RCTimer Argonaut 370mm Hex

[pheasant_plucker]

Nothing new since the last post.
My youngest brother died on boxing day and I haven';t had much motivation to do anything else. It';s 90% done and just needs the video tx and the MinumOSD rigging up.

Gerry

[HexFlyer]

Nothing new since the last post.
My youngest brother died on boxing day and I haven';t had much motivation to do anything else. It';s 90% done and just needs the video tx and the MinumOSD rigging up.

Gerry

I';m so sorry for your loss Gerry, that';s just terrible.

[quadfather]

Nothing new since the last post.
My youngest brother died on boxing day and I haven';t had much motivation to do anything else. It';s 90% done and just needs the video tx and the MinumOSD rigging up.

Gerry

Gerry, sincere condolences to you and your family.  Losing a close family member is never easy.  Been there, and I feel for you.

[Friskle]

Likewise, sincere condolences to yourself and family.

[pheasant_plucker]

Thanks guys.

Gerry

[pheasant_plucker]

I';ve finally moved my butt and got on with this again.
OSD wired up and the Mobius wired to the onboard BEC so it powers up on battery connection.
VTX mounted and wiring completed.

Just a couple of little jobs to do now. I need to make an aerial guide for the RX to keep the antennae well away from the carbon fibre plates and I need to add some LEDs for LOS which is my usual flying mode.
Weight so far 750g without battery

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[pheasant_plucker]

On the move again now but there are issues!
I ordered three new Zippy 3000 4s LiPos and immediately there wer issues with motor no 2 going out of sync. Unfortunately I didn';t realise what the problem was in time and burnt out the ESC. So I have ordered a couple of replacements from RCTimer and will be flashing them with the latest BLHeli V13. Currently they run V11.1 and are flashed with Skywalker 20A firmware. I have removed and flashed one ESC and will be soldering SIL headers and sockets so they can be easily replaced in future if necessary.
I used an Arduino Nano as the flash tool and will post a tutorial of how I did it over the weekend.

Hopefully the latest firmware version will sort out the sync issues and it will also provide the "Dampen light" feature which should make the Hex more responsive to tuning.

Gerry

[pheasant_plucker]

This has been an up hill struggle, it';s fought me all the way but there is light at the end of the tunnel now.
I have tried all combinations of timing on these ESC';s but they still drop out of sync with these 1450kv motors on 4s.
With medium timing the motors rev when the throttle is opened but intermittently stop dead as if they were hitting a dead stop. With the timing raised to medium high and high they spin but occasionally screech.  I have already burnt out two ESC';s so even though I have ordered replacements I decided to fit some standard SimonK 20a ESC';s from RCTimer.
Immediately these work out of the box with no problems on 4s. The only issue was fitting them neatly but a bit of thought has them fitted under the arms. I cleaned off some of the PCB insulation on the upper and lower PCB to give me decent size power pads and shortened the motor wires and fitted them with some 3.5mm plugs to suit the ESC. The signal wires were soldered directly to the relevant PCB pads where the header ins were for the old ESC';s. It';s looking really good now and it';s freed up quite a bit of space where the old ESC';s were.
It';s still a cracking frame but I would think twice about buying anything with integrated ESC';e in future. A lot of time and a couple of ESC';s destroyed but the other 6 will not be wasted. I will solder a set of leads on and heatshrink them to turn them in to standard ESC';s. They are fine on 3s so these will go on a mini Quad and give me two spares.

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Gerry