Armattan Chameleon Frame

All I need to say is Lifetime Warranty. From the Armattan site:
"In the unfortunate instance that you meet the ground at a high rate of speed (and damage does occur), Armattan is offering a full bumper-to-bumper warranty for the Chameleon frame. Included in the list price is a warranty that covers all of the pieces (both Carbon Fiber AND Aluminum) for that added peace of mind."

The feature of having the battery mounted on top the frame was the main reason why I purchased this frame. The top-plate mount gets the battery closer to the CG for this frame. This is explained more here in a frame build video. The Turnigy Graphene batteries have a fiberglass plate on the top and bottom of the cells but I know with how I land some times and I do crash so a bottom mounted battery is not the place for me.

The battery top plate has a slot in the back of it. The slot seems to fit having the SMA connector for my TBS Unify Pro The problem was the counter sunk holes were on the wrong side of the top plate for the slot to be on the right side. The frame kit is to come with 8x M3 nylon nuts to hold the flight controller on but I received 6. Not sure if these are a quality control issues.

ESC

The Aikon 4 in 1 speed controller has integrated 5V and 12V regulators. Having the regulators helped me keep my wires fairly clean in my runs to my fvp gear instead of using the flight controllers regulators. I read many people having issues with soldering on the 4 in 1 speed controls due to having 4oz copper thickness on the board. I tinned the board and wires first for all the connections I was going to make to and soldering was a breeze. I chose to add cable sleeving for my battery connector and motor wires. I have learned from my crashes the wires then to get into the props. Keep the wires just long enough and protect them with either cable sleeves or heat shrink.

Flight Controller

Details on the board are found here on the Betaflight site. I found this review helpful. Since I am not running power through the BetaflightF3 I am not getting the current readings. I chose try to keep the wires clean vs running power into the flight controller and then out to the esc. I do not miss having it since I watch my voltage to manage my flight time. Wiring the esc is pretty straight forward if you have done it before. There are a few wiring diagrams out there. Here is the forums thread to the board. Do not forget to jumper 3v or 5v for your receiver.

The buzzer I ended up mounting to the frame with double sided tape pointing down at the ground. Make sure you install a buzzer so you can still listen for it. Some of my examples: an unfortunate crash in some weeds or while in fvp goggles you do not remember exactly where you were.

To setup the led this video is a good aid to get you going.

Motors

I struggled to pick some motors for this quad There are many options and I finally landed on these after reading the motor test data. The key thing here was efficiency. I also do not mind that they matches the frames anodized aluminum. A surprise for me when ordering the frame and motors together made them much cheaper.

One thing to note was the motor wires were about 1 cm to short to mount them with the Aikon 4 in 1.

FPV Gear

When putting together the aluminum camera frame make sure to build the frame around the camera. The camera will not fit if you do not. I really like the frame feature to be able to adjust the fpv camera without tools. How the camera is mounted as well has some very good vibration dampening. As I mentioned earlier the SMA connector from the TBS Unify Pro did not fit in the slot. I ended up using a Dremel tool to grind off one of the tabs on the connector so the top plate would fit. I really like how compact the TBS TRIUMPH-STUB are.

First Impressions

I have built many foamies and another quad (ZMR250). This build took me about a day to get all the parts assembled and figure out all the wiring in how to fit it all together. I was hoping to find some other quads with some wiring ideas that I could copy but was unable to find much.

This thing is a very nimble machine. In comparison to my ZMR the CG is so much better, the chameleon flips and rolls instantaneously. I have been flying with both 3s and 4S Turnigy Graphene 1300mAh 65C batteries on it. The 4s is defiantly the way to go. I tried to fit my Turnigy Graphene 1500mAh batteries on it from my ZMR 250. It works but if I add a flight cam the battery hangs off the backend of the quad. One thing I noticed was my flight times match my ZMR with 1500mAh batteries vs 1300mAh. I get roughly 5 mins out of a pack so it seems that the motors are pretty efficient.