THE UK’S 1ST DRONE AND MULTIROTOR MAGAZINE
ISSUE 8 NOV/DEC 2016
THE UK’S 1ST DRONE AND MULTIROTOR MAGAZINE
FROM ENTRY LEVEL QUADS TO FPV RACING, AERIAL FILMING, IN-DEPTH BUILD GUIDES AND INDUSTRY INNOVATION
RCFLIGHTCAMERAACTION.COM
NEW DRONE TECH EXPLAINED & EXPLORED
LIFT RC 5” MATTYSTUNTZ ARF ULTRA-LIGHT AND DESIGNED FOR RACING!
FARNBOROUGH INTERNATIONAL AIRSHOW
SAVING THE SALTON SEA
QUAD ON A SHOESTRING PART 3
ROTOR FEST & QUEEN’S CUP
RCFCA ISSUE 08
Issue 08 £4.99
p01_RCFCA08_Cover1.indd 1
15/09/2016 10:38:37
INSIDE
RC FLIGHT CAMERA ACTION
NOV/DEC 2016. ISSUE 008
REVIEWS 8
Lift RC Race 5" MattyStuntz ARF Kit
Wayne Andrews gets to grips with this ultra-light racing quad
12 Feilun 400 3D Drone Flight Test
John Daniels returns to try his hand at some 3D drone flying
16 Ghost Drone 2.0 VR Flight Test
James Crozier revisits the Ghost Drone to see how it flies
32 Optipower Quad Racing Batteries We tested out the manufacturer’s smaller packs
44 Hubsan H502S
The latest FPV quad from Hubsan – tested
50 Liftoff Multiplayer
We return to the FPV sim to check out the new multiplayer mode
REGULARS 52 Viewpoint
A special edition of our regular aerial photography gallery featuring the work of Adrian Squirrell
Sumners Ponds
4 RC FLIGHT CAMERA ACTION p04_RCFCA08_Inside.indd 4
16/09/2016 10:55:33
CONTENTS NOV/DEC 2016 ISSUE 008 FEATURES 18 Farnborough Airshow 2016
We report from this year’s show – the first to feature drone racing
22 Quad On A Shoestring Part 3
Wayne Andrews continues with his popular budget racing quad build series
30 Sumners Ponds
All the racing action from this year’s show
34 Derbyshire Drones
Rotor Fest
We put Jake from Derbyshire Drones in the hot seat to answer a few questions
38 Saving the Salton Sea
Aerial photographer Eric Hanscom returns with another set of fantastic shots from the US skies
48 Delta Hawks
Phil Smith reports on the BFPVRA Nationals Qualifier
60 Straight and Narrow
Rod Boswell talks drone safety in his latest article
Farnborough Airshow 2016
66 Weston Park
Our report on all the drone based happenings at this years show
70 Rotor Fest
Chris Bradbury reports on this event featuring a race to win the prestigious Queen’s Cup
75 Adventures With An Octocopter
Following a trip to Germany, David Bright recounts his time on a special training course at Height-Tech
Liftoff Multiplayer
Saving the Salton Sea Weston Park
38 66
RC FLIGHT CAMERA ACTION p04_RCFCA08_Inside.indd 5
5
16/09/2016 10:55:55
Close up in the air
FPV KIT
LIFT RC RACE 5" MATTYSTUNTZ ARF KIT Wayne Andrews gets to grips with Lift RC’s ultra-light racing quad AUTHOR: WAYNE ANDREWS / PHOTOGRAPHERS: WAYNE ANDREWS/SOPHIE ANDREWS
I
t seems that you can barely walk out of your door without seeing 3 or 4 newly released racing quads on the market, so after unpacking this 5" Matty Stuntz ARF kit from LiftRC it was with some considerable pleasure that I could see what an exciting looking package it presented.
First Impressions
Two things immediately stand-out here. First off, it’s the quality of the enclosed components, with a parts list including: Cobra 2204-2300KV motors, KISS 30 A ESCs, and an SP Racing F3 flight controller. On the FPV side of things, there is a 40 channel FXT799 600mw VTX, a Microminim OSD and a Lumenier SMC-600 mini camera. The camera was the only thing I felt slightly dubious about – although Lumenier is a great brand, the camera uses a CMOS sensor, and lacked the wide dynamic range of the more popular FPV cameras – more on this later. The second standout item was the frame itself. The 3k twill weave carbon fibre used has been immaculately machined, and with 3 mm thick arms and a slightly thicker than normal 2 mm base and top plate it feels very strong. Instead of four individual arms connecting to the frame, this uses two long arms that span the width of the quad. One of the big selling points of this frame is that there are access holes, so if an arm breaks, you should be able to replace it without disassembling the rest of the quad. This can take as little as seven minutes according to Lift RC’s website.
The frame hardware
This 210 mm frame has been engineered to be as compact as possible. The space between the top and bottom plate is just 20 mm. Between the front and rear props there is around a 3 mm gap, and between the props and the frame itself there is about 1 mm. With space this precious, and with the desire to keep the weight down to make it go as fast as possible, this isn’t a kit for a first
8 RC FLIGHT CAMERA ACTION p08_RCFCA08_Lift RC Kit.indd 8
15/09/2016 10:32:14
LIFT RC RACE 5” MATTYSTUNTZ ARF KIT
Electronics unpacked
time quad builder. At the time of writing, there’s no official build documentation, so some prior experience on how to connect up all the components is very important. For this review machine, the recommended PDB hadn’t been finalised, so I used a 36 mm x 36 mm Matek PDB with regulated 5 V/12 V outputs which matched the size of the flight controller.
back into Cleanflight to set up my receiver, and check the motor directions. As I thought, all motors were running in the same direction, so on the two motors I needed to reverse, I soldered a small jumper on the KISS ESCs that handled the reversing. With this done I was able to heat shrink over my ESCs, before finally calibrating them in Cleanflight. The FPV gear comprised the final parts of the build. The camera looked quite awkward to install with a heat-shrinked piece of solid plastic and a microphone coming out of its base. After a quick email exchange with LiftRC, they suggested the removal of both of these pieces to give the camera a flat and more useful base. LiftRC also created some printable designs to mount the camera in the frame at various angles, so having a 3D printer to hand, I printed a 25 degree mount out which made the fitting very simple. With the 5 V power supply to the camera and 12 V to the VTX supplied, I compiled up MWOSD and flashed this to the Micro Minim, finally wiring this in and heat shrinking it.
Soldering the motors to the KISS ESCs
The Build
I started the build by stripping back the motor wires and soldering these directly onto the KISS ESCs. These ESCs come without any existing wires or heat shrink, so this makes wiring easier, given that you won’t have to cut/extend any existing wires. It also means you can use just the right length to your PDB. I flashed Betaflight 2.8.1 onto the SP Racing F3 board and set it up to use SBUS to match my chosen FrSky X4R-SB receiver. To make as neat of a job as possible, I soldered all my wire connections (VBAT and 5 V from the PDB, control signals from the ESCs, and the OSD connection) directly to the underside of the SP Racing board. However, before I connected the OSD (as this would share the same connection as the USB), I went
The Lumenier camera, prior to modification
With the modifications made, the camera fits nicely into the frame
RC FLIGHT CAMERA ACTION p08_RCFCA08_Lift RC Kit.indd 9
9
15/09/2016 10:33:53