2/24/2018 - RotorRiot has the SKITZO Dark Matter frame on sale for $60! Ordered up the Orion graphics for it as well as all the other supporting parts from AMain. Should be a quick build once everything gets here. Going to give RaceFlight a shot on this build and move up to 4s batteries. Everything in the parts list has been ordered.

2/28/2018 - Parts started rolling in today. Everything I’m missing should be here on Saturday if all goes according to schedule. Hope to have this thing in the air by next weekend.

3/1/2018 - Just realized that I have the new V3 Revolt flight controller but the speed controller is the old Bolt V1. While they're still easy to connect, you have to use the pin headers instead of the cable that comes with the Bolt V2. Some have said that connecting with the pin headers introduces a lot of vibration into the gyro. Not sure what I'm going to do just yet because everywhere I've looked the Bolt V2 is sold out.

3/2/2018 - I decided to just use the V1 Bolt so I started the evening by soldering the connections to join the flight controller to the speed controller. After that, I opened the frame, cleaned it up, and applied the Orion graphics. One thing leads to another, and by the end of the night, I had the frame completely assembled and all of the electronics laid out.

3/5/2018 - This build is on hold for a while. After getting it assembled and programmed using RaceFlight, I took it out for its maiden voyage and it barely flew. It was very twitchy, it would constantly yaw to the right on throttle up, and it was difficult to get it hovering in one place. I put it back on RaceFlight, went through the setup wizards again, took it out, and it flew beautifully. Huh? Don't know what I did differently. After the good flight I put another battery in it, took it outside, and it flew the same as it did on the maiden. Huh? I got one good flight out of it and no matter what I tried, I couldn't replicate it. Not wanting to give up, I decided to flash the board with Betaflight and program the ESC with BLHeli. This made no difference. I put it off to the side for a few hours but before bed, I had to give it one last shot. I really just wanted to isolate what the problem was. I flashed it back to RaceFlight, went through all the wizards again, and this time, I investigated all the settings RaceFlight had. I don't remember what tab it was, but RaceFlight has a motor test feature that will run your motors at different RPMs so that you can identify if you have a problem with a motor. The instructions in RaceFlight have you 1. Remove your props and connect the battery, 2. Turn off your transmitter, and 3. Hold the quad in your hand. After I clicked off each box, I hit start and the motors started going through their cycles. Motors 1-3 did fine. Number 4 didn't fare so well. In fact, it exploded. Right now, I'm feeling fortunate that I only walked away with the injury I did. Considering I was holding the quad in my hand, something could have very easily hit my face. As you can see from the pictures, the bell of the motor came apart and shot magnets around like shrapnel. I'm really glad my kids weren't around. I'm currently waiting to hear from Lumenier.

3/14/2018 - The replacement motor from AMain should be here this week. While waiting for it to arrive, I decided that I really don't like the Orion graphics for this frame. They weren't cut very well and made the frame look cheap. I decided to ditch them and go for a mostly black look. I ordered all black hardware as well as the 3D printed battery protector, arm guards/soft mounts, VTX mount, and GoPro mount.

3/17/2018 - Replacement motor is in but something is still wrong. I hovered one battery in the garage last night and it was fine. The twitch seemed to be gone. Took it out today and it was immediately twitching and rapidly yawing with no stick inputs. DYS setup will be in the mail on Monday.

3/20/2018 - The replacement DYS flight controller and ESC are in the mail. AMain is taking back the RaceFlight stuff no questions asked. While it sometimes took a while to get a response from them, they really came through for me. In the 10 years I’ve been ordering from them, this is the first product I’ve ever returned. I don’t feel as fond of Lumenier. After contacting them about the bad motor, I didn’t receive as much as an auto generated reply. Fortunately, there’s a lot of other choices out there when it comes to good motors. Fingers crossed I can have this quad out flying this weekend.

3/22/2018 - She's a flyer! Installed the DYS setup last night and did a quick test hover to check everything out. Brought it to work today for R/C Club and I was able to fly two batteries through it. This is my first quad with a bottom mounted battery so it took a minute to get used to, but once I did I was ripping around the school yard. While I may have jinxed myself by saying this was going to be a quick build, I'm really happy with how it turned out in the end.