First Crash!

fblonk

fblonk

Member
Hi!
I decided to under take building a drone. After many hours of youtube and this forum (Thank you Bartman, you are a wealth of info!) and flying a syma toy quad around my home I bought parts and assembled. Here is my list.
NAZA V2
dji f450
Hobby power SimonK 30A ESC
Sunnysky Angel A2212 980KV
Spectrum dx7s with AR8000 and Telemetry
Turnigy 5200 MAH 3S batt.
Ripafire 1045 props (balanced)
Gopro hero 3+ tywrapped for now to the frame

It actually flew after some calibration issues with naza and the esc's! Worked well. Hovered at half throttle. Flew beautiful! I had about 3 hours of fly time over 2 weeks (I get around 10 mins fly time on a battery from 4.15 V to around 3.75V). All was good. I was about 60 feet up in my yard and I heard a crack and it fell from the sky. I determined that 1 side of the prop broke off (changing to Carbon fiber, no more nylon) and it fell like a brick. The fall broke the antenna, 1 arm, and all the props. Everything else seems fine (I also secured the battery in my BBQ for 4 days)
Now the questions,
I tested the motors by pinching my fingers around it as drag (no props on of course). and 1 was weak. I removed it and plugged it into another esc and it is fine. Bad ESC?
While bench testing the motors I decided to let the batteries drain to storage voltage (both were charged at the time of the crash) by running them down on the quad without props. I noticed that the rpm's varied (both up and down) while the drone is sitting on my bench with the bad (?) ESC. I unplug it from NAZA and it seems to be better, no varying rpms. Is this ESC bad?

Also I am going to strip this and go Hexcopter. Any suggestions on upgrades? The only thing I am doing is transferring existing components to a f550 frame and adding 2 more angel motors and esc's, and going to carbon fiber. I would love some feedback as to what brand props are good, or any suggestions on changing any of the components I have for more reliable, better, etc. Battery suggestions also welcome as I would like more fly time per battery.
I intend to ultimately put a camera, gimbal and fpv on this.

Thanks in advance!
 

fblonk

fblonk

Member
Forgot to mention that the esc on the motor with no torque and the esc removed from the naza that leveled off the rpms was the same ESC.

Thanks again!
 

C

cootertwo

Member
Ha! welcome to the addiction! And now that you've had your first crash, the fun begins! I'm still sippin my morning coffee, but one suggestion would be to try the ESC calibration again, and see if it has an effect on the suspect ESC. It could also be the motor itself, or a weak solder joint, etc. etc. As you are learning, there are a whole lot of variables in these flying machines. Added to that, is the multitude of different radios, flight controllers, ESC's, motors, on and on. Some play together well, others not so much. I've learned the hard way, when gathering parts for a new build, to order at least 1 spare motor and ESC, as occasionally you run into a problem like you are experiencing, and the easiest way to check, is to replace the suspected part. You'll get it sorted out sooner or later, and that "ahhh so that's what it was" feeling is sooo nice!
 

fblonk

fblonk

Member
Hi! Thanks for the reply. I am definitely learning! I have plugged the motor into another esc and it works fine, so I have ruled out the motor. when I unplugged the esc from the naza, the rpms were smoother with less fluctuation. I had to let the batteries run down to storage voltage while waiting for parts, so I used the copter. Each ran down and took about 40 mins with out any props on it with me varying the throttle. When I unplugged the suspect esc, it leveled out the rpms at steady throttle. I have decided to build a f550 with the parts from this one. I have ordered more of the same parts with some spares. I am having a blast. Building them is as much fun as flying them!
 


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