Knockoff is the New Black

[Invid]

Well this is not the crash from the previous post, but probably even better.

Here's the video from my first ever attempts at barrel rolls, front flips and back flips.

I lasted longer than I expected to!

I'll take some better pics of the damaged arm, it appears to be G10 sandwiched between two (really thin) layers of CF.

Nice work!

I'd increase my rates some though. The faster you flip, the less altitude you lose doing it. Because of the way the weight is distributed on a quad/hex a flip takes longer than a roll, so keep that in mind too.

Stay in horizon when you increase your rates until you get used to it.

FYI, flying in horizon will make the transition to flying in rate mode easier when you're ready for it too.

 

[FinalGlideAus]

Yeah I thought it was Horizon mode. You can see the FC getting confused when you centre the sticks while still kind of inverted. Rate mode requires some practice but the rolls and flips will be much cłeaner.

As Invid said, try increasing your rates a little. It's taking you a long time to go arouñd and you're loosing a lot of altitude (especially if you're not chopping the throttle when upside down).

 

[califrag]

Nice work!

I'd increase my rates some though. The faster you flip, the less altitude you lose doing it. Because of the way the weight is distributed on a quad/hex a flip takes longer than a roll, so keep that in mind too.

Stay in horizon when you increase your rates until you get used to it.

FYI, flying in horizon will make the transition to flying in rate mode easier when you're ready for it too.

Yeah I thought it was Horizon mode. You can see the FC getting confused when you centre the sticks while still kind of inverted. Rate mode requires some practice but the rolls and flips will be much cłeaner.

As Invid said, try increasing your rates a little. It's taking you a long time to go arouñd and you're loosing a lot of altitude (especially if you're not chopping the throttle when upside down).

Ahhhhh okay, yeah that explains it. I had reduced my RC Expo from .80 to .65 (controls were a little too soft before hitting the 'extremes') but I left the RC Rates at the default 1.0. I had thought about upping it to 1.2 but didn't.

I definitely noticed the 'slowness' in the flips versus the rolls, as well as the loss in altitude (heh heh).

The flight controller wigged out once before when I exceeded the max-angle during a dive. I nearly thought I was gonna lose it and go into the ground upside down but it violently over-corrected and pitched backwards about halfway through the dive and leveled out.

During some of the flips, I was purposefully trying to stop halfway through then roll out of it. Also during some of them, I was not holding the stick full during the entire flip and was trying to make it rotate slower intentionally.

 

[cranialrectosis]

Horizon is good for flips in autolevel.

Love the epic guitar solo soundtrack!

 

[califrag]

Horizon is good for flips in autolevel.

Love the epic guitar solo soundtrack!

Thanks! I edited the video without any audio and used youtube's 'royalty free' songs. I am really happy with the way it matched up, it was the second song I chose and the song name was called 'Pride before the fall' which I thought was was pretty fitting.

Here are some better pics of the carnage:

 

[cranialrectosis]

How much for a new boom?

 

[califrag]

How much for a new boom?

Well... there's the catch. They don't sell replacement booms so I would have to buy another whole one.

I think I've managed to fix the broken boom using popsicle sticks, superglue and a couple clamps (woohoo!)



I put wax paper hoping it wouldn't stick but it still did a little bit, I removed some of it with a hobby knife.




The popsicle sticks worked great:



Here's a strength test video of the repaired boom.

 

[cranialrectosis]

Sweet!

If only we could repair props like that!

 

[califrag]

Well I ended up having another nice crash and bending one of the brass standoffs.

I did a roll right into a 75ft tree, luckily I fell all the way through and was able to recover the hex without having to climb a tree.

None of the arms broke, but all of the props did (as usual of the gemfan), and then the standoff:



When I tried bending it back it ended up snapping, so I just used some superglue to hold it back together for now.

I also ended up moving the camera plate back to the bottom and making my own smaller mobius plate:



I was a little bit worried about the mobius sitting so far back that it would get the front of the frame in view, but it doesn't.

Here's a new video from over the weekend.

 

[MT Alex]

Nice job with the acrobatics. On another note, that is an insane amount of boats and slips for a lake that size.

 

[SnowRocker88]

I'm pretty tempted to start building one of these

 

[califrag]

I'm pretty tempted to start building one of these

Well, to be honest I would recommend some other better options out there and spend just a little bit more.

I'm starting to build a new mini hex on one of local forum member Twitchity's v3 frames.

This frame doesn't really have much carbon fiber in it, it's just a real thin sheet over fiberglass core, which doesn't add any strength really, and the standoffs and hardware (screws/nuts) are too small (2.5mm vs 3mm).

It doesn't really crash well and I probably should not be doing the flips and rolls and such with it, that's why I'm upgrading to something that can handle harder crashes without breaking.

Though, I did make it out to the first Aerial GP US FPV Race a week ago and took first place in the open class with this build (but only due to others DNF )

This was my first time ever racing, and didn't have any practice on the track before hand. Here's my video from the final round:

I also posted up the video from my first round where I was going a bit slower figuring out the track and how to do everything, it's a bit more comical as I wasn't in 'race mode'.