Finally getting somewhere and where does all my money go???My Small journal.

[Colinevan]

Well it was inevitable really. Once another rc hobby kicks in its bound to cost. Iv not actually put any pics up of my quads but those that know me have seen half built half finished quads and finally it feels like im getting somewhere now.

A small recap for those that don't know me, I was unsure on what I wanted in a quad and so bought 2, a dji550 and a Tbs discovery. A visit to quadcopters revealed a fantastic 550 for smooth aerial vids and a disco pro for fast fun fpv. I decided to be sensible and get a 550 and upgraded the motors to torxpowers as they had a good review and seemed excellent quality.

Due to having young children, money was to be spent evenly over a while to get all the stuff I need. I initially concentrated with the 550 and bought everything I needed to make it fly such as :-
Turnigy 9xr
3 x 4500 4s lipos
Torxpower motors
dji 30a esc's
Frsky module and receiver
Various props
Naza lite with gps
All the accessories needed to make it fly.

At this point a thanks goes out to Mike - Northernmonkey and Andys for there help and advise along the way. Also Mike showed me some of his setup and I realised that this is not only a fantastic hobby but also a moneypit with impressive machinery .

I had previously bought andys 330 and ran that for a while along with the smaller toyish quads and helis which were all sold on to a friend. That was a steep learning curve going from a wltoys 959 quad with camera to a 330 that looked like it was flying at 100mph on full pelt. Small 330's are stupid fast ha ha.

[Colinevan]

When I sold the wltoys 959 to my friend we went to the local park to do some aerial vids. Due to him having a slight mishap he crashed the quad in what was the biggest tree in the park.

We spent a few hours trying to get it down to no avail. I felt sorry for him as he was only just learning to fly and so gave him a spare 330 frame I had to cheer him up . He was to build up this in a similar fashion when funds allow. A week later my mate tells me the strong winds had actually blown the quad out and he had recovered it. It had been plugged in for a week, rained on and fell from a mahoosive height and survived no problems ha ha.

He learnt to fly it and then decided to buy my kk2 330 and is just awaiting buying a transmitter and receiver set and he'll be good to go.

In the meantime I ordered a tarot gimbal due to them being cheap and of reasonable quality with good reviews. This arrived approx 3 weeks later and I then needed to source a landing gear setup.

[Colinevan]

After research and buying a cheap landing gear set, I return ed it as it felt flimsy and that it would explode upon landing. I decided that I needed the aeroxcraft setup .

This is not cheap by any means but is light and good quality. I was virtually set up and ready for buying the go pro and now have one coming for Christmas. With this in mind I started looking/reading up and researching up on osd's. I read all about the Naza mini iosd and saw Mike's in action.

These are really net and even show you what direction home is in the shape of a diamond showing the landing position. Im ny eyes if video fails this is fantastic .

The only problem being is that it wont work with my naza lite. I thought long and hard about what I wanted for the future and so decided to sell the naza and upgrade to the Naza v2 with gps setup. These have recently taken a massive tumble in price and so I bought 2. ( 1 for the 550 and the other for the Tbs ). I disassembled the 550 and rebuilt it up using the Naza and fitted the gimbal and landing gear setup, at the moment its not been test flown yet as I will probably need to go to bigger props as its getting quite a big machine now. Iv just ordered some 10" props to see how she goes.

In the meantime the TBS was stripped down of the kk2 and the naza was installed and wired up. This at the moment will be run with std dji motors and opto's although Iv been advised that the esc's are not quite fast enough and I need something like the Afro's on there. For the time being though I just want to get this flown and will fly it a few times before upgrading.

I could always swap the torxpowers out of the 550 to the tbs and put larger arms and pancake motors on the 550 with bigger props to get a reasonable flight time. But then again thats more money.

[Colinevan]

Tonight iv just put a reasonably large order in to Hobbyking for the start of my fpv stuff. I went for the immersion tx 600mw and the 5800 uno receiver. Iv seen these in action and from reading up a lot on forums they seem better quality than the boscam stuff. However I may also purchase a Boscam setup for the 550 as theyre very good value for money.

As work and family lifestyle mean I don't get much free time iv been flying the little hubsan x4 a lot recently. For the money there fantastic machines and great indoors. As most of my quads are getting quite big and heavy I also have decided to build another smaller fun quad. I was thinking along the lines of another 330, however I would like the option to put the go pro on it occasionally.
I thought sod it and have ordered another 450 with the dead cat conversion on it from hobbyking, the aim to be a light and fast machine but also have the room to fit a go pro on and this seemed like a cheap option. I allready have a spare fr sky receiver and a kk2 and so this wont take much to get flying. Plus its a relatively cheap machine and will hopefully be more advernturous in acro flying when my balls are feeling particularly big ha ha.

[Colinevan]

As winter is here iv also ordered a turnigy tx muff. Apart from looking like a pair of youngsters shorts I believe you can add a battery and some kind of electrical warmer .

Both andy and mike have them and to be honest I dont fancy dropping over 2kgs of quad out of the skies because I can't feel my thumbs .

I have also ordered a small 1000 mah 3s lipo to power the gimbal up and the led lights that I ordered. The 4s is supposedly too powerful for the gimbal and by the time I ordered another ubec I thought just try a dedicated lipo .

A lot of people say theres no benefit as im adding extra weight. But in fairness its worth a try. The lipo cost a whopping £4 ha ha.

The new frsky taranis is also getting huge praise and although iv not gotten fully to grips with my 9xr , the taranis seems to be taking the flying world by storm. Only problem is getting hold of one. Decisions decisions.

[Colinevan]

Well another update and another order placed. This time its all Mikes fault lol.

Iv ordered a dedicated Sony fpv camera for the TBS. Ordered from overseas and for less than £30 seemed like a good price. Mike also mentioned that the power output from the immersion was only 5v and the camera needs 12v.

Immersion sell a 5v to 12v STEPUP converter, these were ordered from Florida along with another immersion 600mw video transmitter for the 550 this time. Amazing things this step up(witchcraft) and the fact that the power should be clean and not give interference is a bonus.