Welcome to FPVDronePilots!
Join our free FPV drone community today!
Sign up

I'm definately learning what not to buy...

Jtrjr

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 9, 2016
Messages
1,527
Reaction score
1,220
Location
Texas
Website
www.youtube.com
I'm fairly new to this hobby and I've had the opportunity to fly all of my birds quite a bit over the past week. As I've now switched to Acro mode and have been getting more aggressive I've had a few pretty good crashes. I've now got six birds, all BNF or ARF. Three of the six are now out of commission. I'm learning why building your bird is probably the best option.

The three birds that have been crashed but are still flying are my Diatone Crusader GT2, my QAV-X Charpu and my JJPro T1. If you are a noob like me, it's very important to carefully examine and cleans your bird after any crash. On several of my crashes the bird went into moist dirt or mud upon impact. I was quite surprised to see how much dirt and mud got into the motors. You can give it a quick look-over and not realize the debris that may still be in the motor. If you were to take off with this garbage in there, it could cause some real problem. Seizing up motors and frying ESC's. I haven't had an issue with this because I actually pull the motors after a crash and clean them.

The three that haven't faired so well are my beloved Arris X-Speed 250B, my JJPro P200 and my XJB-75. To get it out of the way, the XJB-75 is just an expensive piece of junk. It's sold as a BNF but is no where close to being such. The camera is horrible, it vibrates like crazy, it has serious drifting issues, set-up is a big hassle and the motors get hotter than heck on 3S, although that's what they ship it with. I haven't run across a single person who is satisfied with this expensive machine. My opinion, save your money.

My disappointment with the 259B and the P200 is something that really surprised me. Both of these birds are down for the same reason, cracked PDB boards. When taking both of these birds apart I realized that they are using the PDB as a structural part of the frame. In both cases the frame was stressed upon impact and a hairline crack was created in the PBD. After taking the birds apart and inspecting the PDB it's very obvious that these should not be part of the birds structural integrity. I don't know what material these things are made of but you could snap them like a twig. Since all of the wiring is embedded in the board it wouldn't take much to cause a broken electrical connection. Although I wouldn't replace the PDB anyway I couldn't find replacement PDB's for either bird.

I'll be "Frankensteining" the 250B and P200 by making custom carbon fiber pieces to replace the PDB's and using a stack that incorporates the PDB as part of the stack. Either something like a Racercube or a Betaflight F3 board.

Just thought I'd drop this note particularly for the noobs that are looking for their first bird. Don't get one that incorporates the PDB as part of the frame! The three birds that are still in the air do not incorporate the PDB as part of the frame. Lesson learned, the hard way!

Jerry
 
  • Like
Reactions: Carlos and Serius
**** Jerry!
Hate to see anyone having issues like this! We work hard to pay for these thing's and they end up not being worth a squirt of....well you get the point!
And let me guess the customer support is obsolete! The major downside to this Hobby is customer support!! and extra parts available to purchase if it does break. You should be able to go on their website and get replacement parts as needed. That being said I just ordered a Frame yesterday and will be building my own for my second one! I bought the Talon X by Neato frames.
Keep me posted on the racer cube I was interested in that one as well.
Good luck.

Mark.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jtrjr
-- it has serious drifting issues, set-up is a big hassle and the motors get hotter than heck on 3S, although that's what they ship it with---

Jerry

Just wondering if it might be possible to tune some of this out???
 
Phoenix,

Not based on what the more experienced guys are saying. Too complicated for me to explain (or understand). The guys over at RCG aren't having much luck with this thing either.

Jerry
 
Phoenix,

Not based on what the more experienced guys are saying. Too complicated for me to explain (or understand). The guys over at RCG aren't having much luck with this thing either.

Jerry

OK. Just wondering. The guy that helped me set mine up told me to only fly a couple minutes for the first flight. The land and check for hot motors. Said that PID tuning would be required if the motors came down hot. He told me that I could call him back and he would give me a tune for Raceflight.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jtrjr

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
6,011
Messages
44,354
Members
5,307
Latest member
Kodax