RAnst4038
Junior Member
After researching drones for a week I chose the JJRC H8D from Tom Top $98. It arrived 12-8-15 so the first thing I wanted to do is balance the props with the magnetic carbon fiber, red tube & blue nut unit that doesn't seem to have a name. I had already sanded the blue nuts balanced. Found that the B's were almost perfectly balanced. The A's were real heavy on the end that had A molded in. With the excellent macro photography seen on web I was surprised just how tiny the parts are. Handling 4mm jeweler screws with my 57 year old HVAC mechanic shoe leather fingers with no feeling left in them is a real challenge. When you fob it they get sucked onto the highly magnetic micro motors which requires fishing with a jeweler loop & tweezers. Or falling on the floor which requires running the magnetron magnet around. And the heads of the prop screws once installed are hanging out like hand grenades. So much for balancing the props. I think I got the transmitter bonding & gyro calibrating translated well enough. But why does the screen show Mode 2 when I turn it on and the Mode Switchover button do nothing? Checked the quad battery voltage out of box & it was 8. Linked trans & calibrated the gyro, Take Off & sure enough the right joystick spins it.
I’ve flown R/C since a teen but this is my first quad, and never had anything but what JJRC calls a mode 1 so I’m lost. But I kept it in the air long enough to press the video button then crashed it. And after it was on the ground & I had a chance to look at the trans I saw why. I was now in Mode 1, the mode button does nothing & the video button above it puts it in mode 1 & turns on the video icon but no video is taken. When you press video again to stop & save it pops back to Mode 2. And when you press the button the power light goes dim like there is a short. Well now that I know how to get into mode 1, which is actually mode 2 to the entire world I flew it till the dead battery lights started flashing & landed. Charged up the battery again until the charger light turned green & checked the voltage, 8.4. Went out for another flight & the right rear motor wouldn’t start unless I spun it. I had spent a week reading the reviews, boards & watching the videos. I knew the failure rate of this shoddy Chinese junk was 50% the first hour but you hope that 50% is other guy. Flew it again until the lights flashed but this time it was much shorter. Almost dead motor probably sucking more juice.
Ended up settling on a $45 refund from Tom Top to buy another transmitter. After not coming up with an answer if there was a better $45 transmitter I ordered the same one from Banggood. Everything else I ordered has arrived but the 24 replacement motors & the VR goggles.
[Update]: Now that I've had a working transmitter for a week I have to give the JJRC H8D a thumbs up. It doesn't work if the board gets wet but recovers when it dries. And the video recorder & trans is great!
The red magnetic stick on wide angle lens would not work unless you snapped the camera on backwards so I rotated the guts 180*
I’ve flown R/C since a teen but this is my first quad, and never had anything but what JJRC calls a mode 1 so I’m lost. But I kept it in the air long enough to press the video button then crashed it. And after it was on the ground & I had a chance to look at the trans I saw why. I was now in Mode 1, the mode button does nothing & the video button above it puts it in mode 1 & turns on the video icon but no video is taken. When you press video again to stop & save it pops back to Mode 2. And when you press the button the power light goes dim like there is a short. Well now that I know how to get into mode 1, which is actually mode 2 to the entire world I flew it till the dead battery lights started flashing & landed. Charged up the battery again until the charger light turned green & checked the voltage, 8.4. Went out for another flight & the right rear motor wouldn’t start unless I spun it. I had spent a week reading the reviews, boards & watching the videos. I knew the failure rate of this shoddy Chinese junk was 50% the first hour but you hope that 50% is other guy. Flew it again until the lights flashed but this time it was much shorter. Almost dead motor probably sucking more juice.
Ended up settling on a $45 refund from Tom Top to buy another transmitter. After not coming up with an answer if there was a better $45 transmitter I ordered the same one from Banggood. Everything else I ordered has arrived but the 24 replacement motors & the VR goggles.
[Update]: Now that I've had a working transmitter for a week I have to give the JJRC H8D a thumbs up. It doesn't work if the board gets wet but recovers when it dries. And the video recorder & trans is great!
The red magnetic stick on wide angle lens would not work unless you snapped the camera on backwards so I rotated the guts 180*
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