Ok, so we've done first impressions in Part 1 and taken a closer look at most of the components in Part 2 but I'm guessing the qestion everyone is really wanting answered is...how does it fly?
At the end of Part 2 I shared the maiden flight. The stock tune is far from optimal but totally flyable - with a bit of a boost to the rates in the FC it's even possible to do some acrobatics with it. But I was flying on a big 2200 pack for that maiden and I suspected that was limiting the performance quite a bit. For the next test flight I swapped over to a 1300 and I put on some HQ 6x4.5" props to see if I could get more of the performance I was expecting. I also took off the light bar to shave a bit of weight.
Better. The stock tune is still holding it back, but 112g or so I lost by swapping to a smaller pack and loosing the light bar definitely gave it a bit more pep. Unfortunately 3 of my 4 1300 packs died on me almost as soon as I got the quad and the one taht didn't die has seen far better days.
I got some new packs on order, but still wanted to keep doing some testing. The DAL "Indestructible" props are getting a lot of attention lately and the ones I ordered from surveilzone a few months back finally showed up (Long story, but it took 3 shipments to get them to me!) so I put on some of the DAL 6x45" props to try. Overall I wasn't very impressed with these props - they do seem to take some good hits without breaking, and they do seem to be fairly efficient since I got a much longer flight out of them. But they're a big step backwards for performance and they took more work to balance than any other props I've tried (even gemfans aren't normally this far out!)
For a beginner the DAL props might be a good choice though as long as they can handle balancing them and don't mind the floatiness I experienced with them. I've been trying to find out what the stock props are and there are some indications that they might be a new DAL design - so maybe DAL is improving. The stock props really did impress me though, I crashed them hard into pavement and my cinder block wall several times without damaging them. Performance wise the stock props beat the DAL's but weren't as nice as the HQ's. Personally I like a nice aggressive prop that can help me recover with fast throttle punches and the DAL's just don't do that. But this is a quad review not a prop review so let's get back to it!
The stock props seems to be video adverse. The first two flights I did with them didn't save on my mobius for some reason. The light was blinking like it was recording...but when I brought the camera back inside nothing on the card :( I did finally catch a short flight with the stock props...but it was to be the last flight on the stock props:
So long stock props :( I'd love to get more of them but emax doesn't list them as replacement parts and my inquiries to them haven't given any answers as to who manufactured them or where to get more. Bummer.
I still haven't been able to do any FPV with the emax at this point due to the stock TX not being 32ch as advertised and not covering the frequencies covered by my RX. So I figured I'd do the next best thing and try out the mobius mount for some on-board video.
Well, I'm not the most stable cinematic pilot without FPV goggles but the video was better than I expected. Jello was minimal and with a better tune (Yep, still on the default PID's here) this could deliver some very nice video. After charging the pack I wanted to get one last flight in...but the sprinkers came on over my neighbors yard (which I fly over with her permission). Well...let's take one for the team, put my mobius at risk and see how well that conformal coating protects the circuitry on this guy!
It survived! It got pretty wet a few times, not soaked but rather damp. Wish I had turned the yaw rate up a bit higher to help toss some of the water off :) The conformal coating did it's job and protected the circuitry just fine. I did have to do some cleaning afterwards since out here even our water has dust in it and leaves behind a mess - but no big deal :)
Finally I lucked out and caught a sale on some Tattu 45c 1300 packs - let's put my old tired Turnigy 30C 1300 aside for a bit, go back to the HQ props, and see how it does with a nice fresh higher C pack!
There's the sweet spot! Now it's just the tune holding it back!
Most people seem to immediately flash this guy over to cleanflight and there are some suggested PID's floating around for the luxfloat PID2 controller on there. That doesn't help with the stock baseflight install though. I was going to spend some time dialing in the tune on the stock firmware with the stock props...but once I broke the stock props I lost a lot of motivation for that. I may still do it but I'm really itching to get CF on here instead and giving that a go.
Once I finally got official confirmation that the included VTX would not work with my boscam RX I gave in and swapped over to a cheap eachine FPV setup I picked up awhile back. It worked - but the CMOS eachine camera left a lot to be desired. (I've heard the stock camera on here is also somewhat lacking being CMOS...but since it uses a different connector and the stock VTX won't work for me I haven't been able to try the stock camera either yet.) Finally I swapped in one of my Sony Super HADII cameras and went out for some FPV flying.
Unfortunately I still don't have any FPV video to share. I live in the desert and seldom get rain...but it's the end of monsoon season and we've been having horrible weather. If the wind isn't gusting to 45 then it's raining every day I've had available to fly the past month and a half :( And the few days I decided to just fly anyway despite the wind the local parks were all busy so I had to head to the desert. I love flying over the desert. But crashing in the desert is no fun. And with the high winds...I crashed fairly quick.
Ordinarially that's no big deal, I had lots of props with me afterall. But the desert means sand, and rocks. So one crash was all I got every trip out due to packing the motors full of sand :( They did survive though - once I got home and carefully cleaned them out with some compressed air, disassembly and careful cleaning. I'm not big on the clips emax uses on these 2204's but they're not horrible - just not my preference.
Conclusions
Ok, This has been three long posts now and I'm sure everyone is saying "So waht do you think of it already!"
Mechanically it's a very nice 280 sized quad. I don't know that I'd call it a race quad due to it's weight. With the AIO board I expected it to be lighter. It does make for a VERY clean build with lots of open space - but it's heavy and that hurts performance. It could make for a very fun spec class racing series with everyone flying the same quad to really let pilot skills shine - I'd love to see and partake in something like that! But I really wouldn't recommend it as a straight out race quad.
I also wouldn't recommend it to a beginner. It is sturdy and takes a lot of hard hits with no damage. But the video system left me underwhelmed and isn't easy for a beginner to modify. And despite being an ARF it requires quite a bit of configuration and setup to fly. Those are valuable things that a beginner should learn - but they're also a fairly steep learning curve. I'm not saying a beginner couldn't learn with this quad - but I don't think I'd suggest it unless they had a local mentor who's familar with naze32 based flight controllers to help them out. There are a number of videos on youtube though so don't rule it out completely.
In my opinion the sweet spot on this quad is someone with some experience who's looking to step up to something with more capabilities but doesn't want to have to build it themselves. The clean build also leaves lots of roof for payloads and experiemnts so for someone wanting to do something like strap on a RaspberryPi and Pi cam and try to develop some kind of auto-pilot based on that...it could be ideal.
If you've already learned on something like a small hubsan X4 or a Blade Nano (or something similar) and are feeling like you want to step up...this is a great step up at a very fair price. Though I would suggest being prepared to replace the FPV cam and possibly the VTX as well (the stock one does apparently work well with fatshark/immersion frequencies so if you've got a RX for those you will probably have far better luck than I did!)
There's a good community developing around this quad as well and emax has been listening to feedback and making changes (like the improved arms on mine compared to the first batch which were apparently somewhat weak.) So there's likely to be more upgrades and developments to come. I and a few others are already looking into flashing official blheli onto the AIO board's built in ESC's - I'd have done it already but the risk of damaging a $60 FC/ESC combination board has held be back for now. One of these days I'll get up the nerve and give it a go - I have enough spare ESC's on hand I could deal with frying the stock ones...I just really want to do some more experiments with the stock setup first!
Bottom line - I'm not aware of any other ARF/RTF quad that gives this much bang for the buck. There are cheaper options out there - but they aren't as nice, and there are nicer options out there - but they're a LOT more expensive. Despite some minor issues this is still a very nice overall package at a price that would be tough to beat by building your own. The cleanness and simplicity of the AIO board is also unrivaled at this price point.
So once again a big thanks to GearBest for providing this for review: http://goo.gl/28ZA8U
This is also available as a RTF setup with transmitter included here: http://goo.gl/8NOypn I don't have the RTF version so I can't really share any details about it.
If you want more details be sure to check out my thread in the forums where I update regularly as I continue to experiment with this quad. The weather is starting to get nicer so hopefully soon I'll be able to do more FPV with it as well!
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