need opinions on this kit

Morgajus

Active member
I've been chatting with a friend about joining me in starting the r/c hobby. He decided he would prefer to do a cheap quadcopter, rather than a plane.
He has asked me to also research kits, just in case I find something cheaper/better than he does.

I came across this on aliexpress, but I know little to nothing (about anything really) about quads, so I bring it here for expert evaluation (at least relative to me.)

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32827039354.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.67644c4dCXnK4J
 

CarolineTyler

Legendary member
The flight controller is barely supported anymore for one thing. This is basically a quadcopter from 2005-7. It will work assuming you can get something like cleanflight on the flight computer but don't expect it to do freesyle or racing.
 

kdobson83

Well-known member
Yikes. I'd tell him to pass on that one. Pretty cheap. The sad thing is with quads is you get what you pay for. And as a newbie he will be doing a lot of crashing.

Try starting out with something a tad smaller. I'm currently flying a Blade Inductrix Fpv Plus. It's small so crashes don't hurt, but has plenty of power to fly outside.
Anyway, I'd HIGHLY recommend getting something easier to fly as the first quad. Something that won't break every other crash. Then once he gets good at it and wants to move up get a higher quality 250mm class drone.

What radio is he using? Spektrum? FrSky? Flysky?
 

Morgajus

Active member
The flight controller is barely supported anymore for one thing. This is basically a quadcopter from 2005-7. It will work assuming you can get something like cleanflight on the flight computer but don't expect it to do freestyle or racing.

Oh my... Can the flight controller be upgraded? I don't know how he plans to fly but i will relay this to him.

Yikes. I'd tell him to pass on that one. Pretty cheap. The sad thing is with quads is you get what you pay for. And as a newbie he will be doing a lot of crashing.

Try starting out with something a tad smaller. I'm currently flying a Blade Inductrix Fpv Plus. It's small so crashes don't hurt, but has plenty of power to fly outside.
Anyway, I'd HIGHLY recommend getting something easier to fly as the first quad. Something that won't break every other crash. Then once he gets good at it and wants to move up get a higher quality 250mm class drone.

What radio is he using? Spektrum? FrSky? Flysky?

I know he said he wanted to start with something bigger. I think he said he has (or had) a wi-fi based drone called a parrot(?) that he wanted to slap a wifi enabled arduino on, to pass signal from the rx to the quad. so he might already have some flight experience.

he has a futaba [dx6] or some such 6-channel designation.
 

CarolineTyler

Legendary member
I would look to replace the FC and the ESCs -- An F4 based Omnibus board will do, the ESCs I suspect are SimonK firmware which is not great for quads - look for ESCs running BJHeli_s or BJHeli_32 firmware.
 

Morgajus

Active member
I would look to replace the FC and the ESCs -- An F4 based Omnibus board will do, the ESCs I suspect are SimonK firmware which is not great for quads - look for ESCs running BJHeli_s or BJHeli_32 firmware.

The listing doesn't give any info on the escs strangely enough, just that they are 30 amps.

Upgrading the FC seems to cost almost 1/2 as much as the drone kit would lol. I'll see what my friend thinks about this information.
Thank you @CarolineTyler!


Wasn't simonk made for quads? Or is it just so outdated that newer better firmwares are more common?


Oh the rabbit holes I find myself down!
Continuing my research on quad stuff, I came across a few forum posts on how to flash simonk escs to bjheli (with or without soldering, depending on the esc.) There were alot of words and acronyms I didn't understand.

On a scale of 1 to *just burnt my house down* how hard is this to do and/or how dangerous is it?
I acknowledge it may be impractical, but please humor my curiosity.
 

CarolineTyler

Legendary member
Never flashed a SimonK based ESC, without the info on those ESCs you will struggle to identify them anyway. It's not dangerous, worst case is you burn up an ESC and make a bit of a stink in the house.
 

FDS

Elite member
I would look at some of the YouTube budget builds, a lot of those cheap kits are garbage, you end up with a nasty quad that doesn’t fly well, isn’t easy to set up and breaks down. Some are also downright dangerous IMO, since it’s difficult to set them up, increasing the risk of a flyaway or arming accident.
There’s also some good ready made quads for under $150 or if you go to something like the Happymodel Sailfly in Toothpick size micros, a good flyable quad you can upgrade and work on (the boards do break on them) for under $80.
If I was your friend I would buy a Sailfly, the batteries and parts are relatively cheap, plus toothpicks are free from dumb drone laws and fly like a bigger quad, but don’t need the large spaces you want to learn on a 5”.
You can also get perfectly good, powerful, BlHeli 32 ESC’s for under $10 each. Old obsolete crap needs to be ditched, it’s not really any cheaper and is a LOT worse performing as well.
 

Morgajus

Active member
After discussing what you have all told me with my friend, he said he was still looking at this frame still but sourcing higher quality electrical components. Still pretty fixed on a larger size though. He likes the idea of large slow fpv quads.

He doesn't like his parrot because it flies through an ipad app/interface.
 

Bricks

Master member
Your friend can fly any size quad slow.... that is why they have throttle. Flying bigger quads gets really boring to me as they can be pretty limited in what they can do, kind of like flying a Cub style plane fun but not much excitement to it.
 

Morgajus

Active member
Your friend can fly any size quad slow.... that is why they have throttle. Flying bigger quads gets really boring to me as they can be pretty limited in what they can do, kind of like flying a Cub style plane fun but not much excitement to it.

I think he plans to get bored with large and slow before upgrading to [large and fast] or [fpv and/or gimbal]. He's pricing out 2212 900kv motors to swing as large as will fit props on 4x 30amp escs. I think he's looking at hobbyking's brand and racerstar motors. (chinese knockoff of racestar? Or has it always been racerstar?)

We were discussing quads with another of our colleagues, he uses fpv plane footage to create detailed maps of an area, all so he can find his first downed rocket recovery plane and (hopefully) the rocket airframe. Something about breaking the video into frames with one program and then stitching the frames together with gps data in another program.
 

FDS

Elite member
Anything you learn on a small, light and simple set up like the Sailfly will translate onto something bigger. Airline pilots don’t start their training in an A380.