Just saw you comment above about motors getting hot. I suspect your drone is fighting itself. Also, regarding “lighter batteries”. Like I said, lighter is less mAh, so going to a “lighter” battery won’t help, because it will have less power. If anything go to a heavier battery, which will have more capacity.
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Yes, exactly! Normally rear motors are much warmer than front ones, also I had plans to do Autotune someday and see how it goes, but many people told me not to do autotune on such a large aircraft. What would you recommend I do?
Use the CH6 feature to dial in the PIDs while in flight. Obviously roll and pitch are most critical. Set up CH6 and then dial it up slowly and the craft will start to shimmy. Then dial it back until you’ll feel the control start to get mushy. The sweet spot is somewhere in there.
isn’t this a DJI 450 frame?
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Yes it is a DJI 450 frame, but it weights almost 2kg. Also my variable potentiometers are centered like the ones on dji mavic controllers meant to control gimbal, so I can’t slowly change the values.
“and ignore everything dkemxr had to say.”
So it’s your contention that this craft will Hover, let alone fly, for 20 minutes?
TOW-1.56kg
Motors: 2212-1000kv
Props: 1045
Battery: 3S 5000mah
It’s already at a thrust/weight that is not optimum and he wants to add more weight. He’s claiming a hover throttle of 65%. Sound about right to me.
That is bad advise and it’s far from a large craft.Although Autotune on obsolete hardware/firmware (APM/AC3.2.1) can be dissapointing.
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Sorry Dave, I just thought you were getting into the weeds with the technical analysis, but I didn’t know Yaros was using his 450 to haul bricks. I also agree with your saying autotune shouldn’t be disregarded and a 450 is far from a large aircraft. I’ve built quads swinging 14" props. That’s a big (scary) aircraft! Tuning is a bit of an art, especially on a truly large craft.
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I have an S500 with for Emax 2213 935 KV Motors. I have camera fpv GPS LED lights and pretty much anything else I can cram on there. Suffice it to say it’s heavy for its class but it flies okay. I have a 5200 mAh 60 C battery. And I’m getting 10 to 15 minute flight times depending on the Wind. I use ardupilot and I have had to fiddle with the battery settings to get it correct. If your battery options aren’t set properly in ardupilot your controller will scream warnings at you that are not valid. Try watching the voltage and if it does not agree with the warnings go back into ardupilot or whatever you’re using and get the settings correct. This may or may not be the problem but I had the same issues when I set this up for the first time. So take it for what it’s worth
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I don’t understand where the mystery is here. With that hardware as described the TOW should not exceed ~1200g. Will it fly at heavier weight? Sure, but you are asking for a crash, which has been reported here countless times, due to insufficient thrust authority.
So, the expectation that this craft will fly much longer than has been reported is not realistic.
If you want to build a longer flying F450 then base it on 6S. I’m not suggesting this as a good option because the frames are crap but it can be done. Been there, done that try 4S.
The F450 is a great frame for what it is intended. We use them to test new concepts before porting to larger, more expensive, and more dangerous aircraft. With reasonable loads, 2212 motors, and 3s batteries, they consume about 22A in normal flight. A common battery configuration is two 2.2 Ah LiPo batteries. Good numbers for simple math – 20 minutes flight time. Use lithium ion 4S packs for more flight time.
What’s a reasonable load? What is it? What 2212 motors, what kV? OK, 3S 4400 mah capacity. What’s the simple math that makes this craft in this thread fly for 20 minutes? I simply don’t understand the logic here.
Hi Dave,
I was not sure how much the original poster understands about aircraft so I simplified the analysis to a measurement and simple math. If the aircraft draws 22 amps in fight, then with 4.4Ah capacity you get 20 minutes of flight. The original poster was using a 3S battery of somewhat larger energy, so probably a bit more than 22 amps with 10" propellers. The simple math is good for beginners because many LiPo batteries are sold based on “optimistic” energy capacity. Tools such as eCalc are pretty good with multicopters, in particular for exploring excursions from a baseline.
Ron
If there is a 22A draw a 4400mah battery would last 12 minutes totally consumed. ~85%, where you normally want to be, would be ~10 minutes.
The original poster is getting about what is expected given the actual details of the craft.
Can the OP please post a breakdown regarding the weight of their aircraft. I don’t understand why the aircraft’s empty weight is 1200g. I feel like an F450 should less (around 1kg) with nothing on it - but it has been a while since I have used one.
For what its worth I have an S500 setup with 250g of payload on it and a 4s 6000mAh battery. Total AUW is 1.75kg w/ the payload. Aircraft hovers at pretty much 50% throttle and I get around 20 minutes of hover at 85% battery usage. I am moving over to Li-Ion soon though - so I am looking forward to that.
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To say the truth, I have everything possible attached to the aircraft… FPV, Leds, Telemetry, Camera, Gimbal (soon), Power Monitor… and that weights much! So I guess that’s the reason of it being heavy
BTW don’t get confused, I am Yaros1 from another account 
If you components can take 4s - I would go with a 4s 3200 mAh battery. Should put your all up weight at around 1750g - which is roughly 50% throttle for a standard 4s F450/S500 setup. You can probable expect about 10 minutes of flight time at that weight with that sized battery.
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Hi,
So, I can share my own experiences about the F450 style camera quad with 3S LiPo. I have used that golden motors that you linked in, bat later I changed to SunnySky X2212 1400KV motors using 1045 carbon props on them. Just changing to carbon made some extra flight minutes, since these props are more rigid then the plastic ones. However, be very careful with them, when running, these are cutting like a lawnmower!
Also, I use the Hubsan 7000mAh 3S battteries, like this:
This gives about 15-18 min flight time, with about 1,8-2 kg full weight. Recently I have ordered a handful of LG 18650 high current LiIon cells, 3000mAh each, and I am planing to make a 3S pack from it, each cells containing 3 paralel 18650 batteries. That would give about 9000 mAh, with about 460g weight, nearly the same as the Hubsan battery. I hope that it will give about 25 min or more flight time.
If you use a gimbal, use a 2 axis plastic type, like the Walkera G-2D plastic version. It can be fragile, but it is light.
Also, check the PID settings, if there are any oscillation in the RPM of the motors (slow-fast-slow-fast cycles) during the flight, it can consume considerable amount of amps! In a cam-copter, you do not need sharp turning craft, lower the PIDs a little bit, or do an Autotune, and usually the values will be good!
All the best!
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