So I have had the weekend to do a bit of flying; and crashing. There have been three major crashes so far.
1.) While the Yaw P gain was too high, the copter would shoot upwards coming out of a spin. The more aggressive the spin, the higher it would shoot up. Battling 15 to 25 MPH winds all weekend, one of the balloning up motions was caught by the wind like a kite and was being carried down wind faster than I could reorient myself. I chopped the throttle and it fell from 25 to 30 feet up. Thud. No damage, not even a bent prop.
2.) Working on coordinating throttle cuts with flips and rolls, I miss timed my inputs and it dove face first into the ground under power from 15 feet up. Splat. Bent a couple of props and sheered a blade off of another.
3.) Even though I had sorted out the Yaw P Gain issue and it no longer ballooned, the craft was still being carried down wind faster than I could reorient my self. Chop the throttle again from 15 feet up. Pow! A motor popped off the frame and bent a prop. Motor went right back on with new hardware, no idea how locktite'd screws disappeared. This motor might have a damaged bearing now as it make a humming noise at low RPM.
This build by far has met all of the things I had hoped for in a small, acrobatic, bashing around quad. The frame is exceptionally durable and rigid. The frame has a lot of nice little features to help keep things tidy. The motors make ample power, even on small 5030 props. The ESCs are quick, smooth, and respond very well to the Naze's commands. The Naze makes the craft so locked in and exhibits no drama in bumpiness or oscillations; even when flying in 25 MPH winds. The Naze on this Polak build handled the wind way better than the DJI Naza M-Lite in my F330 this weekend, which I found to be quite a surprise.
For giggles I put one of my Zippy Compact 2200mAh 3S 20C batteries on the Mini Panda. I found that it took about 7A to hover (versus 5A), which put the throttle at 50% throw to hover. It consumed 1100mAh of capacity in 9 minutes (versus 12), but it did have a total run time of 16 minutes. The extra 60 grams makes a bit of a difference after all in comsumption, especially when it is 15% more than the normal AUFW of 390 grams.