550 Pilot's lounge

[Uncle Meat]

That just seems like a lot of weight to be suspended by those 8 tiny screws.

That's why I added these zip ties between the battery tray and the frame rails. Insurance.

This is my center mounted GPS mast.

Folded down for transport.

I decided to put the H3-2D electronics up front.

I used zip ties on the camera/gimbal mounting tray too. I just don't trust the hardware that came with my Neewer FPV skid.

I've got the new battery hooked to the old charger and everything looks like a "Go" for a flight tomorrow after work. Doubt if the battery will be charged before dark tonight!

U.M.

 

[FangsCPO]

That just seems like a lot of weight to be suspended by those 8 tiny screws.

That's why I added these zip ties between the battery tray and the frame rails. Insurance.

This is my center mounted GPS mast.

Folded down for transport.

I decided to put the H3-2D electronics up front.

I used zip ties on the camera/gimbal mounting tray too. I just don't trust the hardware that came with my Neewer FPV skid.

I've got the new battery hooked to the old charger and everything looks like a "Go" for a flight tomorrow after work. Doubt if the battery will be charged before dark tonight!

U.M.

I'm just not comfortable having my lipo hanging on the end like that. I prefer it on top of my F550. I guess I'm too chicken. I'd be afraid to come down fast and try to pull up and have the lipo cause that end part to bend or snap.

 

[Uncle Meat]

I'm just not comfortable having my lipo hanging on the end like that. I prefer it on top of my F550. I guess I'm too chicken. I'd be afraid to come down fast and try to pull up and have the lipo cause that end part to bend or snap.

It's not hanging off the end. There isn't enough room out back to hang the battery tray aft of the main body.

I have my battery tray and battery slung almost directly underneath the bottom plate. I'll slide it forward and aft as needed to correct CG.

U.M.

 

[labmansid]

I'm just not comfortable having my lipo hanging on the end like that. I prefer it on top of my F550. I guess I'm too chicken. I'd be afraid to come down fast and try to pull up and have the lipo cause that end part to bend or snap.

I understand completely. I'm thinking of turning the tray that holds the Lipo "upside down" from the way I have it now, so it rests on top instead of hanging down, if that will work. That might be a little more secure. I've just started my 7 day stint of work, so any experiments might be put on hold for a while.
A few days ago, just for grins I thought I would try running my two 5500 3s batteries hooked together with a parallel cable to see what it would do regarding flight times. As a test to see what the absolute max time would be, I first initialized the 550 with a 2200 battery from my Phantom with the intent of when it was ready to fly I would then replace the 2200 with the 5500s one at a time without losing power and satellite lock. As I was securing the batteries after hooking both 5500s up and getting them ready to go, my 550 suddenly lost power, and started initializing again! Well crap, I thought, and discovered that moving the parallel joining cable around somehow made it lose battery connection. So that little experiment went down the toilet pretty quickly, and now I don't trust that cable to try running two batteries together.
In the meantime I have ordered some XT60 connecters, and I think I will try to convert everything over to that type of connection. I don't really care for the "Dean's" style connections that came with the F550. Just have to bone up on my soldering skills.

 

[OI Photography]

I'm just not comfortable having my lipo hanging on the end like that. I prefer it on top of my F550. I guess I'm too chicken. I'd be afraid to come down fast and try to pull up and have the lipo cause that end part to bend or snap.

I understand completely. I'm thinking of turning the tray that holds the Lipo "upside down" from the way I have it now, so it rests on top instead of hanging down, if that will work. That might be a little more secure. I've just started my 7 day stint of work, so any experiments might be put on hold for a while.
A few days ago, just for grins I thought I would try running my two 5500 3s batteries hooked together with a parallel cable to see what it would do regarding flight times. As a test to see what the absolute max time would be, I first initialized the 550 with a 2200 battery from my Phantom with the intent of when it was ready to fly I would then replace the 2200 with the 5500s one at a time without losing power and satellite lock. As I was securing the batteries after hooking both 5500s up and getting them ready to go, my 550 suddenly lost power, and started initializing again! Well crap, I thought, and discovered that moving the parallel joining cable around somehow made it lose battery connection. So that little experiment went down the toilet pretty quickly, and now I don't trust that cable to try running two batteries together.
In the meantime I have ordered some XT60 connecters, and I think I will try to convert everything over to that type of connection. I don't really care for the "Dean's" style connections that came with the F550. Just have to bone up on my soldering skills.

I'd bet the problem was because of changing what was connected to the XT60 parallel cable, not with the cable itself.

 

[labmansid]

Actually, I was using a Dean's parallel cable. The Phantom battery had an XT60 to Dean's adapter on it, and I took it off after one of the 5500s was on line to maintain the power. That's when the experiment started to go south, when nothing but Dean's equipped components was hooked up. I'm pretty sure it must be something with that cable, as I haven't had any issues thankfully using just one battery, or using two of my Phantom batteries connected using a parallel XT60 joiner with a Dean's adapter on the end of it to hook up to the Dean's plug on the F550. I am just tired of keeping up with adapters and am going to try some other batteries that are yet another style connecter. So I have some XT60 connecters coming to try and convert everything to just one style.

 

[Uncle Meat]

I understand completely. I'm thinking of turning the tray that holds the Lipo "upside down" from the way I have it now, so it rests on top instead of hanging down, if that will work. That might be a little more secure. I've just started my 7 day stint of work, so any experiments might be put on hold for a while.

Even with the FPV tray pushed out on the rods as far as it will go, and then pullng the slack back under the 550, there still isn't enough rod sticking out the rear to mount the battery tray on my setup, unless... I trim the rear portion off of the FPV tray so I can push is farther back. This however kind of defeats the whole purpose of this FPV skid IMHO. I bought it so I could hang my GoPro way out front so there would be no chance of getting prop shots in my videos.

On a different note... I hooked up my new Onyx LiPo's to the old DJI charger and set it at 2A. After about 30 minutes I felt the DJI charger and it was pretty warm so I backed the charge rate down to 1A and let it continue. Took about 2.5 hours total to charge up that monster! Will charge the other battery tonight and then head out Saturday morning for a field test. Fingers crossed.

U.M.

 

[lgeist]

Question regarding battery placement on top vs. underneath:

It seems that most folks measure the Y axis distance from the GPS antenna to the top plate of their 550, but in reality the distance should be measured to the center of gravity. Moving a 600+ gram battery from the top plate to the undercarriage could move the CG as much as 3 or 4 cm's downward. I'm wondering how critical this is if it's not compensated for in the Naza set-up?

Thoughts?

 

[OI Photography]

Actually, I was using a Dean's parallel cable. The Phantom battery had an XT60 to Dean's adapter on it, and I took it off after one of the 5500s was on line to maintain the power. That's when the experiment started to go south, when nothing but Dean's equipped components was hooked up. I'm pretty sure it must be something with that cable, as I haven't had any issues thankfully using just one battery, or using two of my Phantom batteries connected using a parallel XT60 joiner with a Dean's adapter on the end of it to hook up to the Dean's plug on the F550. I am just tired of keeping up with adapters and am going to try some other batteries that are yet another style connecter. So I have some XT60 connecters coming to try and convert everything to just one style.

Gotcha, I think the issue would happen regardless of the connector type...have you tested the cable on its own since then? From what I've heard, hot-swapping batteries (esp of different sizes) on a parallel cable like that just won't work.

I actually just went with XT60 from day one on my 550, for exactly the reason you mention (the headache of managing multiple connector types on the aircraft and while charging).

 

[Uncle Meat]

Question regarding battery placement on top vs. underneath:

It seems that most folks measure the Y axis distance from the GPS antenna to the top plate of their 550, but in reality the distance should be measured to the center of gravity. Moving a 600+ gram battery from the top plate to the undercarriage could move the CG as much as 3 or 4 cm's downward. I'm wondering how critical this is if it's not compensated for in the Naza set-up?

Thoughts?

I set mine up based on CG. However I'm still apprehensive about my first flight and here's to hoping the Naza-M v2 is able to compensate if I'm off a CM here or there.

With that tall GPS mast on my bird and the heavy battery on the bottom my current settings look like this:

X: 0
Y: -1
Z: -24

I'm using a pretty primitive method of determining the CG on my 550 by simply finger balancing it. I know how close I was, or how well the Naza compensates in about 6 hours. :|

U.M.

 

[Uncle Meat]

Question regarding battery placement on top vs. underneath:

It seems that most folks measure the Y axis distance from the GPS antenna to the top plate of their 550, but in reality the distance should be measured to the center of gravity. Moving a 600+ gram battery from the top plate to the undercarriage could move the CG as much as 3 or 4 cm's downward. I'm wondering how critical this is if it's not compensated for in the Naza set-up?

Thoughts?

I set mine up based on actual CG. However I'm still apprehensive about my first flight and here's to hoping the Naza is able to compensate if I'm off a CM here or there.

With that tall GPS mast on my bird and the heavy battery on the bottom my current settings look like this:

X: 0
Y: -1
Z: -24

I'm using a pretty primitive method of determining the CG on my 550 by simply finger balancing it. I know how close I was, or how well the Naza compensates in about 6 hours. :|

U.M.

 

[Uncle Meat]

SUCCESS! My first flight went off with nearly a hitch. I'm a little confused at the short run time from these Onyx 6400mAh batteries though. I got a warning at just 6:30 that it was time to land, nowhere near the 12:00+ reported. I can't imagine how short my flight times will be once I add the gimbal and GoPro! Maybe I need to adjust the voltage warning limits in the assist software?

On the good side the platform was as stable as a rock! Either I got my CG pretty close or the Naza is just that good! I had my wife video the first flight using my GoPro. Will post once it's done uploading/processing.

U.M.

 

[extrememc]

SUCCESS! My first flight went off with nearly a hitch. I'm a little confused at the short run time from these Onyx 6400mAh batteries though. I got a warning at just 6:30 that it was time to land, nowhere near the 12:00+ reported. I can't imagine how short my flight times will be once I add the gimbal and GoPro! Maybe I need to adjust the voltage warning limits in the assist software?

On the good side the platform was as stable as a rock! Either I got my CG pretty close or the Naza is just that good! I had my wife video the first flight using my GoPro. Will post once it's done uploading/processing.

U.M.

Congrats on your successful flight.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[OI Photography]

SUCCESS! My first flight went off with nearly a hitch. I'm a little confused at the short run time from these Onyx 6400mAh batteries though. I got a warning at just 6:30 that it was time to land, nowhere near the 12:00+ reported. I can't imagine how short my flight times will be once I add the gimbal and GoPro! Maybe I need to adjust the voltage warning limits in the assist software?

On the good side the platform was as stable as a rock! Either I got my CG pretty close or the Naza is just that good! I had my wife video the first flight using my GoPro. Will post once it's done uploading/processing.

U.M.

Congrats on your successful flight.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yeah congrats UM...we all know what an awesome feeling that can be.

You might indeed need to tweak the voltage settings in the NAZA to make sure you're using the full working capacity of the battery. Do you have a voltage tester you can use to check the battery right at landing and then again a few minutes later? If you can take those readings after a couple of test flights, you can use that to judge what settings are best for your aircraft and that particular batt.

Do you know what your total flight weight is? That can also help determine if your battery results are abnormal.

 

[FangsCPO]

I just got these landing skids in the mail..............how the heck do you assemble this? LOL!!!! It's like a jigsaw puzzle.

 

[ladykate]

I just got these landing skids in the mail..............how the heck do you assemble this? LOL!!!! It's like a jigsaw puzzle.

Yes - it doesn't look right until you start assembling them. The Tarot landing gear was dead simple compared to the 550 skid. Took me about five minutes to have the 810 stuff working and it is collapsible! Took me almost an hour for the 550 skid.

 

[FangsCPO]

I just got these landing skids in the mail..............how the heck do you assemble this? LOL!!!! It's like a jigsaw puzzle.

I just figured it out.........I guess they gave me extra pieces and that was throwing me off. This should be pretty cool.

 

[FangsCPO]

SUCCESS! My first flight went off with nearly a hitch. I'm a little confused at the short run time from these Onyx 6400mAh batteries though. I got a warning at just 6:30 that it was time to land, nowhere near the 12:00+ reported. I can't imagine how short my flight times will be once I add the gimbal and GoPro! Maybe I need to adjust the voltage warning limits in the assist software?

On the good side the platform was as stable as a rock! Either I got my CG pretty close or the Naza is just that good! I had my wife video the first flight using my GoPro. Will post once it's done uploading/processing.

U.M.

Only 6 minutes!!! I can max out to 11:30 minutes. Definitely check your voltage warning settings. I'm about to change my DJI landing skids for the one everyone seems to have which is also slightly heavier. I may have to reconsider.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk

 

[FangsCPO]

duplicate entry.

 

[FangsCPO]

duplicate entry