Test Flight Take #2

I went out this morning to give it a test.  I found a nice soft grassy area and set about giving it a test.  Immediately upon takeoff the quad would start spinning to the right, slightly at first and then faster and faster. I knew what this meant thanks to doing some quality web browsing - a reversed yaw gyro.

The procedure for fixing this is to set the roll pot to zero, turn on the transmitter, power up the control board, then move the yaw stick.  It should then start flashing continuously at a very high rate until you turn the power off.  This should fix the problem.  (Make sure to put the pot back in the middle)

One easy way to test is to hold the quad over your head with props on - be very careful - and then try to rotate it clockwise or counterclockwise.  The quad should really try to fight you.  If it feels like there is just a little resistance than try to increase the gain on the yaw pot a little.  This thing should honestly feel like it doesn't want you to rotate it!  If it's not resisting you'll need to reverse that pot.

To Infinity and Beyond!!!

Not really - after I got the yaw problem fixed I did a few test bounces, then played with the hovering a bit.  I was able to get it to hover a few feet off the ground and move it around a bit, but I can still tell something isn't quite right.  What I experienced was the following:  I could get it off the ground and it wanted to go slightly forward, and I could compensate, but then when I tried to steer it took too long for it to stop steering.  That is, when I told it to go right, it would go for quite a ways before it would stop going right.  I know it should be crisper on the controls, but I'm not sure what the cause of this is.  I'll do a little message board searching and see if I can figure out what is going on.

Getting close to first "real" flight, but not there quite yet.

Ecalc Tool

One handy little tool that I found online is at the eCalc Multirotor Calculator, which will tell you what your setup will do.  It has tons of great defaults and can tell you if you are going to get off the ground and how long your battery will likely last.  Below is a screenshot of my calculations:

New Frame and Rebuild

Side view of new quadcopter frame.

I'm still not sure that I'm really satisfied with the Turnigy Trust ESCs - they claim to have automatic throttle calibration, but that doesn't seem to be satisfactory for a quadcopter, so I might have to purchase the Turnigy Plush ones that I've now recommended on the Quadcopter Parts page.

Top view of new quadcopter frame

However, I did go out and pick up a new frame from HobbyKing - the Talon 550mm Carbon Fiber QuadCopter Frame.  The frame was easy to assemble and went together in about 10 minutes.  The one problem is that the power distribution board was too big so I had to solder the ESCs together - I'm not great at soldering, but it worked for me and all the engines are getting their power.

The frame is a perfect fit for the motors and for the control board, which is incredibly helpful and can be set up both the + and X configurations - for now I'm going with the + configuration.  The reason I'm doing that is  that + is the default and I've had some trouble programming the control board - and this is after I burnt one up - oops!

I did a couple of test bounces and it handled okay, but I can tell that it needs some fine tuning and I'm not sure if that should be done on the control side or on the gyro side.

I think tomorrow I will head out to a grassy field and see how it handles, try to do some test hovers, and see if I can actually fly it around for a few seconds.  I'll post an update once I get some flight data.