The New Improved GEPRC Leopard

After all the hassle with the other FC I decided to try a new flight controller that has not been on the market very long.
The Skyzone F4

It is a dream to fit,just the the motor wires to solder and I thought that to ,ake the build even easier and better looking I would use the matching Skyzone VTX.

The vtx plugs directly into the flight controller and the runcam swift I`m using plugs directly into the flight controller also,this then makes use of the betaflight OSD built into the FC.

I am using the same Frsky XM plus receiver and after soldering on the 3 pins that it came with it plugs directly into the FC also.

The motors are Emax Rs2205 S 2600kv.




















Still some work to do but had it running in betaflight and all is good except the throttle and pitch channels are mixed up.

One thing I will probably do is change the battery cable to 14 gauge as I`m going to be using 4S batteries.

Looks great already. Almost flyable.   Hope you finish it soon and can finally do some real flying.

I noticed you haven't put heatshrink on the ESCs. Stick some tape on the arms under the ESCs to prevent a short.
Also I'd wrap them in electrical tape for protection and waterproofing.

Not sure what to do with those signal groundwires, think maybe solder them to the ESC ground pads.
Which is recommended for when using Dshot, though it can work without. As far as I understand grounding makes the signal cleaner.

The stick directions can be changed in the Betaflight receiver tab at Channel Map.

I have some bits of rubber under each ESC and have some plastic protectors to
put on top of them.Think I will just remove the ground wires as not needed and
I am lazy.

Hope you havent cut them off yet, just as much effort to solder them to the ESC ground.
The quad may fly fine without, but it also could cause unwanted behaviour like vibrations, less responsiveness or even a crash.

Joshua Bardwell explains why in this video, should watch it till the end.  

  Looking good. 

Also good to see you haven't removed the ESC groundwires yet. Thinking back about some of the unexplained crashes I had, I suspect these where mainly due to the missing groundwire.
I blamed it on the battery or something else, but having watched the above vid a little better, it probably was because of thinking the groundwire was not needed.

It`s not easy to tell from the picture but the leopard has an aluminium
plate that bolts to the bottom for strength and to hold the battery strap
rather than having it near the FC.
I was disappointed that the sparrow does not have one of these and
can`t understand why they didn`t make one for it.

muckyman wrote:

It`s not easy to tell from the picture but the leopard has an aluminium
plate that bolts to the bottom for strength and to hold the battery strap
rather than having it near the FC.

Had indeed not noticed that aluminium plate(armholderplate) holding the batterystrap.
That plate is not to hold the strap per se, it's main function is to lock the arms firmly in place.
Though it looks good, and I might have done it the same way, I'm not sure how it will hold.
The arms get to endure quite a lot vibrations, the strain on the bolts could become too much.
And though you probably bolted it up pretty tight, with the strap inbetween, the arms still have movement.
Not saying it's not ging to work, just need to keep an eye on how it holds over time.
On the positive side, the strap between the plate could function as a vibration dampener.
Was it your own idea to make the strap like that, or was it in the building description?

Quote :

I was disappointed that the sparrow does not have one of these and
can`t understand why they didn`t make one for it.

The Sparrow frame comes in 2 versions. One has a single bottomplate(made from 1 solid piece carbonfiber). This one comes without armholderplate.
The other frame kit has seperate arms, like your version above. 4 loose arms that fit together to form the quadframe. This one needs an armholderplate, otherwise it won't work.