Will we see any pics of the Apex HD 5" build process?

(08-Dec-2021, 10:39 PM)Bud13420 Wrote: Will we see any pics of the Apex HD 5" build process?

Probably. I don't have any other parts for it yet though so it may be a while and I'm known for long running builds that last for weeks or months rather than just slapping something together in a couple of hours.

With the price of Befaflight hardware now being sky high I'm starting to wonder if I should jump into the unknown (from my perspective) and make the Apex 5" a KISS build. The KISS hardware used to be expensive compared to Betaflight hardware but it now looks to be on par with the high end Betaflight stuff. I currently have no experience with KISS hardware/firmware so it would be a bit of a leaning curve and I'm also not entirely sure about KISS compatibility with the DJI FPV System (namely what OSD elements are available) so I would need to look into that first if I decide to try and go down the KISS route.

(04-Dec-2021, 12:49 AM)SnowLeopardFPV Wrote: I think it's probably going to be a toss up between 1408, 1507 or 2004 motors on the Micro Apex 3".

I finally got around to ordering some motors for the 3" Micro Apex. They might be a bit of an overkill for a 3" quad but I've decided to try some RCINPOWER SmooX 1507 Plus 4200KV motors which will be running on 4S. I guess I'll have to wait to find out whether or not I've made a mistake by choosing those

So I’m gonna build me a little 3” also. Something that can fly around without upsetting any Karen’s in the neighborhood! Don’t think I have any but incase….I was looking at some 1507 2700 for a 3” tadpole or Japalura. Is it better to go 4S or 6S for a smaller quad? Is a 1507 to big? I like to fly fast so I’m not real concerned about flight times.

I love my 3" Japalura, it is a true tank! I can get up to five minutes on a newer 4S-850mah. My typical flight times are around three minutes of ripping. Pretty fast on 1407's, 1507's would not be too much for the Japalura frame.

I’ve built 2 quads with Armattan frames. I got to say I really like the way they look! Does the japalura have room for a front stack and a rear one? I’d like to put a tbs unify pro32 in there but perhaps the nano would be plenty as it won’t get out to far with the short flight times.

I just love motors with detailed spec sheets and motor test data.

(13-Feb-2022, 05:58 AM)Kevin2112 Wrote: So I’m gonna build me a little 3” also. Something that can fly around without upsetting any Karen’s in the neighborhood! Don’t think I have any but incase….I was looking at some 1507 2700 for a 3” tadpole or Japalura. Is it better to go 4S or 6S for a smaller quad? Is a 1507 to big? I like to fly fast so I’m not real concerned about flight times.

My main reason for going with 4S on this Micro Apex 3" quad is so I can share LiPos across quads rather than have to get LiPos specifically for this one new quad which I would have to do if I was to build it as a 6S quad. 4S on a 3" quad is usually more than sufficient and I will be happy if I can get ~5 minutes of hard flying time out of it which is what I am getting from my 5" quads. I guess I will just have to wait to find out if I will end up being disappointed or not. Also don't forget that with higher KV motors you can always use motor scaling in order to use them with 6S LiPos if you really want to (as long as your other hardware is all 6S capable). Not that I will likely do that.

The ImpulseRC Micro Apex frame weights 58g. The Armattan Japalura frame weighs 56g. So both are heavy 3" frames with very similar weights. By contrast the Armattan Tadpole frame weighs just 17.5g so your motor choice for that frame would probably be very different.

Below is a link to all of the 14xx and 15xx motors I deemed to be suitable for the (heavy) Micro Apex 3" frame, with the highlighted ones being my shortlisted favourites...

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...lhOj-EB7OU

I'm still yet to decide on what stack to put in the Micro Apex but I was originally intending to put a Caddx Vista / Nebula Pro in it. I might think about possibly putting HDZero in it instead but I'm not decided on that either yet.

I have been flying the Kakute F7 stack with the original 35A ESC board (The Leaf) and it has been flawless.  Also have a build (The Ninja) with the FlyWoo F745 stack and if I were planning out a new build I would likely go with it.  Tiny, but it has held up to some serious tumbles.  Being that the FlyWoo stack is so small, mounting the HD stack should be really easy on the Apex frame!  Seeing that spec weight of 58g, the 15xx motors are likely going to fulfill your need for speed better.  The battery selection on these micros is pretty limited, but you should be able to get about 2-3 minutes of crazy rippage and then a few minutes of "cool down cruising" to finish off a charge.

Kevin, the Japalura frame is a single stack affair, but it is one of the only frames in its class that will accept a 30x30 or 20x20 stack.  It was not at all designed for HD systems and there is likely not enough room to go that direction regardless of chosen stack.

The Kakute F7 V3 Mini stack (or the newer H7 FC version) is what I was initially looking at for the Micro Apex frame but the prices have gone up quite a lot due to the global chip shortage. I know some people on here have had issues with the Holybro gear and that some of the Tekko32 ESCs had a hardware design flaw but I have their hardware on a couple of my quads and it's been working flawlessly. So I'm tempted to just stick with a manufacturer that I have a good experience with. Matek are another manufacturer who I trust but the Flywoo stacks do look nice. I need to do some feature comparisons to see which FC's / stacks have all the hardware and features that I want including a barometer and blackbox logging capabilities.

I am flying INAV 4.0.0 on my FlyWoo stack and everything works, plenty of UARTS and the BARO on mine is pretty accurate. The BlackBox storage is only 8mb. Also, the IC2 header works and allows for a magnetometer to be soldered in without having to breakout any UART (no need to mess with resource assignments). It really is a nice design!

Matek is my usual goto...but you are not kidding about the cost increase!

I’m looking forward to watching your build posts.
I have a micro Apex 4” and I got a set of 5” arms for it but I decided to wait on building it and since I just got Orqa V2 I’ll be waiting longer.
I may get some good tips watching your build.

Only 8Mb of blackbox storage is a bit disappointing on the GOKU F745 FC. The Kakute H7 Mini is specified as having 128Mbits (16Mb) of blackbox storage which is still quite poor but better than 8Mb. I'm used to almost unlimited blackbox logging storage on the full size FC's which have an SD Card slot but with the mini 20x20 FC's I guess you just have to accept limited blackbox logging capabilities. I tend to leave blackbox logging on permanently so in the event of issues during any of my flights I will have all the diagnostic data I need to try and help debug the issues afterwards. I don't do long range or run a compass so lack of dedicated I2C breakouts won't really be an problem.

Unfortunately neither the Holybro Kakute H7 Mini or the Flywoo GOKU F745 have an onboard 9V BEC for a digital VTX so I would have to connect it to VBAT which can be risky even with a low ESR capacitor installed. Of course I can use an external BEC but that just results in unnecessary extra weight and additional spaghetti wiring so I would rather avoid that if possible but I might have no option if I want to install a premium brand flight stack.

I know one thing for sure though. I will NOT be getting an FC or ESC made by either iFlight or BetaFPV.

I think I will probably end up doing what I did for the motors by putting in some research time and compiling a stack comparison sheet together so all the options and features are laid out in a nice tabular format.

The Goku GN745 is pretty much all I use. It does have 9v - a couple pads actually. Just be careful which version you have as the pads all moved around. All these FCs are just stupid expensive now though. The 8MB does suck. But at 1kHz, I can usually squeeze in all the tuning flights I need. With that said, you know my focus is sub250 so the GN745 is very hard to beat. If my focus were not sub250, then yea there are far more capable stacks out there than an AIO solution.

Yeah, I think I'd prefer to put a full stack in this build rather than an AIO board. It's odd that both the Flywoo Goku GN745 AIO and Goku HD 745 EVO AIO boards have a 9V BEC but the full Goku Versatile F745 Pro Mini stack doesn't  Flywoo do have a Goku GN745 AIO stack and also a Goku GN722 HD EVO stack both with an onboard 9V BEC but they have a analogue VTX built into the FC which I don't want or need.

Even with the lightest components there is no way this quad is going to be below 250g but I'm not chasing the sub-250g category so I have no concern about that as long as it flies well enough with a reasonable flight time