of the quad if I want to lower it?

I decided that I will start with a cheap plug and play solution to get the feeling on how to fly it right, but at the end I would like to have the possibilty to build my own rig, fly fpv and get some nice aerial footage. And I am working on that and saving money to buy all the things I need to build one from scratch in the near future.

Thanks Josh and Josh for your amazing YouTube-Channel, at the end of my journey I will make you responsable that you made me start it. :)

Sam Daddar
 

pgerts

Old age member
Mentor
1 - more power is more weight but you can fly at a lower throttle and perhaps lower sound.
2 - It is easy to put batteries in parallell - but they have to be at the same voltage when connected ( do not connect a half charged to a fully charged) You will find Y-cables for batteries (both parallell and series).
3 - do not know what you need to connect the head tracker to the TX
4 - look at #1 - and I think that a higher KV motor with a smaller diameter propeller gives lower sound - as long as you dont load it with to much wieght.
 

IBeHoey

The Warranty Voider
Welcome to the hobby! You're also right, this hobby is very addictive. :D

Just to add on to what pgerts has already said, in the world of multirotors I don't believe it's possible to have an overpowering setup. Aside from the added weight, the only possible consequence I could see with have too much power would be the added stress put on your frame. So with more power. comes a sturdier frame, bigger battery, and once again, more weight. It's a never ending cycle.

As far as how many channels you need to have with your Tx, I'd say at the minimum, you're gonna want to have at least 6 channels. You could get away with only having 4, since that's all it takes to fly a multirotor, but that'll leave no room for add ons in the future (switching between different flight modes, activating auto-level, RTH, ect.)

I'm still fairly new to brushless motors as a whole (grew up on glow) so I can't really advise which KV rating/combo will give you the quietest results. Just from my own experiments, I know vibration can contribute a lot to noise pollution. Having everything properly balanced will help a lot, and also using higher quality props can make a difference as well. Being new and starting out, you're probably not going to want to spend $40+ dollars on a set of props though so even though the cheaper props will generate more noise, it's better to break those in a crash than a nice set of CF props.
 

Cyberdactyl

Misfit Multirotor Monkey
For all practical purposes, a general rule for lower sound is to have the props under as light a load as possible.

For example. . .and to give a mental picture. . .if you use 2-blade slo-fly 11x47 props with the DT750s on say. . .a rotorbone quad and the AUW is around 1000 grams, the sound of the quad hovering will be quiet enough to fly in a small apartment breezeway at night without disturbing anyone. :cool:
 
For the radio, the Turnigy 9XR is a very good one from what I've seen online. If you want a good, quality radio, look at the Futaba 8J. I'd personally invest in a better radio to ensure safety of my aircraft. Though people generally seem to have good results with the 9xr. I'm using my dad's Futaba 8J and Futaba 8FG Super.
 

Sam Raddar

Junior Member
Thanks mates,
I read all your answers and I like it very much that people are so friendly in here and helping.
Thats not the case in most of the forums, might be a reason that you have to bear with me longer...

Cyberdactyl: Does that depend on the radius then? So its "More weight of the Quad, bigger rotors, less sound?"
From the logical point of view I understand that more Props like an octocopter should be stabler flying than a quad, because weight divides between more. But the videos I saw they are not very silent as well. What causes a prop to be called "slow-fly", is it the angles? Is it the radius?

Arunabha42: Thx, as I was searching for a Turnigy the wrote about modules and I saw that on YT-Flitetest-Channel. You need at least one or are those modules addon to special purposes like long range etc?

Thanks to the others, got what you said, no further questions on that, thx.
 
The module is basically whats used as the rc link. It comprises a receiver, which goes on the aircraft, and the Tx module, which you plug into the back of the transmitter. Now, I've never used the 9x, but it comes with its own Tx/rx module which is perfect for starting out, no problems. They do have an option for advanced users to use their own modules or if you want to use a module from a different manufacturer, like Futaba or JR or Spektrum. I'd suggest you get it with the stock module. Its like, instead of using an entirely different transmitter, you use the 9x housing with a different module inside it. As you said, its mainly for special purposes. Just be careful, I think it comes in a variant without a module, so users can put in whatever module they want, so make sure you get one with the stock 9x module.