Wow, that's a formidable build! Have you maidened yet?

I've had close to a dozen test flights to sort out ESC settings, since i'm running such large motors with such large props at such low RPM's on 4s, I've had to adjust my BLHeli setting just about as far from stock as you can get. It's currently awaiting replacement motor mounts from my last test flight.

The photo's in the main post are still of the previous incarnation running on 10' props.

Well I've finally had a successful "Maiden" flight. It's a little sluggish but it basically "floats" with such large props. It's also the quietest multi-rotor I've ever witnessed, at a little over 20 feet it sounds like a household fan on a medium or low speed setting. No payload or endurance test just yet but i'll probably make a new build page for it rather than just update this one.

Awesome! How about a 3rd person video of it taking off?

I'll charge some batteries and see what I can do.

Small update, Received new motors and the 18" props. Got everything mounted up tonight, but have yet to wire everything and "maiden" it.

Awesome! How about some maiden video?

Teaser... http://i.imgur.com/h7SgbdC.jpg

Nice. Gong to zip tie those wires to the arms or will they go through the arms?

for the time being they'll just be Zip tied to the arms(With the ESC's) Since the wires wont fit in the arms and the ESC's wont fit between the bottom plates. I've considered switching boom arms, but I can find any 12mm-ish square carbon fiber tubing.

I won't look so clean, but it'll get the job done. I noticed some of your parts aren't tagged with the new system. Might want to get in there and fix those up a bit.

Flew a 30 second maiden today, and it performed like shit. The ESC's I have aren't very compatible with these motors(Firmware is really old and not updatable) since old versions of SimonK really don't do well with low KV motors. So I'm looking for a new set of ESC's.

Sorry to hear! You can always resell your ESCs in the RCGroups classifieds if you want to recoup some of the cost.

They're just super cheap chinese ESC's, I'll probably just end up using them for my next random fun build.

Oh those are the same ones I'm using. They're a good bargain for a cheap build, but its good to know the limitations.

They have worked flawlessly for me on 3 separate builds so far, and if i could figure out how to update the firmware on them, I'm sure they'd be fine for many more. (I've tried updating firmware, melted 3 of them experimenting).

I use these ESCs in my build. Same price... not sure if the firmware is updateable, though.

I've been looking at These, They're Oneshot125 compatible with Damped Light(18" props take DAYS to slow down). And i dont need BEC's anyway.

100% definitely not a genuine pixhawk

Ok thanks. I've thought about getting that same kit. How do you like it?

The only problem I've had so far has been with the external compass(It's about 35 degrees off that doesn't seem fixable with calibration, so I just physically turned the compass to compensate for the error.) Other than that I LOVE the pixhawk.

I absolutely hate doing the calibration for those. That's when telemetry is very helpful.

Telemetry is 10x more awesome than i thought it would be, and it's amazing for compass calibration. you can do it out in the middle of a field with no external magnetic influence.

I have the same issue with my own 'not-a-genuine-3DR' Pixhawk. I'm glad to hear you rotated the compass the same as I did. To be a little less self-conscious about the arrow on the puck, I found I could set the orientation to ROTATION_YAW_45 (or it might have been _YAW_315) and just rotate it a little... while generally keeping the arrow pointing forward.

My compass arrow wasn't pointing the right direction either, but I was able to fine tune it with the ROTATION_YAW values and another more detailed value, I forgot the name of it, that gave me the perfect heading according to the arrow.

Declination? I left mine at Auto, but it does derive different values than the linked lookup site for my location.

The NEO-M8N gps solved my compass error. It's also tons more accurate than the Neo-6m i was using before, i get like 6-7 more satellites locked, and I've seen HDOP as low as 1.1

How many satellites are you seeing? Is that the $20 one that can be purchased at Banggood?

Oh I see the one you listed from Hobbyking. I wonder how it's different from the cheaper alternatives.

The most I've seen so far was 15 satellites, and that was inside a building.

I was wondering how it worked.

I will definitely do that, forgot that the flight photo was a vertical cellphone photo >.>.

Added a few more updated photos with the video transmitter and much improved wiring, Also the navigation lights(should get a green to match actual navigation light standards), and a much higher res Hover shot for the cover.

Awesome! Those are some nice photos. Very interesting gimbal mounting you've got there. I've never seen it done that way before.

I much prefer the front mount 2-axis gimbals but couldn't find one for a price i was willing to pay, so i modified a $50 Ebay gimbal to suit my needs.

I don't yet have any footage from this specific Y6, but i do have some footage from my previous version shooting through the ND4 filter, let me see if i can dig it up for you.

Edit; Found it and uploaded it to YouTube.

First Clip is about 2pm on July 17th, second clip is about an hour and a half before sunset July 20th.

Looks like it works very well. I may just need to make one for my Yi.

The mounting collars are very forgiving, you could probably just slap a ring of 3M double sided foam tape on the Yi and be fine.

They slightly overload the motors at max throttle, but its a camera-ship not a 250 racer, i don't think I've ever given it full throttle in this configuration.