Parts

Transmitter: Flysky FS-i6S 2.4GHz 10 channel transmitter

Monitor: Eachine 7″ LCD5802S 40CH Raceband 5.8GHz diversity receiver

Charger: iMAX B6 + Deans to XT60 adapter

NOTE: This charger doesn’t come with a power supply. I managed to find an old IBM laptop power supply which can supply 16V at 4.5A. I could have otherwise brought a 12V 5A power supply like this.

Assembly

Roughly I assembled everything in this order:

Attached the long metal standoffs to the frame.

Attached the nylon M3 hex spacers to the frame to fit the PDB and FC on.

Assembled the top frame.

Shortened the wires on the brushless motors and soldered them to the ESC’s.

Mounted the brushless motors to the frame, also installing the motor guards at the same time.

Mounted the PDB to the frame.

Shortened the ESC power wires and soldered them to the PDB.

Attached wires to the VCC and GND pads on the PDB that’ll go the FC so it can monitor lipo voltage.

Attached wires to the 5V output on the PDB to power the FC.

Attached wires to the 12V output on the PDB to power the VTX.

Mounted the FC (Flight Controller) on top of the PDB.

Soldered the 5V output wires to the FC to power it.

Soldered the four ESC signal and ground wires to the FC.

Plugged in the lipo voltage wires to the VBAT connector on the FC.

Mounted the Flysky receiver on top of the FC (Had to drill the holes on the PCB out to 3mm).

Connected GND, 5V and CH3 from the IO_2 connected on the FC to the GND, 5V and iBUS on the Flysky receiver.

Filed down the top frame pieces as they hit the FC when installed.

Zip tied the VTX to the top frame.

Completed

The completed quad flies really well. It’s my first quad so I’ve not got anything to compare it to, other than my older days when I used to fly T-Rex 450’s/600’s – but quads are a much different beast to them.

It flies awesome in wind which is great because I live in the windiest city in the world. It also does very well in crashes (I’ve been crashing A LOT), only bent blades and cracked my 5.8GHz antenna so far.

The power to me is just crazy and that’s just on 3S lipos! But I’ll certainly be grabbing some 4S lipos to try out soon.

Also I’d like to quickly mention the Flysky i6s; this thing is damn nice! Feels very high quality and has all your usual settings although only supports 5 models which is a bit of a shame but not an issue for me at this point in time.

Upgrades/Improvements

There were a few things I was unhappy about:

The top frame; even after filing down, was still hitting the FC and eventually broke a header off the FC during a flight.

The tail light wasn’t using programmable WS2812 LED’s.

The VTX was hard to get to, difficult to push the buttons and see the LED’s.

To improve things I removed the M3 nylon standoffs under the PDB and put some smaller plastic washers so it was only lifted up 3mm from the frame instead of 6mm. This lower height gave the top frame clearance from the FC so it no longer pressed on it. I also decided to rotate my PDB 90 degrees so the battery leads hang over the edge (Should’ve done this to begin with).

I purchased the Matek LED tail light WS2512B which has 8 addressable WS2812 LED’s and a buzzer. This allowed me to use the LED’s to show the lipo voltage (green through red), and use the buzzer to let me know when my lipo voltage is getting low. I had to 3D print an adapter to mount the Matek LED tail light as it wasn’t big enough to fit in the Realacc X210 V+ frame.

The VTX I moved to the top of the frame so I could more easily interface with it. Unfortunately it’s much more exposed and could get more easily damaged, however I’ve crashed a few times and not had any issues with it.

I also put some adhesive foam on the bottom of the battery plate to help soften the blow of harder landings.

Future Improvements

I cheaped out on the FPV camera and while it works, it has bad performance in low light conditions. I will eventually buy a Runcam FPV camera like the Runcam Swift.

The Realacc X210 frame is very nice however the top part of the frame has little room for everything so it makes it a bit of a squeeze. Also it’s a bit scary mounting the battery on the bottom as the battery becomes the landing gear, any really hard landings could squash some lipo cells (although so far I’ve not done any damage to my lipos). I may change frames to the TC-R220 as it has much more room for everything and would be easier to work on, battery mounts to the top as well.

The Aomway FPV antennas seem much more durable than my current antenna so I’ll probably pick some of them up soon.

I’ve managed to break off a small capacitor on one of my ESC’s due to a blade bending in a crash and then spinning around and hitting it. Don’t be silly, wrap your ESC’s fellas. In the future I’m going to wrap the ESC’s and frame arms in a large bit of heatshrink tube to keep them safe.

The 7″ LCD 5.8GHz receiver is really nice quality and great for following along with friends who are flying. However I think I’ll be getting some FPV goggles as I find it hard to stay concentrated looking at the relatively small screen.

Also in mentioning the LCD screen; I’m sadly lacking a OSD (On Screen Display) so I’ve brought the Matek PDB-XPW (to get current draw measurements) and the Minim OSD to overlay some beautiful info over my video feed. I’ll update this post when I get those installed on my quad.