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Bottom Mounted Lipos??

the.ronin

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I know I'm gonna sound like an old man here but I'm seeing more and more bottom mounted lipos on racing / freestyle drones. I'd used to build a lot of 250 class and we never mounted bottom unless there were landing gears. Our flying was much more tame back then though and power loops werent even a thing (we just called them loops lol). But is there no concern on pounding these lipos during crashes? Or is flying so 3D now that your chance of crashing right side up is about as good as crashing upside down?
 
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Lol, my experience is a bit like dropping a fried egg. Always lands sunny side down and so it goes with my drones. I have both top and bottom mounted quads that have different setups regarding cameras. I have a hawk 5 that is giving me unrelated grief that has a GoPro mounted on the top plate with no room to mount a battery apart from being underslung. I do check the COG each time before I fly but also have a battery protector/LED to take care of the battery in the event of a crap landing. Some of the gear I am looking at these days is light years ahead of the RC stuff I mucked around with years go with much better and more compact electronics and as a result, sleeker and more user friendly kit.
 
Hey ronin, all my quads are really only suited to bottom mount. I have flown like this for well over a year and only ruined 2 batteries.
Having said that I fly 95 percent of the time over grass so you f you crash it's usually not too bad.
 
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Ah yeah I totally get that if you are mounting a GoPro on top. Heck man we didn't even have these square ones we only had the bigger ones. And we had to walk uphill through snow ... lol there I go sounding like old man again.

I am totally stoked on this Runcam mini split thing. I got one but haven't installed it yet. But it looks like a decent enough replacement for the GoPro! Man back in my day we ... lol jk.

Alright then guys well im goin bottom mount then. I guess whenever I know I'm gonna eat it, I'll just try to flip over LOL.
 
I fly both types. All three sizes of Cerberus have underslung batteries and the sköll carries the gopro session 5 with battery on top. Ive found that the 5" cerb without the gopro corners fast with an almost (not strong but I can feel it) pendulum effect.
The sköll is centered feeling.
..But when the 5" cerb was carrying the gopro.. it was balanced feeling with no "pendulum feel". Im sure you can tune it out with some pid adjustments and the 3" Cerberus and 2" don't have the same issue at all (lighter batteries? )

If / when I start tearing the battery casing due to hard landings.. I wrap just the front of the lipo in a couple layers of duct tape to stop the tears from getting worse.
 
Flying a ZMR 250 frame. I set it up for either battery on top or bottom. I did this to allow me to adjust dependent on the battery size/wt, or if I was flying loaded (go pro).

Hold the drone on its side by the prop tips with battery on. Ideally, it should hang straight down.....if it don't, its either top or bottom heavy.....both affect the flight (bottom= stable but no aggressiveness in turns. Top= stable at hover, but feels like its falling over in turns). My opinion is the best fly drones have the balance ant prop center.
 
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Hold the drone on its side by the prop tips with battery on. Ideally, it should hang straight down.....if it don't, its either top or bottom heavy.....both affect the flight (bottom= stable but no aggressiveness in turns. Top= stable at hover, but feels like its falling over in turns). My opinion is the best fly drones have the balance ant prop center.

Good call. And I agree, I def feel that difference on the roll.
 

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