Not to long ago, my brother gave me his old beat up Blade 180QX. In general brushed geared quads are very stable flyers and have great flight time because the gears and big props make less demand on the motors. The 180QX was a great quad for its time, but the FC is not programmable, has no Horizon mode (Angle and Acro only), and if you put more powerful motors on, the receiver will drop out (nowadays a POS). The canopy on the 180QX was so oversized it was nicknamed "the Parachute". So just using the original frame I rebuilt this from the ground up and made it into a full FPV rig with OSD. With the new F3 FC, I was able to use the most powerful brushed motors out there and changed the props to the GWS EP5443's, which have far better thrust than the original props.
The motor connectors on the booms I left in tact, just made adapters so I can connect to the FC (see pics). For the canopy, I found that the plastic containers in vending machines fit perfect and using the lid upside down, I could mount the VTX on it - no 3d Printer needed! ;p. This quad can fly for over 7 min on a 750ma 1S and is awesome for acro. It's definately much faster than the stock 180QX, and far more agile. I love this Boob! ;)
FPV Footage:
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Hello i am building the same quad frame and fc but without osd. The motors are spinning in the betaflight pattern but not the props since are geared and are turning in opposite direction instead of usual betaflight rotation but in the correct thrust way.
I have an uncontrollable right yaw spin on take off.
Any idea?
Thanks.
Regards
Lorentz
Lorentz -
The original 180QX has the prop configuration reverse from standard (Blade is dumb). Here is the fix:
Looking down at the quad front facing away from you, make sure your motors are setup this way -
CW - CCW
X
CCW - CW
CW=Red/Blue (non Blade Motors)
CCW=Black/White (non Blade Motors)
You will also have to reverse the props from the Blade config - switch left and right props with each other.
That should be all ya need bud.. :)
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Hi! Could you please share your tune? I've been trying to get the very same FC working on a geared brushed quad I have but I can't seem to stop it wobbling all over the place.
IronMew -
Here ya go.. ;)
Roll 43 40 78
Pitch 58 50 80
Yaw 70 45
RC Rate
R & P 1.00
Yaw 1.00
Super Rate
R .70
P .70
Y .70
PID Controller Settings
2
.3
Hope this helps ya...
Thanks! It improved things mildly, but it still flies like crap - I think the tune needs to be changed rather dramatically in my case. Thanks anyway - I wish I knew what I was doing, PIDs look like black magic to me.