Back to the 250 class  

I've always been a big fan of Armattan and even started out in mini quads with a prototype Morphyte I bought from MayMayDay back in the day.  While I've been flying pretty much exclusively 150 class recently, I decided to get back to 5" props with the Armattan Chameleon Ti.

Aside from the name and the reputation that came with it, I was looking for the smallest form factor 250 class in their fleet and the Chameleon coming in at 220mm MTM was smaller than the Badger and Marmotte both at 236 and the Rooster at 230.  I was also partial to the solid body and titanium camera cage (vs. alu for the original Chameleon).

This was to be a 6S build to really differentiate from my 4S 150 class.  Parts used:

Holybro Kakute F7 AIO V1.5 Flight Controller
T-Motor F40 PRO III 1600KV
Spedix GS35 2-6S 32Bit 35A ESC
Fat Shark Byte Frost VTX (0b.CB.23 firmware)
TBS Crossfire Nano RX
Lumenier AXII 2 Stubby 5.8GHz RHCP Antenna

While I much prefer 4-in-1 ESCs for convenience and cable management, the 22mm stack height capacity of the Chameleon is really just about enough to accomodate 2 components in a stack and I needed that for the FC and Byte Frost VTX.



So this build really necessitated the use of individual ESCs.  Also, it made me feel all old school again lol



Testing out the electronics before installation.  Turns out I was tapping what I thought was a ground pad for the RX but was not.  Good find.



First layer is a custom mount so I can secure both the Crossfire RX and a Matek 9V regulator.  The Byte Frost is officially rated for 6S and I know of a racer that runs it straight off lipo at 6S but figured since these things are not easy to come by, I'd play it safe.



So while I spent a LOT of time making sure I had vertical clearance in this build ... I did not ever think *horizontal* clearance would be an issue.  This was maybe the 3rd draft of the second layer.  The issue was the massive 1000uf cap.  Having it the way I normally would directly at the lipo slanting up a bit exceeded the 22mm stack capacity.  From the bottom, I had the RX and Matek regulator limiting space.  From the front, the antenna connector of the Byte Frost VTX was limiting space.  And from the rear, the custom antenna mount was limiting space.



It all ended up fitting but a perfectly snug fit.  Too perfect.  I prefer a bit more room.



I used a custom mount for the Runcam Racer HD so I can get the lower angle I prefer.





All in all a tighter fit than I had planned for (horizontally not vertically).



The Byte Frost VTX can get very hot so I was hoping for more space between the stack.  But I had to push wiring between the stack rather than keeping them in the rear because I had forgotten to take into account the huge size of the cap. 



Otherwise, I think it turned out to be a very clean build!



Oh forgot to mention my coolio landing skids lol 



Little nod to the days of the Naze32 and Blackout Mini H  



Really stoked on my antenna mount design.  This took so many iterations to get right lol.  Even then I still had one hole I just could not find ended up using an online repair tool to fix it LOL.



Money shots incoming ...







Believe it or not, other than on a gimbaled Phantom from way back in the day, this will be first time I fly with a GoPro lol.  Even when I flew 250 class before, we used Mobius cams.



Coming in at 670g auw with 6S 1030mah lipo and Session 5.

In a couple hours I will maiden   Hope nothing blows up

Love the skids. Very nice build.

Thank you sir for all of your great feedback in the other thread as always.  Also big thanks to Banelle for letting me copy his gear lol.  

Beautiful! Can't wait to see the footage!

Nice one man. Looks good. Get it in the air....

Deal

I just maidened this guy off the one lipo I have lol. I got a decent 5 min with 20% left on the pack but as you'll see it's mostly mellow flying getting used to the momentum and 6S.

I was scared at first LOL. I was even thinking that my 3 inch Acrobrat will be my daily and I'll bust this guy out every so often when I need the power. But I quickly got used to it (even though these are nothing like the 250 class I flew on Naze 32's). I do need to get used to the momentum and crapton extra throttle. I don't think I went past 75% at all lol.

I do need to tune this. Like a lot. There's tons of jello on throttle bursts under these stock Betaflight PIDs. The motors were only slightly warm aftrer this 5 min flight so I have some headroom. But I want to fly it a bit with this tune so I get a better idea of what is PID related and what is momentum related that I'm just not used to yet. Also, Byte Frost peeps are saying they will have better Betaflight OSD integration including PID control. I just can't stand PID adjustments using USB.

Here's some raw footage of the flight unedited just cropped. The GoPro is on 1440 60fps but I think I'm using bad settings in Premiere Pro because it looks like frames are being dropped or something ...

The jello looks very minimal.

Awesome build!
Can't you place the cap with the XT60 connector? That would save you a lot of space in the frame.

I am familiar with that jello on my 5" 6S too, but I'm at a point that I just want to enjoy flying and just stopped caring about HD footage. It's almost winter here and flight time are getting reduced as each day passes.

Go on and when you mess with the PID tuning please get back some feedback

Thanks brnmd!  Sorry man I totally missed your post.

Yes but I ended up going to this local electronics store (very lucky we still have one!) and picked up a bunch of Nichicon caps.  So I replaced the Panasonic 50V 1000uF cap ...



With this Nichicon 35V 1000uF cap ...



I also picked up a bunch of Nichicon 35V 330uF for the ESCs if I got noise with this setup but just went for a quick flight (I still only have 1 6s lipo lol) and everything was good!  Great thread here talking about 35V being fine for 6S and even the dude at the electronics store who also flew drones said everyone he knows just uses 35V not 50V with 6S.

And speaking of tuning LOLLL man you know me.  Must have been our short stint on Ark LOL.  Yea I went a little crazy on it and I am now pretty far off the stock tune.  First I'm now using RPM filtering (which is pretty bad ass) so I had to go lower Dshot and 4/4.  I think I could have gone 8/8 though with an F7 fc and I also saw no errors when I tested my motors on 8/8 ...



Since Byte Frost still doesn't have PID tuning via OSD, I didn't want to go through the normal iterations of flying, landing adjust PIDs on laptop, fly, etc.  So I just ripped Nurk and Tommy's PIDs lol.  Turns out Tommy just ripped from UAV Tech LOLLL (except for literally one setting lol).  Only difference was I went more conservative on the filter slider (1.3 vs 1.4).  After my one lipo flight today with the new tune and RPM filter, I saw a little bit of meth addict shaking on sudden stops so I upped pitch and roll D's and I think I scaled back P on one or both.  I should get more lipos today so will have a better idea of my tune tomorrow hopefully.





I need to emphasize though this tune is total work in progress especially since I can only fly 5 min at a time on my one lipo lol.  

Nice. I agree that RPM filters do wonders. Initially when I was setting up the RPM filters on my F4 board (Mamba F405 mk2), I forgot and left the loops on 8/8 and Dshot600. After a quick hover and running the tasks command, I got only about 6800 Hz rate (quite off lol) and 140% max load So I went down to 4/4 and Dshot300 which put the numbers to the right levels.

Nice and detailed build! I run holybro fc's as well and they hold up sooooo long. I never even fried one so far (2 years) while i fried more esc's than I can count! To combat the jello i would suggest using an ND filter. Of course you can keep tuning however much you want but in my experience an ND filter does wonders.

This is my first Holybro, Flickeryvision, and so far I am very impressed with the build quality. The instruction manual is also exhaustively detailed - far more than others. Yes, I will def be using ND filters as well as tuning the picture quality of the Session 5 (for example, it's very obvious I am using auto ISO when I look at the sun). But I do tend to focus on the tune first. Once I get it flying like it's on rails, then I move onto the camera settings and filters. But these jitters are definitely aggressive PID induced oscillations you can just tell by the severity and frequency of the shaking.

I got more lipos lol! Hoping to head out in a bit assuming its safe at my park and not too many people yet for a Friday.

Hmmm I'm a little annoyed cos I crashed on my first lipo, turtled, and thought everything was ok. But all the Gopro video after that crash has tons of jello in it. I didn't notice until much later but one of the props was slightly bent. Are 5 inch builds much more susceptible to jello from bent props than 3 inch?

I have props practically falling off on 3 inch and I still get solid footage. Or maybe something else got joggled in the Chameleon causing the jello I'm not sure.

Wow guys. Having flown 4S 150 class for so long, I am really liking the throttle authority with 6S 250 class. I still need to get used to it lol ...

In case anyone is interested I posted my tail mount design on Thingiverse ...

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4070687