Weather has warmed up here quite a bit almost to the point of it beginning to feel a little spring like 
Time to take a break from getting the camera ships dialed in and have a bit of fun, so that means time for the little Silver Bullet! So what is this Silver Bullet you ask? It's a 350mm scratch built quad that believe it or not started life as a Gaui 330X and over time morphed into this...
I used the same Hyperion motors that I had put on the Gaui in place of the orignal V1 motors (pre Scorpion) and the speed controllers are Exceed Proton 10Amp which if you remove the shrink wrap you will find are EXACTLY the same ESC as the Gaui 10Amp but about $25 less expensive per controller.
The center plates are 5 inch circles cut out of G10 with my Dremel Trio, and the arms are made from 1/2 inch square aluminum tubing bought in bulk from a metal supply house here in the US, props are 8 x 4.5 just like the Gaui uses but EPP rather than the Gaui made of chocolate props. Once I started doing aerobatics with the Gaui I was banging on the sticks hard enough that I managed to throw a couple blades on the Gaui props on hard high G turns. The stock Gaui 344 brain tolerated the aerobatics fairly well but it had a severe case of the wobbles on hard turns regardless of how I set the gain, so I eventually swapped it for one of Minsoo Kim's KK controllers, BIG improvement.
As I got to flying it harder I started breaking the stock Gaui frame more as well and eventually used up the spares I had along with all the not so badly damaged parts I had repaired and recycled back into use, at that point I decided to "roll my own" and the Silver Bullet is the end product of that effort.
Of course it's now a bit heavier than the Gaui was, but it's also a LOT stronger and can stand a brush with the dirt and not break parts off in the process. I found out in the first couple of flights that the 2S 1800mAh packs I was using on the Gaui just weren't going to cut it now, it literally fell out of the sky at roughly 4 1/2 minutes of flight where it was getting a solid 8 minutes in its previous incarnation. A few minutes on the web and I had a set of 3S 2100mAh packs on the way and that's just what it needed.
To say the performance improved with the larger packs would be putting it mildly,this thing smokes across the sky on a fresh pack, it's a completely different flying experience from the big equipment laden AD-6 Hexa or the smaller Hoverfly quad. You really need to be on your game when flying the Bullet, it will get away from you if you so much as blink with the throttle up beyond half way, but WOW does it bang around! Loops and rolls are no problem at all and it will climb straight up like it has JATO boosters attached, now I just need for the snow to melt a bit more so I can get out to the middle of an open area big enough to really put it through it's paces again.
Soon as I can do that and find a warm body to come along with the vid cam I'll get some video of it doing its thing.
Ken
Time to take a break from getting the camera ships dialed in and have a bit of fun, so that means time for the little Silver Bullet! So what is this Silver Bullet you ask? It's a 350mm scratch built quad that believe it or not started life as a Gaui 330X and over time morphed into this...
I used the same Hyperion motors that I had put on the Gaui in place of the orignal V1 motors (pre Scorpion) and the speed controllers are Exceed Proton 10Amp which if you remove the shrink wrap you will find are EXACTLY the same ESC as the Gaui 10Amp but about $25 less expensive per controller.
The center plates are 5 inch circles cut out of G10 with my Dremel Trio, and the arms are made from 1/2 inch square aluminum tubing bought in bulk from a metal supply house here in the US, props are 8 x 4.5 just like the Gaui uses but EPP rather than the Gaui made of chocolate props. Once I started doing aerobatics with the Gaui I was banging on the sticks hard enough that I managed to throw a couple blades on the Gaui props on hard high G turns. The stock Gaui 344 brain tolerated the aerobatics fairly well but it had a severe case of the wobbles on hard turns regardless of how I set the gain, so I eventually swapped it for one of Minsoo Kim's KK controllers, BIG improvement.
As I got to flying it harder I started breaking the stock Gaui frame more as well and eventually used up the spares I had along with all the not so badly damaged parts I had repaired and recycled back into use, at that point I decided to "roll my own" and the Silver Bullet is the end product of that effort.
Of course it's now a bit heavier than the Gaui was, but it's also a LOT stronger and can stand a brush with the dirt and not break parts off in the process. I found out in the first couple of flights that the 2S 1800mAh packs I was using on the Gaui just weren't going to cut it now, it literally fell out of the sky at roughly 4 1/2 minutes of flight where it was getting a solid 8 minutes in its previous incarnation. A few minutes on the web and I had a set of 3S 2100mAh packs on the way and that's just what it needed.
To say the performance improved with the larger packs would be putting it mildly,this thing smokes across the sky on a fresh pack, it's a completely different flying experience from the big equipment laden AD-6 Hexa or the smaller Hoverfly quad. You really need to be on your game when flying the Bullet, it will get away from you if you so much as blink with the throttle up beyond half way, but WOW does it bang around! Loops and rolls are no problem at all and it will climb straight up like it has JATO boosters attached, now I just need for the snow to melt a bit more so I can get out to the middle of an open area big enough to really put it through it's paces again.
Soon as I can do that and find a warm body to come along with the vid cam I'll get some video of it doing its thing.
Ken
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