Phantom 3 Testing

Initial Testing and Battery Issues

So far, we have flown 15 times for a total of about 2 hours of flight time.  All of these flights have been tests.  Attempting to understand the camera as well as the flight characteristics of the quad.  We have flown it in 4 areas.  The local college, the edge of the city, a farm and a flying field.

After the initial testing using the 2 batteries that came with the Phantom, I made a point of signing up on Healthy Drones and uploading the flight logs to that location for parsing.  Before I dive into what I found in the logs, let's look at how to get to the logs on an iOS device.

We use an Apple iPad Air II as the mobile device for the Phantom.  Apple does not make it as simple as a file copy that Android does.  To get the logs, you must run up iTunes on your computer.  Here is a Youtube video that illustrates the process under Windows.

For the Mac, the process is the same except that the log files are in a sub-folder called FlightRecords.  You will still use the "Save To" button to get at them.  Once you have the files on your computer you can upload them to Healthy Drones for analysis, which is what we do.  Every flight.

Another thing we do is that we run the batteries to 50% for the first 10 cycles.  It has been said that this will extend the life of the battery.  I have yet to finish a single battery for 10 flights.  The battery that came with the Phantom has 6 charges on it now.

After the maiden flight, I uploaded the logs and noticed that the extra battery that came with the Phantom had 3 major voltage deviations.  What is that, you say?  Here is the description from Healthy Drones:

Major Deviations ©
Major deviation is when a cell differs more than 0.07v from the other cells.
Please note that normal batteries can have a few of these. 
An abnormal battery will:
    A) Have most of the major deviations in one cell
    B) There will be multiple major deviations per minute, and more than 10 total
    C) The deviations continue longer than 1 minute
If your battery shows all symptoms (example, another) then this is considered a more severe case of an inefficient battery and may impact the battery life.
If your battery has only 1-4 instances on the same cell, don't worry too much about it. If it has 5-10 instances - then continue to track and make sure it does not degrade:

So, when I checked this out, the main battery was fine.  No deviations.  The second battery had 3 deviations:

Had that been the limit of the issue, there would be no concern.  At the end of the day, what this impacts is the longevity of the battery.  Well, these batteries ain't cheap, so I want maximum longevity!

So, after doing a couple more flights and checking the logs, the major deviation never abated but instead increased massively.  So we called up B&H where we bought it and asked for an RMA.  Sadly, we were outside of the return window so B&H advised us to buy another new battery and return it with the old battery in the box.

Instead we opted to buy 3 batteries.  One to replace the bad one and 2 more to extend flight time.  I have flown the new batteries a few times and one of them has exhibited a couple of major deviations but I do not think they will be an issue.

I will be flying this afternoon using the 3 new batteries as well as tomorrow afternoon so I should get a good data sampling from those flights and we can confirm that the batteries are good.  Or not :)

I will blog about those results soon.  Until then, fly safe, fly legal but FLY!

A quick word about safety

Just a quick note here.  Remember, that even though you may think you are out  in the middle of nowhere and no threat to anyone with your quad, low flying aircraft in rural areas can be brought down by a quadcopter impact.

Until next time.  Fly safe, fly often, but FLY!

Sky Pilot

LOTS of learning and flying

Well, a LOT has happened since my last posting here.  In addition to the Kodo, the stable of fliers has expanded to include 2 Syma Toys quadcopters.  I wanted something bigger than the Kodo so that I could see it up in the sky.  The Kodo disappears at too low of an altitude for me.  Speaking of the Kodo...

I am on my 3rd Kodo.  The very first one I bought I took up too high and it vanished.  - *poof* - The next Kodo developed brain damage after about 3 weeks of daily flights.  Admittedly, I have crashed the Kodos pretty damn hard and frequently.  The second Kodo decides it will do a hard roll right after about 30 seconds of flight.  At that point its not controllable.

The 3rd Kodo is just basically worn out.  It needs a new set of motors.  I have them and I will get to putting them in when I have some time to break out the soldering iron.  The behavior is that at full throttle, the Kodo is just inches off of the ground...

Two New Quads from Syma

I bought a Syma X5SC Explorer II ($40) and a Syma X8C Voyager ($80).   These are both excellent little quadcopters for my practice purposes.  The X5SC is black and the X8C is bright orange.  As such, I have named them Black Betty and Pumpkin, respectively.

They both offer the same features and have the same camera on them.  A little 720p camera with bad quality.  But then, I did not buy them for their cameras.  I bought the 5C because of it's indoor flight abilities.  Good for inclement weather when you cannot fly outside.

The 8C is about the same size as the Phantom 3 and is orange.  VERY easy to see in the sky.  I have been able to fly it higher than any other quad except the Phantom.

It's pretty hard to miss the 8C in the air and it's size allows it to tolerate windy conditions.  Something neither the Kodo, nor the 5C can do.  The 5C must be flown in total calm.  I think it's flight software is buggy in this regard.  No matter as I bought it for indoors.

The controllers for these are sized like the quads.  The black one is smaller...  That is the only difference between them.  They both work on either quad.  Sadly, the range on the black transmitter is garbage...  The larger white transmitter that came with the 8C has great range though.

Initially I did not use the white transmitter and I was favoring the black one due to it's size and the fact that the battery door on the white transmitter could easily fall off.  The black one was screwed down.

However, I flew the 5C initially and noticed the occasional weird command error.  I would do a quick roll right and return to center to adjust a hover and the roll would not get cancelled so I would kill the throttle and then once it got closer I restored the throttle and the quad was fine.

When the same exact thing happened with the 8C, I knew it was a transmitter issue.  I put some gaff tape on the battery door and sure enough, the quads behaved as they should.

Both of these quads are a blast to fly.  I have tried to fly and practice every day and I continue to do that.  Here is a little bit of footage of the 5C in my backyard.

So these two quads have been keeping me busy.  I will put a montage of footage from them together soon and post it up.

The Phantom 3 Professional

Well, I took the Phantom 3 out for it's maiden flight.  My wife could not come due to her ankle injury.  It's amusing when you read forums about these things.  Most people post to say they have experienced some kind of failure.  A new owner or potential owner might chance upon these forums and conclude that the normal behavior of these devices is failure.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

I spent a few weeks scouting locations for flying the Phantom and, for that matter, the other quads as well.  My wife recently upgraded her iPhone from a 4S to a 6S+.  We also pickup up a new iPad Air II.  For the initial flights, I used my iPad Air (first gen) and it worked perfectly.

The local college has proven to be an interesting location and generally deserted at daybreak. I also found a vacant field adjacent to a commercial property that has been for lease for the last year or so.  I flew the maiden voyage at the field at dusk.

For the follow up flight, I wanted some more varied and interesting scenery.  For that I went over to the local college at daybreak.  I always prefer the light at sunrise and sunset.  The middle of the day has such a flat look to it.  I prefer the warmer colors and dramatic shadows.

Trimming your Transmitter

I thought I would close out with a little tip.  I was thinking about what I had learned over the past few months and what I determined was that when you are trimming out, you need to account for inertia.  And what I mean by that is this:

Let's say you are trimming roll.  The quad is drifting to the left.  You trim it out a few clicks but it's still rolling left.  Some of that is caused my the inertia of the quad's drift.  Roll the quad back to the right a little to kill the inertia.  If it still drifts, you still need to trim.  But maybe not as much as you thought :)

Stay safe and fly safe!