Snarls

Gravity Tester
Mentor
I don't know about you guys, but when you are in a multirotor club there are some components that just become ubiquitous. For instance, within the past couple months four of our club members, including me, have upgraded to Emax litespec motors. When it comes to frames, the popular choice has been Armattan Chameleon and Rooster frames. One has an original Chameleon, one has a 5" Rooster, another a 6" Chameleon Ti, another a 5" Chameleon Ti, and as of yesterday I have a 6" Rooster. Pretty interesting how that works out.

Why do we like these frames so much? Well for one they have proven to be super tough. One guy has only broken 1 arm, and another suffered a small crack. When a break does occur, we can turn around and ask Armattan for a free replacement using the lifetime warranty. The CNC metal camera cage is beautiful and has built in angle for the hd camera. The battery is mounted lower, centralizing the mass and theoretically providing faster handling. All this considered, the main reason for me to get a 6" Rooster is because there is not a big selection of 6" freestyle frames out there, and the Rooster turns out to be subjectively the best out of the limited selection.

I am going to be moving the electronics from my 6" Martian over to the new Rooster frame. I am also upgrading the old Eachine board cam to a Runcam Eagle that a friend gave me. I may also eventually upgrade the FC because the current one may have RX dropping issues.

Here are the specs:

Frame: Armattan Rooster 6"
FC: FrSky XSRF30
ESCs: Sunrise Cicada 20a BB1
Motors: Emax Litespec 2206 2300kV
PDB: Matek FCHUB-A
Camera: Runcam Eagle (1)
vTX: RDQ Mach 2
Props: Gemfan Flash 6042 and Emax Avan 6" LR
 

French

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Congrats. The Rooster and Chameleon Ti are great frames. I love my 5” Chameleon Aluminium. It’s a work horse.

I also am really enjoying my Emax LS motors (2207 2550kv). I heard rumors they should be releasing some new similarly built RS motors too.

If you’re running individual escs, I’d recommend the Bardwell F4 or CL Racing F4S board. Both have a great layout with built in pdb.
 

ElectriSean

Eternal Student
Mentor
Beautiful frame, cant wait to see the pics :) 20A ESC's seem small to me with those motors... I guess time will tell ;)
 

PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
COOL!!! Those frames are tanks. I think If I ever kill the Alien That is more likely to be my freestyle replacement frame.

I do agree with Sean though that 20 amp esc's seem small specially for a 6 inch build with the added weight. My stock Alien is still on the original 24a race edition esc's and does fine on 5x4.6x3 cyclones so if you are going to be running bi blades anything lower then 4.5 pitch should be ok I would think. Them Avans are super aggressive props. I just tried my first set on Taz. I was over shooting my turns by a LOT yesterday.
 

Snarls

Gravity Tester
Mentor
I was a little concerned about the 20a ESCs as well, but after numerous flights with gemfan flash 6042 props they still don't get warm. The suffering component actually appears to be the batteries. After each flight I am landing with warm, slightly puffed batteries. The puffing is only temporary and goes away after the batteries rest for a while, but it is certainly a sign of how many amps I am drawing.
 

PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
Yeah if you are doing any racing 90c or higher is a must. Them Emax high kv motors can chew up some amps if you feed it to em. I have pulled 148 amps on Taz on 4s. I need to replace yet another PDB. Thought I could get by on 5s or 6s without osd as the current use drops. I killed a CHNL 1300 100c 5s not paying attention to timers. But man was it fun to go all Envy Astro with TAZ.

I been rippin the Alien every day til I can get more 5s packs for Taz one flight a day is hard to get tuning done. will post a raw practice session on the Alien tomorrow. That thing is so darn efficient. Hitting it in the 2/3 to 3/4 throttle range with full throttle taps on straight sections and hard turns for the entire race and still pulling 4 to 5 minute flights
 

Snarls

Gravity Tester
Mentor
Received a package from RaceDayQuads today. Inside is the Rooster 6", the power distribution board, and some new Emax Avan 6" props to try out. I also got some bigger capacitors to try as an alternative to an LC filter, and some Nomojel to try out.

The Rooster is my first premium miniquad frame. It comes with each part nicely wrapped in its own plastic packaging. The cut edges of the carbon are very clean, and it was nice to see very limited carbon dust left on the pieces. The amount of hardware that comes with this frame had me concerned initially as far as the assembly. Luckily the frame comes with lego-like instructions that are easy to follow.

So far I have assembled the bottom plate with arms and the titanium camera cage. One thing I really like are the sunk nuts used to mount the arms. Instead of using M3 nuts which require a wrench to tighten, the sunk nuts bite into the carbon and allow you to tighten the arms just by tightening the M3 bolts. The arms line up nicely with the bottom plate to create a cutout space for the titanium camera cage to fit. The camera cage is beautifully tough, but also light weight. Unfortunately, I found my Runcam Eagle to not be ideal for mounting in the cage, so I went ahead and ordered a Foxeer predator mini.

Now I need to figure out the mounting of the PDB and transfer my electronics over from the Martian 6".

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PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
That IS one pretty frame.The only thing I don't like about the Armattan frames is the batteries sit in the prop line. If they shift at all sideways you have a fireball. I picked up a piece of the nomogel for TAZ and it was sticky as all get out. I have flown it and its grass and dust covered so Its time to wash it down and see if it gets its sticky back or not as advertised.

I have just recently tried the Emax Avans and I am a tad concerned. I can not seem to get it tuned on 5s. I had the Dal Cyclone 5050's flying well with just minor TPA tweeking needed. I ran out of those and put the Avans on which supposedly were specifically designed for the motors I have.

The motors get burn your fingers hot after one punch out a flip and a quick return to the landing pad. I have tuned it higher , lower, stock set up, changed I gains up n down D has been at 10 on pitch and roll as always when I start a tune. It doesn't matter the motors still get burn your fingers hot with them props. Taz is on hold til after the first when I can order some more 5050 and a few sets of 5046 bi blades as well to see if maybe they like less torque at the low end and want to be happy in the higher RPM ranges.
 

French

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Armattan makes amazing frames. You pay a bit more, but the quality and lifetime warranty are top notch.

I prefer the low deck/mid mount battery. I use ummagrip on both my mid mount quads (chameleon and Hyperlow vert freestyle) and have no issue with the batteries moving at all. Ummagrip is the slightly harder version on nomogel. The stuff does get really dirty quick, but I’ve found some water and a lint free cloth clean it up nicely.

I’ve been trying out the 5” Avan Flow triblades lately. They’re pretty good. I’m just a huge fan of HQ props (4.3 and 4.8s).
 

PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
WEEE!! salvaged a full set of the 5050 Dals in the replaced pile to get out with TAZ today. I will leave the tune I last had on it with the Avans to see what difference there is between them. Its actually warmer today then the last time I flew Taz so will be a good comparison I think.
 

Snarls

Gravity Tester
Mentor
Yea the Avans look pretty aggressive, but a friend shared with me some reading about propeller theory. The shape of the Avans should be more efficient, providing more thrust without making the motor work too much harder. I'll have to test them myself to truly see.

Normally Rooster and Chameleon builds have the battery connector passing up between the top plate and camera cage. I think this is a little awkward and leaves the battery lead hanging free too much. I much prefer the method I use on the Martian which is to have the battery lead lower closer to the PDB. When plugged in there is limited slack in the battery wires, and the wires are clear of the props.

One thing I realized is that I need some sort of spacing between the PDB and carbon base plate. On the martian there is a a fiberglass plate to provide separation, but neither the Rooster nor PDb came with any spacer (to no fault of them). No problem, I own a 3D printer and can whip up a spacer and have it in less than 30 mins. I chose a 1mm spacer in blue TPU. I may be the first person to soft mount their PDB so maybe I'm on to something.

I also discovered that the PDB I bought is to have the XT60 soldered pointing straight outwards. I want my XT60 to point up, but the rear connections on the XT60 are too big to fit in the slots on the PDB. To fix this I filed away one of the connectors on the XT60. Now the XT60 can fit upright and rest on the flat of the connectors.

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PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
NICE!!!

Way to adapt and think things thru. I would however not use the XT60 you filed down but try again equally filing both of the connectors til you get the fit you want. I think you will have strength issues with that so far offset and so much material removed. Battery ejections and the constant pulling and pushing does wear on solder joints so that one in particular has to be super super solid.

You could also probably just twist the connectors around until they slide in corner to corner on the pdb then solder them as they twist in the mount easily enough.
 

Snarls

Gravity Tester
Mentor
You could also probably just twist the connectors around until they slide in corner to corner on the pdb then solder them as they twist in the mount easily enough.

And that's why I posted that before actually committing to soldering it on! Good call PsyBorg, I just took some pliers and easily rotated the connectors so that the XT60 fits without any cutting. Sometimes you over think it.
 

French

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Another thought... what about putting a short length of wire (like 10mm) and have the XT60 pointing straight up? The wire should provide a bit of strain relief if the battery gets ejected in a crash)
 

Snarls

Gravity Tester
Mentor
Ok, well this required a lot more finessing than I thought. I scraped the direct XT60 to PDB concept after realizing I wanted to flip my battery to face the the other way. On my martian the end where the leads exit the battery faces the front, but on the Rooster I want the leads to face the back so the gopro has room. Doing this, the battery XT60 does not reach the PDB. So adding some wires was going to be necessary. But I did not want to have the wires directly sticking out of the PDB like in your image Psyborg, because there is not much to secure it on besides solder. I also wanted the XT60 to be not directly above the PDB because the battery XT60 would be a tight reach. So I ended up soldering the wires lying flat on the PDB, one above and one below. They point towards the back of the frame and then bend 90 degrees up to the XT60. An interesting zip tie configuration manages to secure the wires to the PDB and hopefully take up the stress.

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French

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Great job using the zip tie as extra security. Great looking with the paracord too! A+
 

Snarls

Gravity Tester
Mentor
Before moving the motors and ESCs from the Martian over to the Rooster, I had to lengthen the power, ground, and signal wires. I also used the opportunity to put on new heat shrink.

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The PDB I got does not have a BEC. I could have bought one with a BEC, but I have a 5V regulator from the Martian that I wanted to use instead. Unfortunately, the FrSky XSRF30 FC does not take battery voltage for power so I have to use the regulator.

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I then put the arms on the frame, attached the motors and ESCs, and soldered to the PDB. At this point I took off everything from the frame in preparation to threadlock everything. I learned my lesson after loosing two motors on the Martian from bolts falling off in-flight that I should be familiarizing myself with threadlock. I also took the opportunity to build out the full Rooster frame. All together, the frame configured how I want it is about 138g. Not super light, but pretty good considering the metal camera cage and the number of bolts holding it together.

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On the Martian, I always secured my buzzer with just a zip tie. It had a tendency to break off every now and then so I wanted something more secure for the Rooster. I designed and printed a simple holder for the buzzer that fits between the base plate and plate that secures the rear arms. Many people are just using dshot commands as a buzzer, but I prefer a dedicated buzzer as it is louder and will work even if the motors are stuck or damaged.

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This PDB allows me to get current measurements which is something I have on my KISS build, but not on Betaflight. It won't improve my flight experience, but I have always wondered how many amps I am pulling depending on how I am flying and what props. We will be able to see if these 20a ESCs really are hurting or not. I also installed a 470uF 35V capacitor on the battery lead as an alternative to an LC filter for my video. I have been using LC filters with ok results, but I wanted to try just a large capacitor on the battery lead.

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To finish off the FC installation, I soldered the ground and signal wires from each ESC, and added the buzzer connections. This FC has a built in XSR (that has reliability problems), but I secured the aerials to the arms using the same zip tie technique (white in pic) that worked well on my 6" Martian.

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Now I just need to install the Mach 2 vTx and wait for my fpv camera to arrive.