Ok, if you didn't see my first try at building a brushless whoop check it out here. Since then I have rebuilt the quad using the larger Rakon Delrin frame which can swing a 40mm Prop. My hope was that using a larger prop and sticking with 1S I could get better flight performance and flight times. I was wrong.. :(
The quad is 32g dry and 46g with a 500mah 1S battery.
Here's what my flights look like on the new frame... There are 2 things to take note of in this video.
- The props don't stay on. I've opened a few packs of props and these motor shafts aren't consistent across all 4 motors. 1 consistently can't hold a prop.
- The front-left motor stops spinning under throttle while the others keep on trucking. Especially if I throttle up quickly. It seems like it doesn't have the strength to get a 40mm prop like this going?
Ok so I was able to find fixes for both of the problems I have having.
- Props won't stay on - Ok for this I got some tips from others on the tiny-whoop forums that they will super glue or hot glue their props on. Super glue scares me so I went with hot glue and it solved the problem. SCORE!
- Motor wouldn't spin up reliably - Upon further inspection it looks like I had a motor wire issue that was causing that 1 motor to not spin consistently. These motors have wires that are very stiff and very brittle and are only 2 or 3 strands inside. If you have motor wires like this do your best not to work them very much. Also it's helpful to add a dab of hot glue over the solder joints on the 4in1 board so as you're crashing you aren't hitting those solder points. In my case one of the 2 wire strands wasn't properly soldered into place as I don't think it got hot enough to take solder properly, so it had a bad connection and couldn't get the current to the motor that was required. This meant that it would sometimes stop working, and had trouble spinning up the motor with the resistance of a prop on it.
With these problems fixed, I was super pumped to take my working new brushless whoop to a BuckeyeFPV indoor race and get in on some brushless whoop action. If you're interested in our sweet indoor races check that out here..
It didn't go as planned and you can watch it in the short video below. Essentially what happens is I take off fast and everything is going great. But almost immediately I started experiencing RSSI issues and realize that there's no way I am going to be have any fun completing a lap with the total lack of controls I was experiencing. I ended up taking myself out of the race for the night and it was back to the drawing board.
Check out how I resolved this problem and things started to click in Part 3 of the Brushless Whoop Saga.
