Heavy lift rig for Red Epic

[Rick James]

i am in the market for an X8 airframe and have been trying to weigh my options out the past few weeks to see what airframe will best suite our needs. right now we are flying a movi with a canon 5D on our Skyjib 8. it has been doing pretty well but we want to move to an X8 platform when we carry our red. the gimbal with red weighs 14.4 lbs ready to go. right now we have been looking at the gryphon dynamics 1000mm X8 airframe and the kopterworx hammer x8. kopterworx doesnt seem to sell an airframe only though. the electronics we have for the aiframe is U-power u7 420kv motors with T-motor 17x5.8 props, T-motor 80amp esc's and still deciding on the flight control. what we are looking for is an airframe that is easy to break down for travel, is light, and rigid. any suggestions would be great!


Thank you!

 

[fltundra]

If it's possible, I would return those tigers as fast as i could! You need KDE motors for something that expensive in the air. Check out member Kloner's posts and you will see his tiger powered rigs used to eat bearings for lunch. I also had tiger MN470's, and had slight bearing play at just ten hours. I now have the KDE's, and they are built and balanced perfect, the way a motor should be. Also, biased toward SuperX, but i don't fly that large of airframe yet. Don't buy an A2.

 

[Rick James]

yea i have heard good things about the KDE motor setup. the Upowers seem to be pretty popular at the moment. i think we are going to keep this motor setup but our next rig we will try something different. im not afraid to tear apart motors and put some better bearings in the future. but i do hear what you are saying, ive always liked KDE stuff for helicopters.

 

[Rick James]

We are also planning on running retractable landing gear, i have been hearing good things about the RC timer landing gear
( http://www.rctimer.com/product_1086.html ) however it is designed around mounting to a 25mm boom. the DJI landing gear i know mounts up to the gryphon but the movi will not fit in between that landing gear.

 

[jfro]

I wouldn't touch the SuperX for an x8 config. Check the internet, it's not working very good on x8's. I was at 18lbs on mine and finally gave up. It flew great in calm weather, but once in the wind, it liked to jump around too much.

I'm realatively new, so don't take my word on this, but I would strongly suggest you check it out first for an x8.

 

[Mojave]

Matching T-Motor U7s and ESCs

If it's possible, I would return those tigers as fast as i could! You need KDE motors for something that expensive in the air. Check out member Kloner's posts and you will see his tiger powered rigs used to eat bearings for lunch. I also had tiger MN470's, and had slight bearing play at just ten hours. I now have the KDE's, and they are built and balanced perfect, the way a motor should be. Also, biased toward SuperX, but i don't fly that large of airframe yet. Don't buy an A2.

From what I understand the main issue with the U7s was a timing issue with the ESCs. I am building a HexaCrafter 1100L with U7 490s and T-motor T80A ESCs. This configuration was tested by Engineers at T-Motor and verified, reportedly the other popular ESCs do not always work correctly in situations of high demand.

As I understand it; SuperX does not support X8 at this time. I sure hope that the A2 is working by the time I have my build done. If it is not I may be getting a SuperX or another FC system!

 

[Rick James]

we were able to do a decent amount of testing and put some flights on our gryphon with carrying about 16 lbs of weight. so far the motors or speed controls have not shown any sign of going out of sync or wanting to shut down. the only thing i was concerned about was a couple of the speed controls we had actually caused the motors to have a different pitch around mid stick when you spooled the motor up on the bench. it was the speed control because you could do it with different motors but the same ESC. this never actually did anything but it was something i took note of. we also had one motor with a bad bearing from the get go so that was quite lame but luckily we had a back up motor. right now we are running t-motor 17x 5.8 props and 2 6s 10,000 mah packs and flight times seem quite low. we are only getting about 5-6 minutes and going down to about 25% on the packs. we are going to play with some 18" props and see what flight times we will get.

 

[fltundra]

the only thing i was concerned about was a couple of the speed controls we had actually caused the motors to have a different pitch around mid stick when you spooled the motor up on the bench. it was the speed control because you could do it with different motors but the same ESC. this never actually did anything but it was something i took note of. we also had one motor with a bad bearing from the get go so that was quite lame but luckily we had a back up motor.

Funny noises and a bad bearing from the get go. Trust me, you don't want to risk it!

 

[fltundra]

Take a look at this thread.
http://www.multirotorforums.com/showthread.php?20172-KDE-XF-esc-s

 

[Rick James]

i guess i should describe the funny noise a little better.. its incredibly faint but i am also extremely picky. also as far as the bad bearing, it just wasnt perfect and you could hear a difference in how smooth it was compared to the others. for our next setup we will probably try the new KDE stuff. today we are doing a lot more testing. i do hear you though, its a little less then encouraging lol

 

[fltundra]

i guess i should describe the funny noise a little better.. its incredibly faint but i am also extremely picky. also as far as the bad bearing, it just wasnt perfect and you could hear a difference in how smooth it was compared to the others. for our next setup we will probably try the new KDE stuff. today we are doing a lot more testing. i do hear you though, its a little less then encouraging lol

Like I've said , my experience with Tiger bearings going bad, was not good at 10 hours. I was pissed that less then a month i had to shell out a bunch more money, but know now, it was the smartest and safest thing i could have done. They are the Rolex of motors. Just don't want to see you lose all that equipment.

 

[Rick James]

i appreciate you looking out , we as well dont need to have our red drop out of the sky... all we can do is to keep testing until we feel confident. i will probably end up ordering new bearings in the next few days and just replace them so i dont have to worry about it down the road.