The Stone Age Quad Thread- Show n Tell

[BadRaven]

SO, here's a place for pics and comment on those "oldies but goodies" and of course those "oldies and I wish I could forget-ies" and even those "oldies that just WON'T die, dammit!



I'll start:---

A lifetime ago, or so it seems, I "won" an Emax 250 frame for £10.  It was actually a 280 dimensionally, EMax clearly could not count.  

It went through various incarnations, and for its mediocre price with budget gear it performed.......... pretty damn mediocre! 

It was however the first 5" I actually built myself, so Hey, don't mock the afflicted.

Eventually it ended up a disassembled and stripped frame. For at least six years!

I'm starting to prepare my older outdoor quads for use by the schoolboys, and in a clear up of the model room (did you know, it has a carpet?!) I came across the box of bits.

A few weeks back I'd broken up my only Cine-Whoop as it was a noisy load of useless rubbish, so had the following all still soldered up:-

20mm Fury F4OSD Stack, TrampHV vtx, Foxeer "Razer" ginormous camera, RacerStar BR 1407 3500kV 2-3S motors, which had of course been running ducted on 3" props. Buzzer and LED bar.  Fat Shark Antenna courtesy "LemonyL"

I looked up the motors and they claimed they were OK on 5030 props. I had some old DALPROPS but also some EMax AVAN Scimitar 5x2.8x3. They'll do then. 

So I reassembled the frame with a front arm mod. Its now a 260mm diagonal, 135mm in line, 225mm squashed "X-it". Triple layer 2mm, 4mm arms.


This is the result, built this morning in a little over an hour:





Stylish Frame, Eh?                   Weighs in at 323g and with a 1350mAh 3S its 439g.

Test flown it like that and it fair leaps into the air and the motors stay cold (not surprising, its only ruddy 6C out there today minus the wind chill!!).

Tomorrow I might get the chance to try it on 2200mAh 3S ........ will it still fly? Will the motors take the strain??

Going to tape up the arms Bardwell style where the props might hit, bright colour differing front/rear to help kids orientation flying LOS.  Oh, and I need to find a strap!

Bought to do this.................... nothing!

[hugnosed_bat]

i did lower the profile on a luminier clone, liked the look alot :-)

maybe you will save 10g and add more style by shorter standoffs :-)

[BadRaven]

i did lower the profile on a luminier clone, liked the look alot :-)

maybe you will save 10g and add more style by shorter standoffs :-)

That EMax "250" had been running low profile at one point, with a small but 1000TVL camera.  Yes, I could have split the top plate and put that back, but I was playing with keeping the max flat bed length for battery, just to see what the poor little 1407's could carry as I am going to test for maximised duration for kids flying docile circuits.

OK, here's another stone age build that's still around, this time unmodified, but minus its antenna rollover cage here, I do still have it!! :-



It's a 3D printed "Whoopee", and if Oscar's around, he can tell you more about it than me   

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1700311

8.5mm brushed motors (which were sold with far more kv than these ones later on), and its running "state of the art"  firmware............  


# Cleanflight/NAZE 1.12.0 Jan 11 2016


Seven Years ago...............     Nice props, Eh?  




Still fly it occasionally, if only to show just how much the game has moved on!!  
 

C'Mon HB, you've been around the block, you must have pics of stuff that has lasted way past its sell by date and/or represent an era that maybe should have ended (or did end) a while ago!

[Lemonyleprosy]

I'm glad to see that one of those fatshark antennas are being put to use. I bought a bunch of them for $10 quite a while back, and I've been randomly tossing them in packages that I send to people for quite a while now . They're actually pretty good antennas- I'm using one as my horizontal omni on my fatshark attitude v6, with a VAS mad mushroom as my vertical omni.

I've only been flying and building quads for about 2 years now, but, I do have some oldies that I got in random trades that I didn't build that I'll go ahead and post:

This is a WinderWonderWorks Swirlie 64mm. This thing flies like absolute crap, it's just too damn heavy. This will be the last photo of it built, as I'm about to pull the motors for a 2" build and pull the aio cam for a brushed build. Its base plate may live on as an open prop build sometime down the line if I get bored.



This is a brushed I dunno what. I've had it in the air a few times, but, its brushed motors are toast. I would like to get this one back in the air. Its motor cans measure about 8mm wide and 20mm tall, I dunno know enough about brushed motors to know if that actually corresponds to something like 0820 or 820. It also needs an sbus rx (not crsf)- I'm pretty sure I've given away all of those that I had, because elrs is better.  
I might still have an xm rx somewhere, but if I do, it's probably gonna go on a 65mm brushed build with a silverware f0 aio fc.



And this is an old 4". It's got individual esc's, and a pdb. This one I'm likely to get in the air- I've got a couple spare 30x30 fc's that would fit in it. I haven't decided if I'm gonna leave that heavy old TS5823 vtx in it. I might, just for fun. I used this as my Xmas tree topper last year.

[BadRaven]

Ha!  Nice (sort of!)

That last one..........those props are incredibly bad, in 2 or 3 blade versions.  Very noisy and inefficient.

Even a couple of dollars on a modern set would make a big difference.


Also, on the brushed one, the motors are 0820's, a common size. Can be got cheaply from Banggood, etc, but be aware that kv has been ramped up and you might easily exceed the output current ability of the FC board, presumably a rectangular Pixo or similar.  So don't buy the highest kv if you do!  Also, you may find that only one motor is bad, and the FC is limiting the lot to balance.  MY last two brushed "motors are toast" quads were only one motor swap, luckily they were plug fitted for a quick test.

[Lemonyleprosy]

I’ve got some much better 4” props I can toss on it once it’s airworthy.

Thanks for the info on the brushed motors- these things are completely out of my wheelhouse. I’m typically of the, “more power!” mindset, so if I buy some replacements, I’ll try not to go super fast. I do have some random older used ones that will fit- is there a good way to test to determine if one brushed motor is bad? Or should I just randomly plug/solder in the others and see if it helps?

[Mike C]

Probably not the type of quads asked about but here is my first "FPV quad".

[BadRaven]

I do have some random older used ones that will fit- is there a good way to test to determine if one brushed motor is bad? Or should I just randomly plug/solder in the others and see if it helps?

If you have a rev counter, power each motor with the same prop size attached at half its rated voltage and measure the revs??

[BadRaven]

Probably not the type of quads asked about but here is my first "FPV quad".

Assume that was "a while ago".

Hubsan are just one selling a very similar thing today, but with the wiring out of sight!

[hugnosed_bat]

furibee adventures from the past :-)