First flight woooooo party thread!

[Dune]

I just got off the ground with my Naza / f450 kit yesteday! Yeah!!!

This is my first RC experience, too. The DJI gear was a good way to start - now I know the basics of how quads are put together, radios, charging LiPo's, etc. and am FLYING!

I brought my friend along who had a lot of experience flying parrot and gaui, and he was really impressed at how stable Naza is, even in manual mode.

I did have one minor hiccup - the first time I had the props spinning, I had the 10' kit ones on (1045). Two of them instantly exploded as soon as we started the motors at 10% when the quad wasn't even off the ground (cross-posted in other thread). At the time we hypothesized that thread lock(images) leaking on to the plastic weakened them, but from what I've read, these props seem to just have problems. A little disappointing as you're sitting there starting up about to fly for the first time, and then they just go whizzing off: "Wait what??"

We put the 8' ones on right away and everything was fine, though. I had a Canon Powershot ELPH 100 mounted to the pcb flap with velco, the quad with 8' did surprisingly well, and the video quality was pretty good. Some vibration was present that I'd like to see if I can tune away, but no jello effect or anything. That camera does pretty well at in the dark, too. I'm going to shoot a lot this weekend and will post some video a little later.

Cheers to everyone here - all the good discussions definitely enabled me to have this level of success my first go-around.
-Josh

 

[Tomstoy2]

Wow, nice! Nothing like that loosing your virginity moment!

APC makes some pretty good props.

 

[DucktileMedia]

It is about the best toy out there right now. After my Xaircraft prop experience I was very hesitant to use these too. But the ones I got were VERY strong. I tried breaking them and they would not break. I crashed hard and 1 prop blade broke. I think there are inconsistencies in the manufacturing after all it is China, what would you expect...a Graupner? I'm surprised that it broke right on startup though. Maybe there is something to the loc-tite. I've heard this before but figured it was a cover up for their crappy props.

 

[Dune]

Thanks Tomstoy!

Yeah the thing that still gets me about the loctite is that when I screwed the props on, I even grabbed them a little bit right next to the hub to help my hand get traction and tighten the nut down (incidentally - it's possible that I overtightened, but I don't think so). They survived torquing on them for a little bit, but then when I go fly them 3-4 hours later, they break on 10%. What I also forgot to mention is that one of the ones that broke I had the ESC wired up wrong and it was spinning backwards. I wouldn't expect that to kill the prop though - the other ones were fine and survived crashes in the grass and everything.