Dodger
Member
I apologize for the length of the rant but i'm starting from the beginning which started with winning a $200 visa gift card from a trivia night i had no intetion of going to untill i kidnapped by some friends. Decided i wanted to finally experiment with RC multi-rotors and so the story begins. Ordered an FPV 250 Racer (PNF) from RCTimer and the various other supplies from Hobby King. LiPos, a Turnigy 9XR Pro, FrSky 2.4gHz module and reciever, etc etc. eventually everything comes in and i get down to setting up my flight controller and testing my ESCs.
The frustrations begin.
One of my motors is stuttering and the ESC is heating up rapidly and intensely. So after some research i discover that bad solder joints ca cause symptoms like this so i get to work. resoldered everything and in the process the stuttering never stops, the signal wires break free so those needed to be reoldered and eventually (likely from me applying to much heat to the signal pads which are directly behind the IC on the other side) it ceases to work period. SO this all happens the day before I go on leave back home in New Orleans.
I decide i'm going to take everything with me to New Orleans with the hopes that in a bigger city comes hobby shops and hopefully that means someone has some 30A ESCs and to of course purchase some needed things like a LiPo charging bag and an appropriately sized 3S LiPo for my radio.
My first day home I find a local shop. He of course doesn't carry any multi-rotor parts what-so-ever. It instead turns into a hate rant about HobbyKing and how it makes it impossible for him to run a business. Moving off the subject i ask about the LiPo and charging bag. Bag was easy enough and I brought my radio to make sure the battery would fit inside the compartment and that's when he starts bashing my equipment. I still don't know what brand he was bashing because when he saw the FrSky module on the back he said "these FlySky radios are terrible", then turning it over and sees the turnigy logo he continues on saying how he's had tons of these Turnigy radios thrown through his window and they were just cheap crap. The jihst was, (random brand) Radio was terrible you should buy one of my $300+ radios (Futaba, Spektrum, etc). I also needed some XT60 connectors and tells me how those too are crap and that i should buy his EC3 connectors and their the future of RC battery connectors.
Short story the guy was an A-Hole who found every opportunity to bash my gear in order to push me to buy his stuff.
I finally find a route to get my same ESCs at least within the states through UAVObjects. They thankfully sell RCTimer parts within the US. The rest of the week was spent in anxious anticipation for my new set of ESCs. That's right, ordered a whole set of 4 so now I have back-ups. Woot woot!! get everything soldered in, hookup my CC3D to my laptop and calibrate everything then rush outside to finally get the Scruffy in the air. That's right, my quad is lovingly named Scruffy. I get everything set up pull the throttle back and watch the rotors and caps fly in every direction! i didn't tighten the props down..... and honestly the CW and CCW prop adapters maybe attached to the wrong motors. '
Any road, since i'm in a small yard with many large over grown plants i lost one of the left hand threaded prop adapter caps. It's black and small and has yet to be seen again. RIP prop screw thingy!! I at this point have fashioned another one of some plastic and it gets a tight bite, I tighten down all the others, and set back out to the yard! I bring the throttle back ( i should probably note that I inverted my throttle so it operated more like a helicopter's collective) and the quad lifted into the air with that awesome weed whacker esque noise of bad assery. At this point I discover the Pitch is inverted. When i pitched forward the quad went backwards and things escalated quickly with 2 broken pops, Luckily I had already received 5 extra sets of 5x4.5 props so I'm set for some basic prop bashing crashes.
I go back to the GCS, hookup and invert the pitch, get back outside with a fresh set of props and takeoff.
And.....It.....was..... Glorious. forward back, straffed a bit, yawed a bit and then try to fly off. I over zealously increase my collective as i give some forward pitch and it up and forward at a very brisk 45deg angle into the branches of my parents large oak tree. I watched it with zero interest of stopping it with a rather large smile on my face. All i cared about was I had my first real flight regardless of how short and my first crash by my own hand and not some dumb failure. i was smiling like a giddy child when i found the broke props but unfortunaely the caps came loose again and i lost the CCW cap so now I'm make shift making another one. It's amazing how hard they are to find even on the internet.
For future reference the diameter and threading on the prop adapters of an RCTime 2206-2000kv brushless motor is an M5x0.8. And you can get both right hand and left hand threaded hex nuts from Fastnal.com. I will be doing this with locking washers as well. untill then it will be drilled out force threaded pieces of plastic i fitted on. If anyone has any other suggestions that would be great!
End of the story is, after having a multi-rotor in my possession and being unable to fly it for nearly a month the rush from that single solitary short lived flight was enough to hook me in for life. now i just need to build a ground station with an FPV monitor etc and i'll start really getting out there, but till then i'll just be doing some park flying.
Say hello to my quad "Scruffy"
The frustrations begin.
One of my motors is stuttering and the ESC is heating up rapidly and intensely. So after some research i discover that bad solder joints ca cause symptoms like this so i get to work. resoldered everything and in the process the stuttering never stops, the signal wires break free so those needed to be reoldered and eventually (likely from me applying to much heat to the signal pads which are directly behind the IC on the other side) it ceases to work period. SO this all happens the day before I go on leave back home in New Orleans.
I decide i'm going to take everything with me to New Orleans with the hopes that in a bigger city comes hobby shops and hopefully that means someone has some 30A ESCs and to of course purchase some needed things like a LiPo charging bag and an appropriately sized 3S LiPo for my radio.
My first day home I find a local shop. He of course doesn't carry any multi-rotor parts what-so-ever. It instead turns into a hate rant about HobbyKing and how it makes it impossible for him to run a business. Moving off the subject i ask about the LiPo and charging bag. Bag was easy enough and I brought my radio to make sure the battery would fit inside the compartment and that's when he starts bashing my equipment. I still don't know what brand he was bashing because when he saw the FrSky module on the back he said "these FlySky radios are terrible", then turning it over and sees the turnigy logo he continues on saying how he's had tons of these Turnigy radios thrown through his window and they were just cheap crap. The jihst was, (random brand) Radio was terrible you should buy one of my $300+ radios (Futaba, Spektrum, etc). I also needed some XT60 connectors and tells me how those too are crap and that i should buy his EC3 connectors and their the future of RC battery connectors.
Short story the guy was an A-Hole who found every opportunity to bash my gear in order to push me to buy his stuff.
I finally find a route to get my same ESCs at least within the states through UAVObjects. They thankfully sell RCTimer parts within the US. The rest of the week was spent in anxious anticipation for my new set of ESCs. That's right, ordered a whole set of 4 so now I have back-ups. Woot woot!! get everything soldered in, hookup my CC3D to my laptop and calibrate everything then rush outside to finally get the Scruffy in the air. That's right, my quad is lovingly named Scruffy. I get everything set up pull the throttle back and watch the rotors and caps fly in every direction! i didn't tighten the props down..... and honestly the CW and CCW prop adapters maybe attached to the wrong motors. '
Any road, since i'm in a small yard with many large over grown plants i lost one of the left hand threaded prop adapter caps. It's black and small and has yet to be seen again. RIP prop screw thingy!! I at this point have fashioned another one of some plastic and it gets a tight bite, I tighten down all the others, and set back out to the yard! I bring the throttle back ( i should probably note that I inverted my throttle so it operated more like a helicopter's collective) and the quad lifted into the air with that awesome weed whacker esque noise of bad assery. At this point I discover the Pitch is inverted. When i pitched forward the quad went backwards and things escalated quickly with 2 broken pops, Luckily I had already received 5 extra sets of 5x4.5 props so I'm set for some basic prop bashing crashes.
I go back to the GCS, hookup and invert the pitch, get back outside with a fresh set of props and takeoff.
And.....It.....was..... Glorious. forward back, straffed a bit, yawed a bit and then try to fly off. I over zealously increase my collective as i give some forward pitch and it up and forward at a very brisk 45deg angle into the branches of my parents large oak tree. I watched it with zero interest of stopping it with a rather large smile on my face. All i cared about was I had my first real flight regardless of how short and my first crash by my own hand and not some dumb failure. i was smiling like a giddy child when i found the broke props but unfortunaely the caps came loose again and i lost the CCW cap so now I'm make shift making another one. It's amazing how hard they are to find even on the internet.
For future reference the diameter and threading on the prop adapters of an RCTime 2206-2000kv brushless motor is an M5x0.8. And you can get both right hand and left hand threaded hex nuts from Fastnal.com. I will be doing this with locking washers as well. untill then it will be drilled out force threaded pieces of plastic i fitted on. If anyone has any other suggestions that would be great!
End of the story is, after having a multi-rotor in my possession and being unable to fly it for nearly a month the rush from that single solitary short lived flight was enough to hook me in for life. now i just need to build a ground station with an FPV monitor etc and i'll start really getting out there, but till then i'll just be doing some park flying.
Say hello to my quad "Scruffy"
