The WWVi Model UAV Lab

First, the box was crushed in shipping and so I was worried that things might be damaged

But they were not, it was a bit of a mess inside...

Most things were wrapped in heavy plastic, but most bags were already open? Strange.

in fact I was surprised to find everything intact and even impressive, the protective paper was already removed from all the parts, which is a relief because that is a lot of work taking the paper off the parts, not to mention very messy. but that was done. A quick check and all the parts seem to be here.

I did a quick count and all parts seem to be accounted for, the arms are 15mm brushed aluminum and undamaged as were all the parts.

So I began to build, using the main bottom plate and top plate first,

attaching the 15mm standoffs to the small plate and the 25mm standoffs to the main plate with m3 6mm hex screws. the hardware seems to be nice.

Next I attached the main leg struts and brace them with 25mm standoffs

Next the 25mm bolts to hold the arms go in.

On go the arms

And the plates go together

we add M3 nylocks, and the arms are in.

I was pleasantly surprised when I I stood the frame on its legs without feet, that it stood perfectly balanced.

I imagine the keeping this thing balance with motors will probably be easy

Ok thats it for tonights build session.

So first off, for this session I cracked open 6 new ESCs.

Then I soldered 24cm Silicone wire extensions on the ESCs so I can leave them in the main body and extend them out to the motors.

The female bullets on the ends and shrink tube on splices and connectors, Next was to solder them to my new cheap distribution board, which I am really liking, I got them here:

http://www.goodluckbuy.com/multicopter-multi-tri-copter-power-battery-to-8-esc-connection-board.html

All the ESCs are now soldered to teh PDB

All Extensions are now on.

The wires are coded such that each middle wire is a different color, so the ESC to motor wiring goes

A1 - R B R
A2 - B R B

B1 - B R B
B2 - R B R

C1 - R B R
C2 - B R B

This simplifies the process of reversing direction on a motor by having one wire a different color, so swapping any black and red reverses and is less confusing, also when looking at the motors, one motors wil have two reds and the other motor will have 2 blacks, making it easier to figure out which ESC connects to which motors when its all wired up.

Then I removed the FC and mounted the PDB instead, 

it was tough feeding everything down into the frame, but I got it in there, then put the FC on top.

However this is NOT going to work, as there is not enough room to mount the next deck and still pliug the ESCs and RX on the FC, so I will have to try recucing the space between FC and the PDB. Also there is a minor alignment problem as you can see the standoff on the bottom right is crooked.

I will be taking a break on this model for a bit, since I cant fly it outside right now anyhow and will be finishing up the Nano copters, RD22 and RD23.