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Lots of good information about weight and the affect on flight time. Here's something for some of you to consider....and save yourself $80 in the process. Standard landing gear = 44g. Simonsays foldable landing gear 88g(not the V2). The new stuff I just bought off infinity hobby (DJI carbon fiber adjustable landing gear, advertised at 94g).....108g. Just putting it out there for whats it worth.......

I wish there was a giant excel spreadsheet where we could share and compare accurate battery weights, accessory weights, what works and what doesn't work....propellors, motors, gimbals, flight times, transmitters, receivers, FPV, antennas, etc. It can get awful expensive trying this all out yourself. Like Martcerv I like to try out things for myself...so i can control the research and elements of my experiments and see for myself what is working and trying to figure out why.....but it's very hard on the pocket book. I have probably spent as much money on things that I will not use or didn't work (props, landing gears, gimbals, dual battery mounts, and batteries) as the cost of the phantom itself. I'd be embarrassed to say the exact amount and i stopped keeping track of expenses long ago. I still learn something almost everyday reading posts shared by the many phantom pilots that are out there.....and I thank those who contribute proven information. I am a retired military pilot, so i've got time at this point in my life to putz around with all this stuff.

I have tried many types of batteries, 2200, 2500, 2700, 2800, 3200, 5000, 6400 and even an 8000 that i now use on my F550. I have used storm, thunder power, venom, DJI, enerland, onyx, turnigy, and zippy. I could have bought two more phantoms for what i've spent on batteries alone...lol! But it is exciting and interesting to see where the experiments will take me. These are ALL 3s 11.1v batteries BTW. The best all around flight time on my phantom (weighing currently 1504g) is about 11 minutes with dual 2700 storms and 9050 GWS tri props. This is with fat shark fpv, hero3, IOSD, and a few other odds and ends. The point is I love doing this....if i didn't i would have stopped long ago. I have had a couple fly aways early on....there are so many variables on what not to do....for instance I thought it would be fun to land my phantom on the hood of the car one day. Shut it down....refired it up and took off....what i didn't realize is the affect all that metal had on my compass..... i almost lost it right there but quickly realized what had happened...and brought her down and did the compass dance, fired back up and worked perfect. Another time I had my wifi on my gopro on and was controlling the gopro with my smart phone while flying the phantom....not a good idea....you can see exactly what effect a wifi has on your transmitter if you have a dx8 like mine you can see your transmitter/receiver signal strength...as soon as i started messing with the phone to gopro wifi the signal faded in and out affecting control of my phantom.....again avoided yet another disaster.

I say all these things to share with my fellow phantom pilots in considering where to fly and what to try and not to try. I am glad too of the stories others have shared....i enjoy all the readings and information. Lets keep the wealth of information flowing!
 
Hehe another crash test dummy like me :lol:

I do like to try things out not necessarily just for the sake of trying them but to get the most out of the setup I can, like you I have a bunch of stuff that doesnt work very well. Was still worth a try I think as testing things for yourself especially some things many others dont try because someone on the internet said it wont work on a purely theoretical basis. I like to do practical tests as theory only goes so far and with many things I have been quite surprised with my results compared to some other's theories.

I am quite happy with my setup as is though (bigger batts would be nice but I dont really want to go dual batteries) I have one more test to do soon apart from a new gimbal. I managed to break my vtx antenna hanging it very low has advantages but too low and hitting the ground with it has a nasty disadvantage. I did get well over 2km range using the DJI cloverleafs but finding replacements has been very tricky. I did get someone to order them in for me but they will be a couple weeks so I figured why not order a set of the IBcrazy bluebeam antennas. These are all the rage online but I was amazed at the range the DJI antennas give and the quality of the image so I wonder if the bluebeams are as good or better.

I will have the bluebeam antennas later this week so will fly them until I get the DJI antennas and it will be interesting to compare the performance of the 2. Once I have both antenna setups I will do some proper range tests, the bluebeams are rated highly by many and cost more so I wonder if this also shows in real world testing.
 
One can only hope that "cost" means something! Hopefully it will bring positive gains in both clarity and distance!
 
Seeing as my results with the dji fpv have done better then what ive seen with most 5.8 setups that arent using a specific long range antenna with a base station I am not expecting better results. I can get the other antenna by the weekend I figured id want something to fly fpv with my new gimbal.

I was pretty much told by some suppliers that the dji antennas are crap and I should buy theirs instead. Then when I asked if they can do over 2km range they say no only about 1.5km max but as I have gone well beyond that using my osd and google earth to check distances. It will be interesting to see if its the transmitter or antenna from dji that makes it do so well.

There are cheaper cloverleaf antennas but I figured I may as well just get the best alternative rather then waste money getting a cheaper option.

If the bluebeams do really well I can always cancel the dji antennas too. :lol:
 
@martcerv if you don't like the ibcrazy one's, I'll buy them off you, I was going to buy a set on eBay ($60) but I've got a cheap set for now doing the job fine, but I'm not flying more than ~250m either (I'm still a wuss!). I plan to add a few more items and refine others, once I have the set up I'm happy with, I'll start cutting weight where I can!

The hardest thing about comparing different mods is the variables change from phantom to phantom and even flight to flight! For a perfect example of what I mean, recently I tried a set of tri-blade props on my phantom, however this weekend I'm planning on using my phantom to get some footage, but I'll be using the "standard" 8" props!

When I flew with the tri blades, I had about a 15sec flight, ending in a crash in my neighbours back yard! I'm not blaming the tri-blades for the crash (could have been a few things) but ill be using the set up I know that works (for this weekend) and then test out the 3 bladed props sometime next week . . .

If I had tried a different mod (an OSD w/GPS, landing gear etc) I may have blamed the crash on the newest mod, and not something like not having done the compass dance, or my bad prop reaming skills :(
 
I run the blue beams and have been to about 1km with no problems. I haven't pushed it as far as it can go but i'm sure martcerv will find that out before me. Got a mini osd on the way and hoping it will work with the 600mw immersion vtx. Can't seem to find much related to installing the mini osd with immersion vtx. There are 2 cables coming from the zen yellow (vid) and black (ground) going into the vtx, so i'm guessing that I connect those to the mini osd video out and ground. Any help would be appreciated but i'll probably work it out. I seriously cannot fit any more stuff inside the phantom or it will burst.
 
Also really enjoyed the experience of building and bettering something that flies! I have never been into electronics or rc gear until one day when I popped down to my local camera shop to get a gopro and walked out with a phantom and gopro. Has been a very sharp learning experience over the last few months. I built a friend an f550 the other day with all the fruit, something I would have scratched my head at 4 months ago. Awesome :lol:
 
thetac said:
after reaming the props did you balance them? Just curious....

No, no I didn't . . .

That flight was doomed from before I put the battery in, had a bunch of friends watching lol. I think I may have reamed one prop a little to big and it didn't grip with the motor well enough, when I took off, I had to correct with the right stick full right to keep it in hover (few a few seconds) from there it was pilot error combined with whatever caused the initial problem. It may have been the compass with an issue too? I'd used an 8mm drill bit to drill the hole, and used the dji prop nuts without washers etc, I'm not sure if the nuts bottomed out and wouldn't hold??
 
I dont want to take over this thread as I think thetac's original suggestion of a database of sorts would be a good thing. Especially weight wise as most things I have bought have actually been under the weight listed such as the storm 2700mah batteries. These I think were listed around 230g but mine are under 200g, The zippy flight max 2800 were listed around 230g so I hoped they were under 200g but ended up close at around 227g each.

Same with props and such where I have tried many but most were just one off test flights as they didnt work as well as others.

Drifill with your crash on the triblades, if you drilled out the hole not very well and had a prop that was not on very tight allowing it to slip a little this could easily cause a crash like you had. The NAZA will add power to the prop to compensate but if under torque it slips then it will still have less lift then the others and likely cause complete loss of control.

This is the antennas I ordered http://www.perthrc.com.au/5.8-ghz-blueb ... crazy.html I have heard good things about his stuff and have watched most of his videos and read lots of info. The range I got out of the DJI antennas was pretty impressive and made flying inside 1.5km very safe so Id hope that these antennas are at least as good.
 
Probably the most common cause of an instant crash is......props put on wrong...revolution-direction-wise. After lift-off and then problems hovering and responding to stick...then more likely compass problem needing re-calibration dance. I speak from experience. Yes, the tri-blades need 8 mm drilling...of the center core...but you inserted the 8 mm inserts in the bottom...and same or smaller on the top-side of the prop....right????? There should be a good firm fit to the motor shaft when nut tightened.

But I like the idea of the Original Poster...a cumulative info spreadsheet on all the various categories of mods. Say....gimbals----make----weight---- any required hardware pairing.....setup/tuning support....function rating....common problems...etc. And so on. The same can/should be done for landing geat, fpv transmitters, antennas....cameras....GPS trackers....etc.. Wouldn't THAT be nice.
 
I totally agree with you Peter.....you could reaffirm info that was posted or use it as a guide in making decisions about upgrades for your phantom! I can't tell you how much money that would have saved me....but if we could figure a way to do this maybe it could lower my future expenses!!
 

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