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Finally!...It flies!

Joined
Feb 2, 2019
Messages
31
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24
Location
Pacific Beach, CA
So last year I was working out of state in AZ for about 8 months. While I had my TH Pro and another 500 class uav, you can only do so much flying and I was getting bored to tears sitting by myself in a hotel room. I figured I'd try building a quad, how hard could it be?

For the basics I started with a Tarot 650 Pro frame and gear, a Pixhawk flight controller and FrSky Taranis X9D Plus TX. Given the YouTube videos I watched I figured I'd have this thing flying in two weeks, a month at worst. How wrong I was.

Until about three years ago I was never an RC guy. About the closest thing would have been a balsa model kit of a P38 Lightning that I built as a kid that only made it to rubber band propulsion and gliding before it was relegated to my trusty Daisy Red Rider. So ya I was and, more or less, still am a novice. Nevertheless, it's good that some really smart people turned their coding knowledge into making things like Mission Planner and OpenTX, user friendly GUIs. Regardless of these free tools, it's still a daunting challenge for those who've never played with this stuff before.

The other challenge was soldering. While I've always been able to melt solder on an iron, I've never done it correctly. That was definitely a steeper curve. Nevertheless, after a few hundred solder/rework joints, I'm sure I could solder my thumb to a tree stump. :D

Now here I am, a little over a year later, and it was just in the last month or two that I've been able to feel kinda comfortable putting this thing in the air. However, I am at the point where I am confident that I can work out the last few minor issues. It's been a terrific learning experience.

And because I'm feeling super cocky now, I ordered a frame for a 680 Hex. Let's see how that goes :)

Proof's in the Pudding.
Tarot 650 - It flies! It flies!
 
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Feels pretty darn good, doesn’t it? A big congrats to taking that big step. You have learned much by doing what so many avoid[emoji106]

Yes it does feel good but, it's getting old now. I need to build a bigger one with more stuff. Not unlike a boat, it's always too small. ;)

Tuning is still a bit squishy and it's crabbing a bit. More Autotune tomorrow 'cause I still don't have a clue about changing PIDs myself with any confidence.
 
Unless you have a Masters in math and computer science PID’s remain largely trial and error. Even engineers have trouble with them. Having 3 items that independently effect each other is almost the definition of the chaos theory.
 

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