Ycopter Quad 350 Review

Ycopter 350 Quad Kit review

This is a small review of Ycopter Quad kit. You can have a look at this neat kit on the attached articles so as on Ycopter Website. 

If you want to have some more inflight videos of the copter, look for Ycopter videos in the article section.

Modifications

SunnySky X2212 1400kv motors on 3S

The main change I did on the copter was to power it with 3S batteries. I have 6 or 7 of them in my box and I thought it would be good to use them for this copter. In order to have more or less the same rotation speed of the propellers, I have choosen SunnySky X2212 KV1400. I have order a set of four motors by Banggood. But I received motors from two different manufacture batch. You can notice it on the writing on them. Unfortunately the two from one batch have a little play in the bearings. I have complained about the issue by Banggood. Support by Banggood is very good. They have sent me straight away two new motors without any discussion!

Motor supports

The second modification I had to do is on the motor supports. If you use the 16x19 pattern with counterholes predrilled for the NTM2826, the motor cables will come out 90° to the arms. Ycopter tip for that is to use the non precounterbored plate and to drill the counterholes on the other side so that you can rotate the pattern by 90°.

The SunnySky motors have a little bit longer shaft so that the I had to drill a little bit the arms to be sure that the shaft would not have friction with the arms.

Wire harness

For clean wiring I use orange wire mesh guard. I use 8mm one and I terminate it with a 10mm piece of shrink tube. Inside the wire mesh guard I have my 3.5mm bullet connectors. I have put a piece of 14mm shrink tube around my 3 bullet connectors together as well in order to guarantee their connection.

In the same idea to ensure to 4 motors connectors on the KK2, I have put a piece of 14mm shrink tube on the four connectors. It holds them together and prevent any of them from disconnecting.

M2.5 Lock Nuts

One other small change I made from the manual is to put locknuts on the 6 M2.5 screws on the clean board. Even though there is very few vibration there, I prefer to put lock nuts instead of normal nuts with loctite. I had to dismount that plate already several time. 

Receiver support

I use FrSky D4R-II receiver in CPPM mode. The support is a 3D printed part bolted with a small M2 screw to the clean plate. On the belowed picture I have the current sensor connected on the telemetry port. This was for debug purpose, see below for the story.

GoPro Support

One goal of this frame was to carry the GoPro in its waterproof case without props in the FoV. And it works well. But for my GoPro I like to record with the Narrow FoV anyway. For the GoPro support, I use the fiber glass support screwed with 4 M3 Nylon screws through the clean plate. The attachment system has made its proof already as I had a hard back landing and the screw broke but nothing else in the frame. For the time I fly with the waterproof original case as its winter here and I have from time to time snow. But as soon as spring will be back, I will fly with fiber glass frame as it is much lighter than the original one and protect it as good from crash and scratch.

FPV Gear

For my FPV gear, I use a 200mW Tx hold with velcro on the clean plate. The camera is a cheap 720TVL 1/3" CCD camera. Ther camera support is a 3D printed part bolted with a nylon screw on the clean plate.

Motor wires routing

The last change I did according to building manual was to route the front motor wires between the two dirty plates. It is forseen to have the cable coming out from the top dirty plate and then to the side. I found that my motor cables were touching the clean plate. I had fear that this would transmit some vibration from the dirty to the clean side. So having them coming out on the side avoid that problem.

On the following picture you can see the two rear motor harness  come out between the clean and dirty plates. The harness for the front motors come out between the two dirty plates and give a better clearance to the clean plate.

First motor run

On the first test, I had a very weird issue, you can see it in this video

I tried many things to solve. The weirdst behaviour came when I plugged three of the ESC to the KK2 and the last one to a servo tester. The only thing they had in common was the power distribution. When I raised throttle on the servo tester, one of the motor was spinning. But when I raised more the signal, suddenly the KK2 bipped and all the motors started to spin crazily! Diagnostic, one of the ESC was defect. After having changed it, no more issue.

Maiden flight Propeller choice

I have put Multistar 8x4.5E carbon propellers. They had almost the same specifications as the one recommended by Ycopter. (Remember he recommends 4S 1100kV motors and I use 3S 1400kV ones). And they look great on the quad. But those propellers were a really bad choice! What happened is that with the 3300mAh 3S battery I had low voltage alarm kicking in after about 1m30 of hovering flight time!!

Even though this quad is purposed to go fast, small and carry a GoPro in its original case without vibration, the flight time was undecent!

So I read a bit more about those propellers. They have a very bad efficiency! What was happening is that they draw so much current that the battery voltage was dropping very fast. After 1m30 of flight I had drawn about 700mA! Hovering current was about 35A!

Even though I knew I could pull a bit more out of the battery, I was afraid that one cell voltage would drop too low quickly and would be destroyed in flight.

So my second propeller choice are the 8x4 APC Style Propellers. And they work great! Now I hover at about 22A which is still a lot but gives me more decent flight times. I have also removed the LiPo low voltage alarm from my balance plug and have now only the low voltage alarm from the KK2. As it pulls much current the voltage goes quickly low but it doesn't mean that the battery capacity is low. After I land the voltage quickly comes back to a higher level. I have lower the alarm level to 10,1V and I can fly about 5min now having drawn 1800mAh. I will lower it a bit more to be able to fly around 2400mAh of my 3300mAh battery. 

Conclusion

The frame is of a very good quality. I can go with about 6m30 of flight time pro battery as long as I can fly fast, clean and stay in a small frame.

The dampening system works perfectly. Even if I can hear that my two front motors make a very bad noise and should produce a lot of vibrations on the dirty part, the image stays cristal clear in any situation.

One little thing I noticed if you want to make a straight climb at full throttle. As the GoPro is on the right side, it makes the copter unbalanced in its roll axis. Therefore the copter rolls a bit to the right when applying full power. But this is in a very rare situations.

Thanks to Ycopter for the kit quality keep going with perfect quality kit developpment!