Mini F4Flame build

Some pics of my latest build in progress.

flightcontroller: F4 Flame
esc: Racerstar 28 Amp
motors: Emax RS1306 4000kv
propsize: 3inch
est weight w/o battery: 130 grams

Woo !  a tiny one. Those motors should help it perform great.
Maybe my eye`s but it looks like a stretched X frame and need`s
rotating 90 degrees ?

muckyman wrote:

Woo !  a tiny one. Those motors should help it perform great.

Despite it's size this may become the fastest one I build so far.
Also because it is small it is easier to reach higher speed on small spots.

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Maybe my eye`s but it looks like a stretched X frame and need`s
rotating 90 degrees ?

It is stretched a bit yes, but in width, instead of length.
My other 130 size frame has the exact same shape but slighty shorter arms.

Nice teeny tiny build, excellent, just about as big as your needle nose pliers!

In fact, open the pliers up and stick 4 1306s on that, see how that flies hehe!  

That should be really nippy and speedy little beast, what's the cam?

Cool.

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what's the cam?

Camera is the Runcam Micro Swift, best smallest available atm imo. Only downside is this camera has no onboard OSD, but that's not a big problem if the flightcontroller has it.

Only need to update the firmwares (ESCs and FC), add battery strap, and fix the antennas properly.

Thanks I'm also curious how it flies. Can't make it much lighter, so the quads weight won't be a problem.
But perhaps the battery is a little too heavy. May need to buy a few lighter ones to enjoy maximum performance.

oh lol, how stupid, I accidentaly clicked the edit message button, instead of quote. Sorry Papa

CANNER wrote:

oh lol, how stupid, I accidentaly clicked the edit message button, instead of quote. Sorry Papa

Hahaha, I thought, hang on, I didn't write that lol...
I see hahahahaha, No worries

It started as a nice day, but slowly went average to bad.  

First I went out to do a quick test with the quad, the weather was nice, it was a good day. Had not taken my laptop with me, was only going for a quick test. The quad flew alright, but not good, slight vibrations on the throttle but not much.

Convinced it only needed a small change in the PIDs, I went home to pick up my laptop. 15 minutes later back on the flyspot, tried hooking up the quad, found out I had forgotten the fucking USB cable. So I went straight back to pick up the cable.

Again back on the flyspot, I could finally start tuning and do some proper flying. After several attempts and changing PIDs I managed to improve the tune. I couldn't completely get rid of the vibrations, but the props weren't new, not damaged and looked okay, but still questionable. I also found the fpv camera wasn't fixed properly, which also could be causing 'visual vibrations', where it appears the quad is shaking, but actually it is only the cam itself. But I could hear from the quad's sound, it wasn't only the camera.

At some point I found the PIDtune acceptable for the moment, and started flying a bit faster, that's the moment when suddenly I lost vision in my goggles and the quad went down. Went to pick it up, luckily found it fairly quick, then I discovered to my horror that the batteryplug had unplugged itself.

The batteries I bought a while back have a different connector then the normal XT60. They do fit, but not very tight, though till now tight enough. Going to buy some XT60 connectors and replace those bastard SY60's


Now using a different battery with proper XT60, I straightened the bend props and tried flying again, everything still worked. After tuning a little more, I decided it would not get better without replacing the props. Also the 1500mah battery appeared too heavy to do tricks, could really tell the quad was struggling with the weight. For normal flying it's okay, with a good long flighttime. But for tricks I will need smaller batteries.

Later it was time to go home for some food and a drink, only I walked passed a spot that looked nice for some normal flying between the trees. I only had batteries with shitty connector left, but decided to use it anyway. Bad decision unfortunately, after a few turns the quad went down again, and again the fucking connector had come loose by itself. Sadly this time I had some troubles with a motor that would not spin up anymore.

Have done some testing already, and found the ESC is making bad contact. Looks like no real damage yet, and hopefully easy to fix.

Ouch, double whammy...


I'll certainly never use those SY60s, thanks for crashing twice to find this out for us "Test-Crash-Canner", hehe...


Hope it's not too badly damaged though in the end, guess it could have been worse....

PapaLazarou wrote:

I'll certainly never use those SY60s, thanks for crashing twice to find this out for us "Test-Crash-Canner", hehe...

Glad to be of service.

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Hope it's not too badly damaged though in the end, guess it could have been worse....

Think it's just a bad solder joint that came loose, worst case it is a single component that is broken. And yes it could have been much worse. With no battery connected the lostalarm does not work, so easily could have lost the quad because of the small size. If the connector came loose above a high tree, I would have lost it also. Or I could have had a fatal crash breaking the frame etc.

Anyway a little setback won't stop me from flying. The season is pretty much over soon, got the whole winter to do repairs and stock up on batteries.

Fun day out you had.Those battery connectors look like poo,thanks
for the warning.

I hope you get it all fixed up nicely m8 and get a few more hours in
the air before winter.Personally I`m hoping for a lot of snow so I can
get some good shots of white countryside with the mavic.Cujo lives
in a perfect spot for snow vids so hopefully he will get some nice vids.

muckyman wrote:

Fun day out you had.Those battery connectors look like poo,thanks
for the warning.

I hope you get it all fixed up nicely m8 and get a few more hours in
the air before winter.Personally I`m hoping for a lot of snow so I can
get some good shots of white countryside with the mavic.Cujo lives
in a perfect spot for snow vids so hopefully he will get some nice vids.

That's the only good thing about snow, nice pictures.
Would love to see some snowy drone vids from you and Cujo.

As for my broken quad, it's not fixed yet, but I did discover the problem.
It was sabotaged by an invisible troll with cuttingpliers. I mean wtf, how could it break like this?

Wow ! Nice clean break there,i see what you mean about it being cut 

Nice X-ray cam also ,I want one...

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Nice X-ray cam also ,I want one...

I made those pics with my DSLR with 100mm macro lens. Used my phone to light the object from behind, otherwise the glare on the plastic would make the wires hard to see.

Had repaired the quad, but it already broke again during testing today. Not much though, only from one of the ESCs a solder had come loose from the FC.
Not that the soldering was terrible, though could have been better with a hotter solderingiron.
Think I just made the wires too short and tight. This causes tension on the solderpoints due to vibration and slight bending of the arms.
This probably also caused that wire to break. Besides being too short I found the wires of the motors are ridicilously brittle, which explains the clean cut.
Actually the motor's wires are such poor quality, I'm considering to take the motors apart and replace the wires completely.

Best thing to do is rewire everything with a little more space on the wires.

edit: fixed the bad solder, ready for testing again. This time going with ultralight battery 3s 550mah, expected flighttime 1 minute.

I guess faults,failures and fuckups are part of what makes the hobby
of building your own aircraft so much fun and addictive.
It`s about time all manufacturers started using silicone wire on all
their parts.

Good luck m8. 

Well not all the fuckups are that fun, but the trick is not to get angry and try to laugh it off.
Accidents happen, and failure is always an option.

But when things do go right, the reward is great, because it is awesome to fly!

Had a not so fun fuckup, and not even my own fault.  Had a VTX fail on my KISS quad, and got a black screen in my goggles. Unfortunately I decided to disarm the quad, it wasn't very high, but I had not noticed how wet the grass was. So after the quad crashed, I went to pick it up, not even a bend prop, but sadly the KISS FC was shorted and not working anymore.

Also the small quad I had repaired appeared broken even before testing. Another of the wires was snapped, while after repairing the previous, I had tested and everything worked. The wires are so brittle not even going to try repair without fully replacing all the original wires. Hard to believe Emax used this cheapo shitwiring.

I decided to replace the KISS FC with the F4Flame, and did a total rebuild of my 5 inch quad. Also replaced the KISS ESCs with the Racerstar 28Amps ESCs. Started yesterday, finished today, took about 8 hrs total. Disassembling 2 'old' quads, and rebuilding a new one. Pleased with the result, and it turned out quite a bit lighter then the KISS quad was.

Looking good there buddy,sorry to hear about your KISS system failing
it was some good stuff and not cheap.
I don`t think I could frankenquad in 8 hours so well done there aswell,
hope it flies ok m8y.

muckyman wrote:

Looking good there buddy,sorry to hear about your KISS system failing
it was some good stuff and not cheap.

Got good news about the FC.   After desoldering everything and cleaning off the crud, I tried connecting it to Betaflight one last time, and suddenly it works again.   Almost ordered a new one, good thing I waited with that. The crud consisted of mashed up leaves/grass which, though dried up, apparently shorted out the board. Now considering very hard to buy some good waterproofing stuff, not just for making it waterproof, but also to isolate the electronics from other hazards.

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I don`t think I could frankenquad in 8 hours so well done there aswell,
hope it flies ok m8y.

Thanks   Went out for testflights today, despite the wind it flew very well. PIDs still need some work, cause the quad flies a bit sloppy with certain moves, but overall the performance is great. Specially the second video you can see the quad wobble a bit during tricks, this is probably a too low P, but with this ridicilous wind it is hard to tell.

Here's 2 vids, first video is the very first flight with the new quad. Second video I'm flying a bit wilder, but the wind started picking up so it looks and sounds not very good. That's why I also posted the first vid to show how it flies without the treacherous windgusts.

Was literally being blown around and fighting the wind, not very good flying weather, sometimes when doing a lowthrottle jump over the tree, the wind just stopped me mid air and blew me backwards. But really wanted to test the new stuff.

Hard to nice any wind from a video,must be remembering the feel of it that helps you
see it.
Seems to fly ok anyway and I`m sure once you get it adjusted to how you like,it will
fly great.

Glad your kiss FC is ok,saves spending cash on a new one.

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Hard to nice any wind from a video,must be remembering the feel of it that helps you
see it.

It is difficult to spot from the video at what points the wind is affecting the quad, even though I flew myself.
But while flying you'll certainly notice it, cause your just not going the direction you aimed for.  
Also can't rely on feeling the wind, cause a short distance from where you're standing, the windspeed will be different.
The quad can be acting weird and being tossed around by the wind, while I don't even feel a breeze (yet).

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Glad your kiss FC is ok,saves spending cash on a new one.

I'm happy I didn't immediately buy a new one, almost ordered one in advance.
Now everything seems ok, I will be rebuilding the KISS asap, but this time with different frame.

Found out I have to take a little step back. Though the quad flies pretty wel, I did not put a groundwire on the ESC's. Which I just read is not very good when running Dshot. There's always been this debate about yes or no groundwire on the ESC, so I kinda took it for optional. As this flightcontroller does not have groundpads for the ESC signalwires, I just left them out. Thought about grounding them somewhere else anyway, but didn't.

http://intofpv.com/t-why-run-a-ground-wire-with-esc-signal-to-the-fc

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Many still are unsure whether or not they should connect the ground next to ESC signal, so here is why you SHOULD!

The main reason for the signal ground is for noise reduction. As you might be aware that many ESC's come with signal and ground wires twisted, because it shields the EMI interference - noise, that could affect the signal wire. Any wire could act as an antenna, the longer the signal wire, the more likely it will get affected by noise and interference. If noise inhibits the signal wire without the ground twisted around it then this may cause problems. 

Another source of noise is from ESC power. Because multirotors' motors are constantly changing speed, the voltage across the ground level of a quadcopter can change significantly, therefore it makes a LOT of noise. This can be enough to corrupt ESC signal outputs in some cases.

Some FC doesn't have ESC signal ground, such as the FuriousFPV Piko BLX, in which case you can just connect the signal ground to the the power ground pad.

Let us know if you have any comments

Update: For smaller and less powerful build (e.g. a 3" micro that draws less than 15A of current each ESC), we might be able to get away without signal ground. If the signal wires are not very long, you might also be able to get away from using signal ground, because when it's shorter, it becomes less effective as an antenna
Update (Apr/2017) - For ESC that are using DShot, signal ground is strongly recommended regardless of current draw.

IMPORTANT : If you use signal ground, you must twist it around the signal wire to make it as effective as possible.

At the same time this may be a solution to the throttle oscillations I've experienced. On the KISS quad I had made groundwires, but not twisted them around the signal cables.

Have read up on this groundwire issue before, but it never found it explained like this. I knew it could improve the signal, but apparently it does not work without twisting the wires.