550 Pilot's lounge

[havasuphoto]

I've never used full throttle on anything I've flown. This will mostly be stuck in a high hover for live broadcasting. I think the linear throttle on E-calc said something in the low 40% range to hover, and in the 30% range with the 12" props.
I have a laser thermometer-so I'll be monitoring everything very closely. I have a little over 60 days to either crash/melt this, or sign it off as "safe" for the work I need it to do.

And-I think maybe someone is misreading the E-calc data.
tell me what you think;

 

[ElGuano]

I don't have the motors so I'm going off the manufacturer's spec sheet.

It's up to you, plenty of people use XT60s beyond rated current; I've done it too in a pinch. For a permanent setup, for me wiring and connectors are an easy thing to change out to mitigate risk, but you may have other valid considerations I'm not thinking about.

 

[havasuphoto]

I'm just going by the E-calc numbers-they have the manufacturers motors limits programmed into it.....the numbers look good to me-so we'll see what happens.
Remember-this is an F800..800mm arms, and it's a bit on the heavy side.

I'm toying with the idea, now that I found a place that I can buy those exact carbon fiber rods, for cheap-of making a Y6, with 800mm arms!!! Maybe even 1000mm arms, 6 co-axial motors, running 15" props, on 6S!!!
Looks pretty easy to remove a couple arms. The hard part looks to be mounting the bottom motors.
BUT-I have to start crashing some aircraft first. I still have a P1, P2 and the F800....

 

[havasuphoto]

Well, my ESC are soldered in. However-the main battery wire is something like 8ga-it's really thick, and my friends' soldering iron isn't powerful enough to solder it back on. So, I'm taking my gun with a broader tip over to see if that will work. I was able to remove it, and able to heat the solder on the end of those big wires enough to de-solder a little bit of the excess and clean it up-so hopefully this works, then we're done with soldering.

Question; what gauge wire are you guys running on your F550's-running a single 4S battery?

When I first got this aircraft-one thing I noticed was how thick the battery wire was. I guess the guy was running dual 3S8000mah batteries a few times...but I don't see the need forthis massive 8 ga? wire. It's thicker than the wires coming off my 4S batteries.

So, if my soldering iron can't get the job done, we'll move to a smaller gauge wire. then it's just a matter of me rigging it up to test that everything works. Heat shrink and zip ties will follow, and probably some hot glue over the ESC pads-as I'm told that's what DJI recommends.
Weather for this weekend is; windy-windy-and windier with thunderstorms. So, if all goes according to plan, I'll just idle it at 10% here in my Office, and move the controls around a little. I don't expect any surprises-as I've already had this thing running with these engines before-just not the DJI ESC's.
So, when I plug the battery in, I want to hear the beeps, 1,2,3,4,5....(I think that's how naza lite does it?). OH-1 more thing; I read somewhere that if you're on 4S, naza does an additional single beep at the end of the first series of beeps, to indicate 4S. Is that true? 2 beeps for 5S and 3 beeps for 6S.

 

[SanCap]

"Question; what gauge wire are you guys running on your F550's-running a single 4S battery?"

My stock 550 is wired with 12 gauge.

 

[havasuphoto]

"Question; what gauge wire are you guys running on your F550's-running a single 4S battery?"

My stock 550 is wired with 12 gauge.

Thanks-I think what's was on there before, and what we're trying to put back on is 8 ga or 10 ga....more likely 8.

 

[Acill]

Had my son take a video of a quick flight this afternoon. Sorry for the bad framing, lol!!

http://youtu.be/9MpGqQLwZR4

 

[FangsCPO]

Had my son take a video of a quick flight this afternoon. Sorry for the bad framing, lol!!

http://youtu.be/9MpGqQLwZR4

Nice!!!! Looks good! Now you need to add LEDs so you can do some night time flying. I used these.

http://www.cooperuav.com/store.php

 

[ElGuano]

It's done (mostly):

And it flies (mostly):

 

[OI Photography]

And it flies (mostly):

I love it when a build comes together

Very nice, and I bet you're grinning pretty big right now. I'll have to look at it more later, I've just about squinted myself to a headache trying to identify all the components. It does look like the hubs on the bottom blades are juust wide enough to fit on the motors, I hadn't thought about that presenting more of an issue on the bottom.

It's hard to tell, but it seems you did opt to use the spacers with those arms, to keep the stock separation between the top and bottom frame plates..? I chose to do without them, and I still managed to fit the WKM IMU in there, but just barely.

Are those ESC's really that much wider than those arms? The 35A Maytech's I have were able to fit completely up in the arms between the sides (again just barely though).

I love the effect the LED's made on the lower blades in that pic...took me a while to figure out that's what it was.

 

[ElGuano]

I love it when a build comes together

Very nice, and I bet you're grinning pretty big right now. I'll have to look at it more later, I've just about squinted myself to a headache trying to identify all the components. It does look like the hubs on the bottom blades are juust wide enough to fit on the motors, I hadn't thought about that presenting more of an issue on the bottom.

It's hard to tell, but it seems you did opt to use the spacers with those arms, to keep the stock separation between the top and bottom frame plates..? I chose to do without them, and I still managed to fit the WKM IMU in there, but just barely.

Are those ESC's really that much wider than those arms? The 35A Maytech's I have were able to fit completely up in the arms between the sides (again just barely though).

I love the effect the LED's made on the lower blades in that pic...took me a while to figure out that's what it was.

Thanks! I'm more exhausted than happy at this point. This build took DAYS! I made design decisions that added hours to each component (though I'm glad I did, if nothing else for aesthetics). I burned through 4 2.5mm hex wrenches had to cut several to different sizes multiple times. There is still a lot to clean up.

The bottom prop hubs weren't actually wide enough (they're 4mm and the hubs are 5mm). I tried balancing them, but realized the hubs aren't centered, making it impossible. So I just took a dremel with a grinding cone to it and widened them out. They're FAR from balanced but they do fly. I looked around and the t-motor cf ones are 6mm, so they should fit unaided.

I didn't use the spacers, so like the f450 it's running 31mm plates. the standoffs for the unused arms are 30mm so I do have spacers under those. I think I looked up the WKM/a2 IMU module dimensions back in the day before making the spacer/no spacer decision (I have a full set of the aimdroix spacers), and they're 27-28mm high so as you discovered they do fit underneath. It is tight though!

The ESCs are way wider than will fit the arms. They are almost exactly the same width as the arms themselves. I slanted them to test but may print a bracket and line them up straight. The e300s do fit perfectly in the arm troughs.

The cf blades do make a nice plasma/statue-of-liberty-torch effect, but they're way too dark to get anything really bright going. The since upward-shining led isn't visible at all against the black top props.

 

[djp4059]

I have a question about compass calibration on a F550? The first part where you spin it around horizontally I get, but the second part where you spin it around vertically, which way does the GPS puck have to be pointing, up, down or sideways? I have seen two videos, one the guy did it sideways and the other with the puck pointing down.

 

[havasuphoto]

I have a question about compass calibration on a F550? The first part where you spin it around horizontally I get, but the second part where you spin it around vertically, which way does the GPS puck have to be pointing, up, down or sideways? I have seen two videos, one the guy did it sideways and the other with the puck pointing down.

Puck with the arrow pointed forward-down. Always nose down.
And you don't have to hold it like a box of cookies and walk around in a circle. Just stand there and pick it up, spin it horizontally by going from arm to arm, then when the green light arms, hold the tail arm, and just spin it that way. If it's heavy-hold two arms. It's kinda clumsy when you get to larger airframes-but doable.

 

[ElGuano]

A short video of the first couple of flights (amazingly, no augering in). First lesson, the 10C Walkera batteries are no good here. I got voltage sag enough to trigger the LV alarms at 3.9v.

My flight with 4x Phantom 2200s (4400mah 6S) lasted just over 18min to 21.9v.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1HPcZCQQQw[/youtube]

 

[OI Photography]

4x Phantom 2200s (4400mah 6S)

2x pairs of series, connected in parallel, or 2x pairs of parallel, connected in series?

 

[ElGuano]

4x Phantom 2200s (4400mah 6S)

2x pairs of series, connected in parallel, or 2x pairs of parallel, connected in series?

Yes

2x pairs of parallel, connected in series.

 

[ladykate]

re: Y6

Very sweet. Congrats!

 

[ElGuano]

I love the effect the LED's made on the lower blades in that pic...took me a while to figure out that's what it was.

This one's for you

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01sWr4chIOA[/youtube]

 

[havasuphoto]

4x Phantom 2200s (4400mah 6S)

2x pairs of series, connected in parallel, or 2x pairs of parallel, connected in series?

Yes

2x pairs of parallel, connected in series.

That's pure genius right there. Here I am-looking at a 6S heavy lift copter, and just dropping my jaw at the prices for 6S batteries-and you come up with an elegant solution. I have a ton of 3S batteries.....

 

[ElGuano]

re: Y6

Very sweet. Congrats!

Thanks, now I just gotta find time to finish it up and fly it

That's pure genius right there. Here I am-looking at a 6S heavy lift copter, and just dropping my jaw at the prices for 6S batteries-and you come up with an elegant solution. I have a ton of 3S batteries.....

I haven't quite decided whether I'm going to with 3S-in-series or just spring for 6S. I like the redundancy of parallel packs so depending on the flight times I need at full load I'll probably spring for smallish 6S packs I can run in parallel, thinking something like 2x6000mah, which might be good for 25-30 minutes....