So I decided after the field repair that I should make a few modifications to the Vortex. The first thing I wanted to do was to balance out the weight by putting another 4mm arm on the back right to even out the repair I made last Saturday. But I figured also, maybe I should make this thing less purple while I am at it. Not that I don't appreciate that my vortex is a color other than the typical red (and sometimes green) but at 20 bucks why not give it a go.

Anyway I had a few thing in mind... 

• unummagawd it (remove stickers, apply "white" pimp kit... because... what says "pimp" more than white on carbon fiber with yellow props and an orange runcam? OK, maybe not... I probably should have stopped at white on carbon fiber grey for modern-pimp)... 
  
• Upgrade to my XSR reciever (not going to happen unfortunately... SBUS connector not included so I am just going to stick with PPM on this one)
  
• Make reciever internal rather than external
  
• 4mm arm to match the field repair mentioned earlier
  
• Install IntoFPV battery straps (w00t!)
  
• Install runcam sled & cam
  
• I am also going to be trying out the cyclone 2 props 
  
• Upgrading the the most recent firmware/betaflight/etc.
  

So the idea overall is, I am going to change a few things all at once... and my tune hasn't been great lately anyway... so it's a good time to do my first proper pid tuning. I've done it in liftoff and failed miserably, but I think betaflight will be a little easier to work with in this case since it's dealing with real life physics. One thing as a sim believer that I have noticed real flight controllers being better at is the reaction to the PID process.

here is the vortex in it's current form for tonight: 


I'll post an update after I get it back together

Your first DIY build!

I hope it all goes well.

(14-Apr-2017, 10:07 AM)unseen Wrote: Your first DIY build!

I hope it all goes well.

Thanks! although maybe more like my first half of a DIY build lol... I am not doing any electrical other than the receiver and even that I ended up not needing the make the cable for it that I thought I was going to have to do. Part of it is that I told myself I wasn't going to let not building my first one hold me back from being willing to get in there and take things apart. 
I've stayed very organized though so I should be easily able to get everything back together 

I am a little bummed because I wont have it done until Saturday night and Sunday it's supposed to be rainy... It almost doesn't make sense to charge batteries but who knows... maybe I'll at least charge up 2 or 3 of them so that I can try to tune if it stays dry enough sunday morning.

I feel for you. Temperatures here in Sweden have returned to not much above freezing so this Easter break will be dedicated to building instead of flying.

(14-Apr-2017, 11:06 AM)unseen Wrote: I feel for you. Temperatures here in Sweden have returned to not much above freezing so this Easter break will be dedicated to building instead of flying.

Oh yeah... Easter too! I almost forgot about that part... 

Gosh... how did I forget Easter?... probably because I don't have kids :p

What reminded me was not having to set the alarm to get up and go to work this morning!

yeah... we don't get Good Friday off where I work, but I definitely could feel the improvement in the traffic on the way in! Plus several people have taken vacation days today so the office is like a ghost town. It's kind of relaxing and useful for getting stuff done when I am not busy checking on intoFPV that is

You don't get Good Friday off? Wow.

I won't even tell you how many days holiday I get per year in addition to public holidays. You wouldn't like to hear it.

Betaflight has made PID tuning so easy, nearly non-required. I built 2 quads recently and just sticks with stock values LOL But it would be good for you to see how those values change copter behavior !

What my company lacks in holidays it makes up in "PTO" (aka Paid Time Off)... in an effort to mirror your concern for feelings I'll hold back on saying how much, but I can tell you it's a lot!... If I wanted to take Good Friday off I certainly would have been welcome to do so

(14-Apr-2017, 06:52 PM)Oscar Wrote: Betaflight has made PID tuning so easy, nearly non-required. I built 2 quads recently and just sticks with stock values LOL But it would be good for you to see how those values change copter behavior !

I'm on like 2.6 or something right now and I get a little bit of oscillations on some of my inputs. When I say that I am going to tune it, I really mean that I'll up D a little and see if that helps but I'll probably play with all of the numbers for sure.

OK so for the update:

I received the "pimp kit" along with some other parts yesterday and as I was mounting the arms I noticed that the wires didn't have anywhere to go. For some reason when they made the arms they put the notches at the bottom rather than the top. This would mean that you'd need to thread the wires through the arms which would make repairs or replacements very difficult, plus what vortex owner is going to break apart their wiring to the ESCs or motors just for new plastic parts? Part of why you fly a vortex is so that you don't have to do stuff like that.



This is easily fixable if you have DoPs beloved tool: a Dremel. I simply cut a new notch in the top about 2mm thick and 3 deep and the wires fit snug. I do worry because I might be weakening the plastic a bit. Luckily it's not part of the quad that supports the arm, but if I have a tough enough crash to break an arm I could end up cracking the plastic now too.



Oh well... other than that the white looks a lot better than the purple did.

I have to wait to put the top plate back on until I get the receiver today but i figured I'd put everything loosely together and preview with the new cyclones:



I will likely eventually get tiny number stickers/decals so that I can put my old number (75) on the side... because racequad.

Alright, everything is back together and looking good.

Updating to betaflight 3.1 poses a little bit of a problem. It's not directly compatible with my version of the vortex, although this may be because I only updated the firmware and not the OSD. Essentially I've lost my ability to tune through the OSD... if I can't get that fixed then I'll have to bring my laptop when I go out flying today. There are of course worse problems that I could have had so no biggy.

One additional modification that I hadn't planned. When I put my receiver inside of the frame I decided to route the antennas a little differently than I've seen others do. Instead of having them come out of the back and figuring out some sort of way to manage that I put them through the front, ran them along the front arms, and then used zip ties and shrink tubing and zip ties to extend them back a little. I'll need to anchor them down so that they don't come up and get hit when an arm hits and they're somewhat at risk if I break a front arm but we'll see... I know for sure that the receiver is safer this way than it was before so that's the important part.

Here are the final pics with everything put together

Nice job! I like your antenna placement, very neat.

I hope you remembered the blue loctite on all those screws.

Not yet. I thought about it but I am still a little suspicious about the way a few things went back together. There were several parts that required repeating re-assembly (user error caused). I'll keep an eye on screws for now and then come back with the blue later.