Flitetest Versacopters came today!

Fusebox

Member
Hello everyone. So my roommate and I have been watching flitetest for quite some time now. We have been building many of their planes. I have been looking into a quadcopter for a while and I have been torn on what to get. After seeing the flitetest versacopter recently, my roommate and I decided to order a couple. Being well experienced in the airplane, helicopter, and car scene... we figured we should try out something different with the recent craze. I have to say that we were pretty confused with some of the Naze board setup, but we figured it out enough to maiden these little quads under a street light tonight at midnight. Anyway... I tried to attach some pictures of them.

Seeing as I haven't seen much talk about the new versacopter on here, I figure I would post up my first impressions of our first quadcopters. They are pretty sweet so far. We still need to do some tuning to get them flying better. Which brings me to my questions...

So being experienced flyers and seeing the videos of quads flipping online, we expected these to be pretty twitchy on the first flight. I didn't mess with any of the PID settings in the Naze board. Took it up for the first flight and it was rock solid. No twitch. No toilet bowl effect. I was pleasantly surprised that it was so solid. But the thing is the "throw" in other words. It feels like there is 50% expo dialed in but I don't have any set on my radio. Anyone know how to turn this little guy up to make it flip?

I'm also open to answer anyone's questions on these new versacopters. Like I said. I haven't seen much online about them other than from Flitetest.

Thanks,
Jeff



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Fusebox

Member
So the quality of these things is pretty awesome for the price. We ordered them with the power pack E. It was a nice touch of Flitetest to add the 2mm wrench and lipo bag. To me those were extras. Nice touch.

You can tell that the quad itself is well thought out. I didn't like how you have to mount the Naze board with double sided tape. I figure it's better for dampening for the board anyway, but it was annoying to have to build up some pieces of foam tape to get the board mounted. Also if you are thinking about mounting the board with screws and standoffs... that's not possible. There is no clearance between the bottom plate and the plate that the naze mounts on. So screw heads wouldn't fit. It would be nice to get some of that thick foam rubber that Josh used to mount the board.
 

coreyltexas

Junior Member
Nice work and awesome write up Fusebox, I will be receiving mine today, and can not wait, I actually took vacation the rest of the week to put this thing together. :) You will have a great time learning to fly them, did you set up the different modes on the Naze 32, once you take it out of horizon mode it will really come alive! Also buy bulk in props as you will go through loads of them!

Happy Flying!!
 

Fusebox

Member
Nice work and awesome write up Fusebox, I will be receiving mine today, and can not wait, I actually took vacation the rest of the week to put this thing together. :) You will have a great time learning to fly them, did you set up the different modes on the Naze 32, once you take it out of horizon mode it will really come alive! Also buy bulk in props as you will go through loads of them!

Happy Flying!!

Yep I setup Rate, Horizon, and Angle mode on a three position switch. I pretty much only fly it in rate mode though because the wind we have today. Horizon mode seems to try too hard to keep the quad level that it limits your throw when trying to fight the wind.

I figured out how to adjust the rates. I guess I missed them in the PID menu.

One issue that I'm having... which is a small issue... is that the quadcopter constantly yaws slightly to the right. I tried re-calibrating the accelerometer but it didn't fix the issue. So I just bumped my trim a few clicks and it hovers with no stick movement. However, I know this is bad in the helicopter world because your trim setting messes with the gyro on the tail. So I always adjusted it mechanically for any drift. Does the same rule apply here in that if you trim the quad with your normal trims on the remote, it will be confusing the board?

Thanks,
Jeff
 

Snarls

Gravity Tester
Mentor
Does the same rule apply here in that if you trim the quad with your normal trims on the remote, it will be confusing the board?

Correct, make sure that all the trims on your TX are centered. If your quad is yawing to the right check the receiver tab in cleanflight to make sure your yaw channel is still centered around 1500. If that is not the problem then increase the I gain for Yaw until it goes away.

Very clean looking quads you and your roommate have. You should have a lot of fun with them, and yes buy lots of props.
 
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markyoe

Senior Member
Looks very nice! How much space is there between the two plates when it is all assembled?
 

FlyingMonkey

Bought Another Trailer
Staff member
Admin
Mine arrived today, and I just measured it. 9/10" is the height of the side plate.
 

Fusebox

Member
Thanks Snarls. I'll have to try what you mentioned.

markyoe. There is quite a bit of space really. I love how clean they look with all of the wires in the frame. The trickiest part I had was that one of the speed controls was right in the way of my naze board. The wires coming off of the naze board were right in the way of the esc that was mounted to the side wall of the copter. I was able to scoot the esc around a little bit and move the naze over an 1/8th inch and everything was good for that. My roommate actually just laid that problematic esc down flat with the pdb and it cleared fine. It was a little tricky getting my AR6200 receiver to fit in with the vertical pins. Wish the height was a 1/16" taller. I made it work though.

Awesome quadcopter so far. I was attracted to this one for my flying style and the fact that I wont be competitively racing at events. I just like the way everything fits together with the versacopter and the overall design. Looking forward to fpv once that comes in the mail!
 

Snarls

Gravity Tester
Mentor
You may need to if you plan on punching to full throttle often. I run 2204 2300kvs with 6X4.5 props and 12a Rotorgeeks ESCs all day long, but there is evidence that the RG ESCs can withstand much more than they are rated. Rotorgeeks Cobra 2204 2300kv data shows 21 amps with a 6X4.5 at full throttle 3s. What you need to hover and cruise around should be much less though. So if you don't fly extremely hard you can probably get away with it.
 

markyoe

Senior Member
I have some Tunigy Plush 18A ESC's. Those should work. Do you think the Versacopter will take hard hits well? I guess time will tell.
 

Fusebox

Member
I have 2204 motors, 12A ESC's(http://www.readymaderc.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=379_382&products_id=4333) and want to run 6x4 or 6x4.5 props on the versacopter. Do I need to upgrade my ESC's to run larger props?

I think you will be fine with that setup. The flitetest power pack that I bought is the emax 2204 motors with 6x4.5 props and 12a escs. As long as you are on 3s then you should be fine. I have been flying mine with 2200 3s packs for 6 minutes and the escs and motors aren't even warm. If you are going to 4s then I would recommend going with a 5 inch prop. However, at the end of one of the recent flitetest videos Josh Bixler states that he is running these motors with the 6 inch props on 4s and I bet that would heat up pretty quick... He was using the Luminer escs though.
 

Fusebox

Member
I have some Tunigy Plush 18A ESC's. Those should work. Do you think the Versacopter will take hard hits well? I guess time will tell.

I'll let you know later today. I'm sure my roommate or I will dump it pretty soon. Especially now that I figured out how to bump up my rates :D
 

markyoe

Senior Member
I'll let you know later today. I'm sure my roommate or I will dump it pretty soon. Especially now that I figured out how to bump up my rates :D

Sounds fun. Are you going to do FPV or do you need to camera plate thing that FT sells?
 

Fusebox

Member
My roommate ordered the fpv system from hobbyking for 100 bucks. Comes with a board camera, fpv transmitter, and the goofy looking goggle setup. It also comes with a cable to hook up your gopro and fpv through that, even though there is a bit of lag time with a gopro.

Yeah we didn't realize that the kit didn't come with the camera plate. I saw it in one of the pictures of the versacopter on the flitetest store page for it, so I figured it was included. So it looks like we will just fabricate our own gopro mount on the front. I have some sturdy thin ply that I use for firewalls that I'm going to fabricate one out of. But that takes away from the clean look that I like so much with the versacopter. So I guess I'll order one eventally from flitetest. They really shouldn't have it pictured on the page if the quad doesn't come with it. Oh well...
 

Fusebox

Member
This will be our first dabble into fpv so it should be pretty interesting. It the goggle setup from hobbyking works out nice for my roommate then I'll order one too. We weren't sure about it though. The Fatsharks are way out of my price range right now. I read some reviews that the HK ones actually looked better than the Fatsharks because of the single screen.
 

Fusebox

Member
We flew 3 more batteries through the copters so far today. I fixed the yaw issue thanks to you guys. I checked the centers and my pitch, roll, and yaw were all off from 1500. So I clicked in some subtrim and it flies nice now. I was doing my normal figure eight fast forward flight circuit as I do with my helis. I lost orientation a few times when I was at a distance. No big deal because of the rather tame settings. I was able to track it and figure out what it was doing.

We have also been tracking our battery usage. With our 2200 3s 35C packs we are up to 8 minutes of spirited flying. The packs were consistently at 11.3 volts. That's about where I like them to be because I try not to puff my packs. We will probably try 9 or 10 minutes of flight and see what the next packs are at. If anyone is curious.

We are also going to try some different PID controller settings. Right now we are on the 0 setting which is what was default with the board. Supposedly setting 1 and 3 is the best.