Art builds a Quad

I am a novice to this hobby of model flying. Previous experience in RC flying was via a birthday present from the missus. A micro helicopter with a spycam. Indoor flying only, but got the hang of the fairly simple controls, then the camera stopped working by the time I got fairly good at it. Still got it and once in a while fly. The next thing I bought was a Hubsan X4 107C with standard camera. flew this indoors quite regularly and outside in the back yard when the weather was fine. Took it to the local park and had an interesting time. Dropped it into a nice bramble hedge. Had to climb in, well more over the top, laying my jacket down and crawling over. still got stabbed though. After this, I upgraded the propellers and swapped out the standard video module for an High Definition one. Took it out for a fly in the same park. Although a sunny day there was a breeze. A breeze I thoroughly misjudged! It was on the third battery that my beloved X4 was taken by a sudden gust of wind. I  watched haplessly as it was spirited away. Spent almost an hour looking but alas, I came home alone. Lost a modded micro on its maiden flight. With it, the HD video I was shooting on a 4GB SD card. Surprisingly for me, I wasn't even angry. All I could think of was that I had a frame I had sourced from an online supplier. I had the bug!

Talking to my brother (who is quite experienced in quads and the hobby), reading articles and watching videos wetted my appetite even more.... 

One of the first things to do when getting into this sort of past time is to go join a related forum. The wealth of expertise & information out there is mind blowing (let alone the vast banks of Youtube offerings). If you don't know, just ask (or watch)!

The aim is to build a quadcopter from scratch and I will document it here through a series of photos & words. The intended of the quad primarily is as a camera ship, thats right, Aerial Photography/Video (APV or AP for short) and FPV (First Person View).

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Its been a few weeks now since I've started the build. Had to take a break due to the festive holidays and most importantly - awaiting parts! 

First things first, I started by making the battery power cable using 14AWG Silicon wire. I have a lot of past history with soldering, but had not done so in a while. Therefore this was the thing to start with.
I asked on the forum about the length of cable and promptly got a response of about 12.5cm. This is not necessarily a hard and fast measurement, but seems adequate as a starting length and with future builds this could be reduced or lengthened based on what I want to do. 

Could not find my little soldering clamp, so I used a small G-Clamp to hold the connectors (XT-60 female) to be soldered to. Worked a treat as the above picture shows. 

To finish off, shrink wrap was added around each soldered terminal to give a neat finish.

The opposite ends were then soldered onto the bottom plate printed circuit board (PCB) of the frame.

After stepping back to admire my simple handy work, I realised that I had not put a shrink wrap sleeve over the two cables to give that extra bit of tidiness. I have since used black electrical tape to rectify the minor issue. It is a minor issue, but I'm a picky type!

The Assembly...

The frame was sourced from Hobbyking.com. It is the Q450 (a clone of the DJI F450 frame) for around £10. It is the Version 3 frame with the integrate PCB, so no extra wire looms. 

Started by attaching the top plate to the legs.

Then attached the bottom plate.

Mounted the motors, just so I can workout the lengths of the motor cables positioning. As I did. No screws were added at this stage as I did not have any thread lock. Thread locking the motors to the frame is a sure way to not losing a motor or two due to vibrations during flight.

The ESC (Electronic Speed Controllers) where then laid on top to work out where they would be fitted - on top of the frame arms or underneath. Conversations & research on the where to put the ESCs were a matter of personal choice. As I would be using 10" props, the downdraft would be sufficient to keep the ESCs cool, regardless of positioning. I chose to go with placing them underneath as it gives a cleaner look. On future builds I may chose to place them on top or even within the body of the frame.

ESCs used for this build are the Afro ESC 30Amp Multi-rotor Motor Speed Controller (SimonK Firmware). I have it on good authority that SimonK series ESCs are the way to go for their stable flight characteristics. There is a wealth of ESCs that can be flashed with the SimonK firmware. As a beginner, I just want to know they work, popular and for now, I am not interested in getting too bogged down in extra geekery.

Still without thread lock, I temporarily mounted the motors as I was rather impatient (having kids had taught me patience but not a lot) and wanted to solder the ESCs to the frame.

First I cut the bullet connectors off before realising that I could have simply removed the heat-shrink, then desoldered the connectors, leaving already tinned ends. Then to top it all off, I threw out the bullets in an already full dustbin, which I could have saved for use later for something else - In this game you save everything, cause everything costs money and money ain't something you throw away unless you're rolling in it. Nevermind!

The next sequence of photos document the soldering and mounting of the ESCs to the frame.

Remembering to put heat shrink on before soldering the power leads to the bottom plate power board.

I did not completely remove the legs from the power board. I left one screw in and turned the leg 90º to leave enough gap to get the soldering iron in.

Mounted the ESCs with good old fashion cable ties that were donated to me by a customer I had done a favour for during my day job a while ago - before I even contemplated building a quad. He though I would need them more than he did and they sat in a box for quite a while till I remembered.

Since mounting the ESCs, I have modified the way I strapped the ESCs to the frame. The dual cable ties around the ECSs have now been removed and just tied on at the cable ends of the ESCs. And with the motors connected, they seem sturdy enough, leaving the sides clear for when or if I choose to add LEDs etc to the build.

The Flight Controller

The Flight Controller (FC) is the part that translates the command signals from the receiver to the ESCs which in turn controls the motors with the correct signal - thats as basic as I can describe the process. This is the very heart of the quad. Choosing the right FC is very important to what you want the quad/RC model to do. For example, if you are building a racing quad, like the popular 250 framed models, you would choose a FC that is suited to that purpose. FCs come in various forms, from plug-n-play to highly customisable varieties. As a beginner, the wealth of information on FCs are staggering. All I need for this build is something that would get me in the air asap without too much faffing about with configurations etc. Therefore, without too much fanfare I simply went for the best on the hobby market - the Naza! Well, in fact, The Naza Lite to be precise. But at £107 - £114, it can wait a while. I am hoping to get one in the next couple of months. In the main time, my dear brother has lent me his Open Pilot CC3D FC. This will get me up in the air sharpish, and would be a help whilst I sharpen my flying skills. No point in waiting money at the novice stage. Seems a really good FC and it was one of the first boards I had looked at during the planning stage of the build.

The CC3D FC was attached to the to plate as in the photos below with industrial strength double-sided foam sticky tape. My brother had given me the FC case without screws. Scavenging in the cupboard of bits & bobs (every household should have one), I came across an old El Cheapo wireless radio transmitter I used to use whilst camping to play music from an mp3 device. The self-tapping screws from the casing fitted perfectly on the CC3D casing - Woohoo - and they call me a hoarder!!!

El Cheapo Transmitter - only need the screws

Mounted CC3D Flight Controller with DS sticky pad - Firm!

Connecting ESC & Reciever cables  

This is as far as the build has gone to date. I am currently waiting with anticipation for the arrival of my Transmitter - The Turnigy 9X. This is a fairly cheap Tx and again very popular amongst hobbyists. Seems fairly straight forward to set up, so looking forward tinkering with it. Also, batteries!!! Nothing goes nowhere without one of these. Researching a good supplier, preferably in the UK. 

In the next instalment, I shall document the coming together of the motors & propellers. This was a major snag just as I was about to start balancing the props. I'll leave you with this image: