My Quanum Nova (aka Cheerson CX-20 Open Source) ate a tree, which broke the USB connector. When I plugged into the USB connector on the FC, that broke too, rendering it unusable. By now the thing was in tiny pieces. I figured it was a sign from God to bite the bullet, put in all new flight system and innards, and see how it worked then. I already had the VTX and gimbal plus a 9x radio flashed with er9X.
Update: build completed. It turned from soup to spaghetti as the HK bundle was full of tiny little wires which were a devil to wrangle. The 1045 props were about 1mm too long, and hit each other, so I sliced off 1mm from each end and rebalanced, and they worked fine.
All up weight with 2700 mAH battery is 1230g, which seems a lot, but the 1045 props and Sunnysky motors are a wicked combination and it flies like a much bigger quad now, hovers at half throttle with ease and has a ton of power. Previously it really struggled with the stock motors and 9443 props, at 1160g. OSD works fine with FPV from the GoPro. Very stable loiter... somewhat to my surprise this really worked out well.
The weak point is definitely the 9X receiver and I think this is an upgrade I will do soon.
Photos
Part List
Motors |
4 x SunnySky X2212 Brushless Motor KV980 For RC Airplane Quadcopter
(3 builds)
Goodluckbuy.com
|
$71.48 |
Propellers |
Turnigy Slowfly Propeller 10x4.5 Black (CW) (2pcs)
(2 builds)
Hobbyking.com
|
$2.01 |
Propellers |
Turnigy Slowfly Propeller 10x4.5 Black (CW) (2pcs)
Hobbyking.com
|
$1.30 |
FPV Transmitter |
HobbyKing™ FT952 5.8GHz 32CH 200mW Mini FPV Transmitter with Gopro 3 AV Lead
(5 builds)
Hobbyking.com
|
$23.09 |
Receiver |
Turnigy 9X 2.4GHz 8Ch Receiver (V2)
(4 builds)
Hobbyking.com
|
$10.29 |
Ouch, maybe it's time for a new frame. I preemptively sold my CX-20 shell and replaced it with an F450 frame to avoid just such a fate. Depending on your goals you can switch for an F330 for a fun little sporty build.
I quite like the frame itself for some reason. But this build turned from soup to a massive pile of spaghetti... the HK kit has ten thousand tiny little wires which love to tangle. It is mostly done, but it exposed a huge weakness in the CX20 design, namely the use of ferrous screws to hold on the magnetometer pod (which I'd already broken and replaced). Once you screwed and unscrewed them a few times they become well and truly magnetized and make compass calibration impossible. It took me hours to track down the cause. I think I have a solution though.
Yeah, I hear ya. If that happens I'll swap. Mine is normally carrying a GoPro and gimbal so I'm pretty careful with it although...
https://www.facebook.com/john.brownlow/videos/vb.586128892/10153212768488893/?type=2&theater
Guides & Reviews
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Looking great now! Any footage yet?
I just shot some this evening but my gopro was acting up. It flies on rails though, quite impressive.
Done any PID tuning? I found the stock CX-20 yaw P a little low. Love those motors though. I use the same.
I tuned it with the old motors and 9443 props and the gimbal and GoPro and that improved the handling a lot. When I built it up with the new stuff it flew just great so I left it like that.
Also, since I changed the FC for a micro APM, I ended up with all those defaults, eg max angle of 45 degrees and so on. It all works nicely. There is more Y axis vibration than I'd like, not really sure where that's coming from.
Here is a quick edit of the only GoPro file that got recorded. No stabilization, straight out the camera basically.
https://vimeo.com/johnbrownlow/review/138036481/b45b56b03b
Looks like a finely tuned machine! You've got nearly no yaw wag with that 2D gimbal, impressive. Looks a little blurry to me though.
Yeah, just the lo-rez version I uploade. It's pin sharp.
I imagine, I'd love to have a GoPro 4, but the Xiaomi Yi is acceptable for the time being.