X450 Quadcopter
New Motors & Battery
Since my last post, the new motors and 8000mAH battery have arrived and been fitted. Compared to the last motors, these are monsters! The battery’s also much bigger and the whole quadcopter looks much more substantial as a result:
Here’s a quick reminder of what ecalc estimated with this setup (650KV/8000mAH/1047 Gemfan props):
The all-up weight ended up being slightly higher than what that calculation was based on and the actual hover time reflects that, coming in at 14 minutes on the nose. The new motors, unlike the old ones, didn’t even break a sweat during the flight and were still cool to the touch on landing. The battery and ESC were mildly warm but clearly not under any strain.
Based on this result, I’m going to call the upgrade a success. If the ecalc estimates hold, a pair of 11x5.5 carbon props will bring hover flight time to over 20 minutes and push the thrust:weight ratio near 2:1 which will make the flight characteristics even better so I’ll be ordering those soon. Which just leaves the FPV/pilot’s camera gimbal to design and some final wiring to do.
Anyway, as I said in my last post …
Posted on 22 September 2016
