Fitting the ESC to the Motors

The tips I have suggested so far have all been tried during the pre-assembly stage. I powered up the power distribution board a few days back just to check all was well before starting soldering. Unfortunately two of the LED's failed to light up.

On closer inspection one of the LED's was missing the diffuser and as they are fitted in pairs its partner failed to light. I have been pretty careful handling the board so I don't think I was to blame. I emailed Blackout in sunny Aus and they said they would send out a replacement board immediately. Great service!!

I knew it would take a while for the replacement board to show up so I ordered a replacement LED off ebay and considered a repair. The LEDs are so small I couldn't even see them without the aid of my glasses and a loupe. Damien (my son) came to the rescue and successfully replaced the broken LED so if I mess the soldering up or destroy this PDB in a crash I will have a replacement.

Here's the repaired PDB after my first job of soldering the ESC to the motors. After positioning the striped ESCs I cut the motor wires down, it didn't feel right cutting the wires so short but remember it's all about saving weight and maximising efficiency.

 The ESC have had their motor wires removed and the shrink wrapping and heat sinks. Three of them have had the +ve and ground wires removed from their connection to the CC3D board. Only one ESC BEC circuit is needed to power up CC3D board.

Next job is to fit new shrink wrap ver the bare ESCs.

And here it is. Looking nice and tidy. Soldering ESCs to the PDB up next.

Blackout Mini H Quad Pre Assembly

By the time the quad frame had arrived from Australia (only took about 5 days) I had already got a few parts for the build. I am not going to go into technical details about all the individual parts, just a brief description of what they are and what they do. I much more enjoy the actual build process and will try to give some tips and ideas for the best way to put one of these together.

Here's a pic of the first pre-assembly. As you can see a few bits are getting their first fit. The motors are T-Motor MN1806. There were no suitable bolts supplied for mounting the motors so I used some M2 x 5mm stainless socket head screws purchased off ebay. The flight control board is Openpilot CC3D by readymaderc and the video TX is a 5.8ghz 600mw Immersionrc unit.