What do you get when you cross rainy-day TinyWhooping, a desire for brushless performance, a couple beers too many, and BangGood? The Bumblebeast.
05/08/2017 - Complete! flight tests and flight vids to come.
An indoor/outdoor TinyWhoop that performs as close to a "Big Quad" as possible in this form-factor.
Too-tight build
The components chosen barely didn't fit into the frame. The frame was built with BangGood suggested parts (yes... I know...), but there was no way to build it with those parts without serious modifications/extra parts.
I had to remove a JST port on the FC because 3mm high was too high to fit this in the stack.
I had to use electrical tape to line certain sections of the frame, to ensure any flexing would not allow a solder-joint to touch carbon-fiber.
The height-budget for the stack was 14mm total, above the baseplate, and including the top-nuts. Any higher and it would hit the props.
Standard M2 standoffs (5.5mm) would have top-nuts hitting the props, and the props would be below the ductwork when mounted.
No.
You'll note I left the motor wires long (yet still nicely laid out) when attaching them to the ESC's -- I did that knowing that if I break this frame I would move to a larger frame. The pain of building this does not justify the size.
While this is ducted, and generally small enough to run in the house, I'm not sure how much I'll do that with this build as it's pretty heavy and has potential to damage an object/person more if you hit them.
It performs better than a TW, and the throttle is truly responsive so yes
Acheived! See photos. DVR Flight vids to come!
Nope: There wasn't enough room to fully soft mount the FC. Will try to Soft mount the motors later with small o-rings as there is a little room if you take away one of the carbon mount shims (see side photo of motor mount)
Final weight (dry) was 58g + 21g for 350mah 2S Battery.
That's about 13g heavier than I estimated. Some of that is the 5v 1.5A BEC I had to add to support the VTX, but I suspect the rest is errors in estimated/documented frame weight, wiring, and conformal coating/electrical tape to prevent boards from shorting out in the tightly packed stack.
As far as final thrust:weight values -- will try and reverse-mount props and do an informal thrust-test on a scale later. Original estimate was for about a 2.5:1 Thrust:Weight ratio.
UPDATED: 05/09/2017
Link to Thrust Test video on Youtube
This is the BR1103B 10,000KVs with a 1.5" set of blades from BetaFPV
While my assumptions about single motor thrust were about right (46.5g thrust average), sadly when all 4 motors are spun up the limitation is the 450mAh LiPO not being able to keep up with the current draw, so that drops down to about 30g.
In the end that means that this build, in the air, only gets about 1.5:1 Thrust:Weight, instead of the intended 2 to 1.
I have other LiPo's coming for this build, so hopefully one will work out better.
Now that I've sobered up done some analysis after ordering, I realize I should have went with a frame that would take 55mm/2.1in props for the best thrust-to-weight in a small brushless class, but this frame was already ordered. When I crack an arm, these motors will go on a 2.1inch build without ducts. (Update: 05/30/2017 - Yep, cracked an arm. Was flying without ducts and "alternative motor mounting" to fit 1935x4 props and hit a tree. The 1935x4 blades work pretty well on this motor - ordering up some other frames from ArmattanProductions to test/build a true 2" with these BR1103Bs, and hopefully the 2mm thick frame on the ArmattanProductions version is still light enough. )
Still need to clean-up the mounting of the BEC/Frsky XM+ on the back. There is no room between the duct and the carbon top-plate to put either of them.
I cleaned up the BEC from the back and managed to make room between the TPU ductwork and the top carbon-plate. Now only the XM+ receiver is left behind the camera. You can see the cleaned-up layout in the thrust-test video.
What's the PDB for?
Yeah, it's improperly titled on Amazon. It's a 5V BEC that does 1.5A (instead of the 500mAh limitation of the Mini Omni F3's built-in BEC). If you click the link you can see it's just a micro BEC.
I needed more than the 500mAh so I could do 200mw on the TX03 AIO. At peak the specs say it draws about 750mAh when it's on 200mw. The build is so tight I didn't want to take a chance at adding heat in the middle of that stack, as the Omni F3's are pretty well known for slightly dodgy BEC circuitry.
If you look at the 4th photo from the top, with the carbon-fiber top-plate installed, you can see the Matek BEC hanging off the Brown/Purple wires without any heat-shrink on it yet.
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Will you do another build that accomplishes your old/new goals o