Penny, the copper cruiser

Theuglycamel

Active member
Hello again everyone, I haven't been on the forum much but have been busy in the shop. I've finished my last project, an iNav mini cruiser. I built an fc for the mini cruiser I had previously. However the weight and repairs made it a pig even with iNav. So I stripped that and upgraded some of the odds and ends (i love these servos) Toughest part was keeping the weight down, but here's the guts:
Sunnysky 2204 2300kv
emax blheli 12a escs
spracing fc mini deluxe (mag and baro)
ublox gps
Protronic 5g digital metal gear servos
minimosd
flysky fs-ia6b
akk 200mw vtx
betafpv 1200tvl nano camera, 16:9 ntsc
3a 5v BEC

FC and receiver are running from the on-board BEC while the rest of everything is running off the BEC. Running iNav 2.5 with .3 diff thrust (for now). I built it with these Turnigy 1000mah 3s in mind so I kept everything to the rear or out on the wings and fuse. It's dry at 330g with the wire landing gear. I don't have a landing strip so I don't run them. with the 3s it's right at 440auw. Flies like a dream both in stabilized and manual mode. I get fairly good range with this vtx and flysky receiver. I can cover 80 acres at 120 ft without any dropouts. I don't have a good dvr but I'll try and record something off my cube this evening.
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whackflyer

Master member
Hello again everyone, I haven't been on the forum much but have been busy in the shop. I've finished my last project, an iNav mini cruiser. I built an fc for the mini cruiser I had previously. However the weight and repairs made it a pig even with iNav. So I stripped that and upgraded some of the odds and ends (i love these servos) Toughest part was keeping the weight down, but here's the guts:
Sunnysky 2204 2300kv
emax blheli 12a escs
spracing fc mini deluxe (mag and baro)
ublox gps
Protronic 5g digital metal gear servos
minimosd
flysky fs-ia6b
akk 200mw vtx
betafpv 1200tvl nano camera, 16:9 ntsc
3a 5v BEC

FC and receiver are running from the on-board BEC while the rest of everything is running off the BEC. Running iNav 2.5 with .3 diff thrust (for now). I built it with these Turnigy 1000mah 3s in mind so I kept everything to the rear or out on the wings and fuse. It's dry at 330g with the wire landing gear. I don't have a landing strip so I don't run them. with the 3s it's right at 440auw. Flies like a dream both in stabilized and manual mode. I get fairly good range with this vtx and flysky receiver. I can cover 80 acres at 120 ft without any dropouts. I don't have a good dvr but I'll try and record something off my cube this evening. View attachment 172009 View attachment 172010
Very cool! @Hondo76251 and you would get along I think!
 

Theuglycamel

Active member
OK, think I've got all the bug out of her now. Actually had the OSD profile switch on my throttle channel... was actually kinda cool once I got that figured out. I thought it was on my rssi channel at first.
Flies smooth as butter and handles the wind GREAT with angle or horizon enabled. It's also a Rocket with these SS 2300 on 3s. Everything I've got is rated for 4s... so I might have to serial up a few 2s's to see what she'll do.

Only problem I'm having is with this cheap ublox. She's been working great until this morning, and now has an led loop (3short 1long). Guess that'll give me something to look at this evening.

Cruisers for LIFE!
 

Hondo76251

Legendary member
Awesome plane @Theuglycamel! Hard to put that much gear in and keep the weight down for sure! Your 2204's are probably pretty comparable to the 1808 2400kv ive got in mine, even with the weight i was pleased with the performance. Im working on a V2 at the moment myself. Not sure if im going to stay with the Zohd or use a mini pix but i know i am Going to tune her for speed this time... She is a long distance air racer after all! ;)

Need to get some videos of yours posted! :)
 

Theuglycamel

Active member
Hey Devil Dog! Sorry I've been offline for so long. Work got crazy for awhile. I'm working on getting a vid up now. This has been my all time favorite build so far. Soon as I get something decent recorded i'll post some more pics and a vid link. BTW, your BlackMagic turned out WAY better than mine! ;)
 

Theuglycamel

Active member
OK... OK. I've got a video and it's not exactly what I'd call a "good" one. This was taken with my Polaroid cube act 2 (best 25 bucks out there) um... day before yesterday I think. Right away I realized my elevator was WAY off. I didn't pay any attention since I had it in angle mode and just assumed the up-tilt was due to it's accel position in my hand. As soon as I realized I was in trouble, I had to drop the hood because it flew behind me. Once I was fp I at least got her back to the yard... and into my fence. Keep in mind I was FULL DOWN on the ele with trim maxed the whole time. I had to hit Manual mode as the accel just kept pulling the nose up no matter how mashed the ele was. She survived beautifully and a few drops o glue and a sticker or two and she's right as rain. I'm VERY glad I added a 1/2" carbon square tube to the spar.
In my aim to stay light I trusted a light gluing to the rud/ele servos. They are no longer lightly glued lol. I didn't even notice the rudder being out since the diff thrust overrode that anemic rudder.

I also had to cut 1 1/2 hours of "sky" off the end of this video as the cube landed in my flower bed and took 2 days to find... which I just did an hour ago.
 

Hondo76251

Legendary member
Its amazing how stong they are with just a simple spar... mine is wood and that plane seems nearly indestructible!

Thanks btw, the little black magic makes a nice hanger queen to put on wall at least! 🤣 it flies, but its a full time job to keep her in the air...

My V2 smart cruiser is another black magic, not quite a master series style, but close. Not sure when ill get her in the air, been busy as a one legged man myself. Most days i cant tell if i found a rope, or lost my horse!
 

Theuglycamel

Active member
HAHAHA you sound like an Okie Hondo! I'm in the middle of rebuilding that 115% cruiser I did over the winter. Had a hard maiden and needs a nose job.
I've actually just got a master series p38 started a few weeks ago. It's definitely a more time consuming process but it looks balsa slick.
I'm assuming you're going to use a flight controller on your smart cruiser. What are you going to use?
 

Theuglycamel

Active member
Took Penny back out yesterday but found the fence claimed the port motor and esc. Got those swapped out today and am currently waiting for my google pack to charge. I'll strap the cube back on for a more... traditional flight video.
 

Theuglycamel

Active member
Here's a decent one from yesterday running a "rebuild maiden" she was a little wonky so i had to run her through auto tune again. You'll see where I start throwing yaw around. It was terrible windy (that's what I'm saying) but I wanted to test it hard and she did beautifully. I'll be working on some missions with iNav and see what comes of that. When I'm not yanking around on the throttle I'm getting close to 12 min. Still, 7.5 is pretty good in this kind of wind.

 

Hondo76251

Legendary member
Nice, do you land on goggles? I have a blast doing that!

I think im going to use a mini pix on this one...
 

Theuglycamel

Active member
Sure do, I've tried pulling my hood and landing los but 9/10 I loose the stinking thing and crash anyway. Decided I'd better just get good at landing. My strip is way too rough for this landing gear (cow turds do that), but I've had a few lucky roll-ins.

Awesome! Let me know how you like that pix. Are you going to run ardupilot? As much as I love iNav, ardu feels... professional.
 

Theuglycamel

Active member
Well I've been out all morning trying out different props and I think I finally found a sweet spot. The walkera 5.3 props I was using are AWESOME, don't let the name or looks fool you. Best efficiency of any other prop I've run, and a ton of power, no matter how low the rpm. But, they don't play nice with my landing gear and I HATE thread on props. I've got about 3/4" clearance between the deck and the props. With a 2/12" tall grass runway... well it doesn't add up. Tried some King Kong 5x4x2, but were way too anemic. Cruised at 3/4 throttle and ate the packs up. Then I ran a bull nose 5x4.5x3, this was just the opposite tons of grunt but ate a volt up just getting in the air. Tried a few other 5x#x2 but they were all either too light on the pitch or chopped like a blender.
I recently bought a couple of sets of Mr Steel watermelon 5x3.2x3 (s3 i think) for my latest 5" quad. Didn't have a lot of hope with the low pitch, but these babys COOK on these sunnyskys. I'm getting about a minute to a minute and a half less time than the walkeras, but they're just as quiet, have tons of punch and these motor love the low pitch.
And best of all, I've had 3 successful roll-ins on these props so far. Still too rough for a take-off, but I'll get a roll of carpet one day.
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Hondo76251

Legendary member
Fun to see your prop choices! I dont usually do landing gear anytime i can help it so im pretty well stuck with twin blade props most of the time. My last smart cruiser ran the avan "long range" props. I really liked them. Not the most powerful, but efficient and extremely quiet.

Ive toyed with i nav some, just enough to make me really appreciate ardupilot... 🤣 i use it on everything now. There are a lot of cheaper ways to do what i do, but ive realized that im dumb and i dont have as much time to learn new tricks as i would like so i tend to stick with what ive been able to make work...
 

Theuglycamel

Active member
It really is hard to beat a good set of bi-blades. My ar wing has a sunnysky 2206 with an apc 8x6x2. I've hit 104 on 4s, and I've run almost 25 min on 4400mah 3s. It's also my ardu project. I haven't tried anything new (this one is an apm mini from 2016) but I've got the osd board, telemetry board and power module board so she's pretty well stacked. The telemetry is so cool I spend more time looking at maps than I do flying sometimes lol. They may only be 8 bit FCs but man they're fun. It only took me 50 flights to get autotune square lol.