Sometimes you just have to do what you just have to do

[jhitesma]

I think you all know that I'm not generally one to buy RTF or even ARF models. I love tinkering and building as much or more as I love flying. But....

For my birthday last month some friends gave me a nice gift certificate to the local hobby shop. I've been up there three times since looking for something to spend it on...and keep striking out. They're mostly cars/trucks but do carry Horizon - but mostly only have coaxial helis and planes. The planes are more than my GC and available cash would cover (well, the ones I want...I could afford a champ but don't really want one.)

And they don't really stock supplies that I need for most things and aren't interested in getting them in. If they had 6x4.5" props I'd have blown the whole GC on them

There is one thing from Horizon I've had my eyes on...but the local store hasn't had it and I haven't wanted to order it...but today...they had it:



I've been wanting to try and build a 3D quad for awhile...but with the GC this was more affordable and quicker Plus I wanted a nano for flying in the house anyway...two birds one stone I figure.

Pack just finished charging so I guess I'll go see how this does Little breezy today for flying out side and don't think my ceilings are high enough to fly inverted in the house...so we'll see how much fun I actually have with it today....

 

[narcolepticltd]

Should be fun to bash around I managed to supe up my rates on my regular nano through the tx, and can actually do flips in the house now (precariously)

 

[jipp]

cool, i hope its just as durable as the nano qx.. from what iv seen its suppose to be more powerful?
iv not done that yet, try to bind the Dx6i to the blade nano..i guess i should do that.. iv gotten use to the POS TX it came with.. would be nice if i had more than 20 feet range with it, which im told the DX6i will give.



chris.

 

[jhitesma]

Yeah, I didn't really want the RTF but that was all they had, I would have been happy with the BNF since I'll probably just use my normal TX with it most of the time.

First impression....1/4" thick instruction book...6 pages of which are in english and only 1 of which is really useful (2 more are useful if you're using a different TX than the one that came with it.)

I'm naming it finger biter. In 3D mode it's almost impossible to land, only way I've found is to use the throttle cut...and then even with the throttle cut as soon as I touch it...it jumped to life again. With no arm/disarm it's really hard to keep my fingers safe. Thankfully it's small enough and gentle enough it just stings a little. Thought I must have been missing something obvious...but cant' find anything in the instructions.

It's fun...more powerful than I expected, handled the wind outside no issue.

The transition between thrust directions isn't as quick as I expected...really hard to catch it as a result. But more practice and getting used to the stick travel will help...getting it bound to my good TX will probably help too.

Need to pick up some more packs for it....

Will probably take a few days of practice (maybe longer since I only have one pack with the right connector to use with it) before I'm willing to get video of it

 

[PHugger]

Rates and Expos really helped me with the Nano.



Best regards,
PCH

 

[jipp]

thats cool. they probably are the same TX.. you push in the left stick to bind in acro mode, or easy mode ( red or blue LED at start up ).. and the push the right stick in for high rates ( flashing red, or solid red light on the TX), for low rates. i get 20 feet with mine if im lucky.. and some times it wants to fly off. lol, i just hope for the fail safe to set in.. which it seems to do, as it will fall from the sky after a couple of seconds of lost control, or iv just been lucky so far.

does it use the same battery as teh nano? i picked up 5 of these 250mah 1s for 20.00
they are much better tan the 150mah 1s it came with.. all together i have 7 battery's now.. i get about 5 mins per battery.
also if its the same setup as the qx i think im gonna get the charging board so i can charge 5 at a time 1s.. i figure with 1s why not.. cheap compared to the 3s.

chris.
chris.

 

[jhitesma]

I'm not hugely impressed with the stock TX. It's better than the hubsan stock TX - but not by much. I need to give it a try with my DSM module in my 9x. Binding and rates do work the same. Some expo in 3D mode would be nice. The failsafe cuts in after about 3 seconds...as quick as this guy is I'd like that to be a bit quicker but it's better than nothing

Not sure what battery the nano uses, this came with a 200mah 30c 1S with the connector right on the pack no cord to attach it. Looks like it's the same paced the mCPX uses (and honestly if they'd had one of those I probably would have given in a bought it instead as I've been kind of itching for another heli...but that would have been really stretching my budget even as a BNF...I actually went a hair over budget on this one since they only had the RTF and not BNF's which was really all I had budgeted for - but I got a nice bonus at work this week and knew this afternoon was going to be rough from a parenting perspective so I decided to treat myself.)

Looks like Amazon has a 4 pack of Lectron Pro packs for $23 delivered with Prime that would work....but I'm going to do a little research on batteries before I order any. I have a 6 parallel charge cord I use to charge my 1s packs for my micro helis...but they're smaller and use a smaller connector so I'll have to get a new one for these. On 1S packs I love parallel charging. But on 2/3/4s packs I'm still a bit gunshy about parallel charging.

I'd say it was in the 5 minute range as well for flying time - but I split it between some outside and some inside so it's hard to say for sure.

The autoflips and inversions are quick and tight enough I can do them in the house no problem. But the 3D mode is so different to fly I can't do much with it even outside yet. It's more like learning all over again than learning FPV was.

It flies GREAT inside even in the very limited space I have available. By far the most stable and easiest to fly brushed quad I've got (which is only a Syma X1 and my proto-x the Syma is too big and loose and moves too much air to fly in my house, the proto-x I fly inside but it's a LOT more fun outside where I have more room to really open it up as I loose props way too quick inside with no guards.) The guards and design make this a blast to fly inside since you can "park" it on the ceiling in either direction.

My daughter likes chasing my proto-x around the house and loved chasing this around equally if not more. She loves recovering them for me when I crash and is better than me at finding props when they come loose She was a bit freaked out the first time I did an inside flip though.

My one big complaint is that it doesn't have a non-3D agility mode. That was the one thing I really wanted a nano qx for - practicing rate mode flying in various orientations inside at night. The 3D agility mode is a rate mode...but that throttle is so different and hard to get used to I can't do much of anything in that mode yet. I did do a few manual flips outside - but chopping throttle to mid instead of the bottom is hard to remember!

 

[cranialrectosis]

Mustang has one of these too. One of the reasons I went for the KISS ESCs last year was so I could play with 3D...

 

[jipp]

yeah, im glad i went with the nano.. if i would of went with the hudson i would of broke so many props.. as of now i have only worn one pair of props out. and 2 bodys. i found a template to print bodys out tho.. so i can just use my printer now.. instead of spendy 8.00 or whatever for a new body which is a rip off.

and i agree the TX is so generic.. the gimbals suck. it is funny what we can learn to fly with tho iv gotten pretty good with it.
but i fear it has created bad habbits, like flying close to me.. i wont know for sure till i get a larger quad and go out side and see what bad habbits i need to break. i am glad i listen to you guys and fly it in hard mode always.
that has to help some. but when i get my mini up in the air i see 20 plus battery's on hovering, then ill see if i can get this going further out and back deal under control.

yeah, they do go a long ways in a short period when you lose signal. heh.
these are the batterys i bouggt.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lectron-Pro...310?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item54073b66c6

looks like the same battery plug.. but the battery are different sizes? makes sense looks like the blade 3d takes 300mah? or at least has them for sale.
chris.

 

[jhitesma]

One thing this has taught me for sure...I won't be building a brushless 3D anytime too soon. Not the way I'm flying this in 3D mode

Though it does have me really wanting to try a collective pitch quad now


Yeah, these area different size than the batteries for the original nano. Here are the ones for this:
http://www.amazon.com/4-Pack-Lectron-Pro-3-7-volt/dp/B00JBSF18S

 

[Balu]

I've seen 220mAh 45C LiPos for the Nano QX. I can't find them in Germany though.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/220mAh-45C-...005&rk=2&rkt=4&mehot=pp&sd=360898586310&rt=nc

On Friday I was able to fly my Nano QX FPV in a Tennis hall. There's a club in the next city called the "Freitagsflieger" ("Friday Fliers") that meet there after 9pm on -uhm- Fridays. Most of them fly micro helis, but there was a kid having a Vapor and I think an a UMX Trojan. And one pilot even flew a big heli, I'm thinking (scaredly hoping) a 550 or 600, two courts away - doing 3D stuff. :-o

It was interesting that none of the other pilots (besides that pro pilot) had seen FPV on such a small scale. Everyone wanted to have a go with the goggles .

 

[jipp]

I've seen 220mAh 45C LiPos for the Nano QX. I can't find them in Germany though.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/220mAh-45C-...005&rk=2&rkt=4&mehot=pp&sd=360898586310&rt=nc

On Friday I was able to fly my Nano QX FPV in a Tennis hall. There's a club in the next city called the "Freitagsflieger" ("Friday Fliers") that meet there after 9pm on -uhm- Fridays. Most of them fly micro helis, but there was a kid having a Vapor and I think an a UMX Trojan. And one pilot even flew a big heli, I'm thinking (scaredly hoping) a 550 or 600, two courts away - doing 3D stuff. :-o

It was interesting that none of the other pilots (besides that pro pilot) had seen FPV on such a small scale. Everyone wanted to have a go with the goggles .

i wonder if they would improve the flight time..
chris.

 

[jhitesma]

Having run a few more packs through this I have a few more thoughts.

1) the prop guards work. I've knocked quite a few props off...but I'm still on the original props. Heck even on my proto-x I destroyed a prop within the first 3 charges Not sure if these props are just tougher or what. The ends are getting a little torn up...but they still fly fine. They're also easier to find than proto-x props when they fall off which is nice.

2) The instruction manual is junk. Absolute rubbish. It's flat out wrong in some places. Its says the blue and red LED's are solid when the LVC kicks in...um...no. They're solid during normal operation, the red blink when the LVC kicks in. The rates on the TX also seem to be backwards. It says solid red is low rates and blinking red is high rates...I can't tell a huge difference in pitch/roll...but yaw is definitely faster with the solid red light on the TX.

3) I still can't fly 3D mode AT ALL. I keep switching it back into auto-level just to make sure it actually still flies correctly. I can't even hover in 3D mode. It's like the rates get extra sensitive and the whole mid throttle for neutral but the props never stop spinning and there's no way to disarm is just really messing with me. I'm still trying...but wow is it hard.

 

[jhitesma]

Finally took the time to get my 9x configured to fly this. Got it bound, got the first 4 channels setup...and got the 3 way working to pic the modes (though it's backwards from how I want it with 3D as the default at top half flips in the middle and full flips down at the bottom. Actually, if I figure out 3D mode I guess I would want that as the default. Maybe it's trying to push me

I also got my trainer switch hooked up to work as the trigger so I can trigger the flips and motor stop just like the stock transmitter. I still need to play with the expo a bit but it's already more to my liking than either stock setting. I can fly much more aggressively inside now.

Which means I'm also now down to 1 blue LED and 1.5 red led's still coming on. Every now and then another will come on and flicker for a bit. Other than that it's really taken a beating. I did switch to the second set of props. The first still flew but were noisy, had frayed edges, and were much stronger in one direction than the other now with noticeably different sounds.

Feels great on the new props, and after putting them on I found the missing prop from the first set that had forced me into switching So I still have backups - but they're in rough condition.

I'll have to see what I can do about the LED's. They really make it easier to see and fly so it's a bummer they're so exposed and get taken out so easily.

3D mode feels better, but I don't always get reverse thrust, sometimes it seems to start up in rate mode now but without the 3D throttle. Which is kind of nice as I was thinking about trying to make a mix so I could fly 3D mode with a normal throttle just to practice orientation in rate mode. And when I do get the 3D throttle I still have a heck of a time keeping it under control.

 

[KRAR]

to fix the leds, go around with a exatco and press down on the resistors and resolder them... I was able to bring back all but one led...