Over the weekend just past I got my first solid session flying FPV under my belt. This of course means, as the title of this post also states, that my FPV build of my 215 Hopper design is complete.

The build wasn’t quite as smooth as I had hoped for a few of reasons:

1. The new routing for the motor wires, through the arms, came up short. An extra 10mm or so and I would have run them as they were. As it is though I ended up extending the wires. This also made soldering them to the ESC’s a simpler task so it was a good move in the end. Despite the extra complexity in the build I am very pleased with how this aspect of the design turned out.
2. My initial design for the base plate of the camera mount fouled on the zip ties that hold the ESC’s in place. I had to shorten that and print the new design.
3. My initial design for the video transmitter carrier fouled on the heads of the screws  that mount the flight controller. This was actually 2 errors rolled into one. I absentmindedly assembled the frame back to front with respect to the flight controller. i.e. the flight controller is in the front half rather than the rear half. This doesnt make any difference flight wise but it would have meant the carrier wouldn’t have fitted up even if I had accounted for the flight controller screws.

The second failure with the video transmitter carrier design is also the same failure as with the camera mount. It is a lesson that I have learnt the hard way on to many occasions and it is thus; If you are using CAD use it fully, every detail should be represented in your model. If you leave something out, either intentionally or inadvertently it will come back to bite you at a later stage of the project. In the case of the camera mount I didn’t even have the holes for the zip ties let alone the zip ties themselves. For the transmitter carrier I didn’t have the screws in my model. Thankfully having the 3D printer on hand meant that I could correct these errors in the space of an evening and was ready to fly on saturday morning.

With the new build came new batteries, I am now flying on 4S 1400mAh batteries (hobbyking) and loving it. I went with the higher discharge rate option, it is perhaps overkill but it means I get much further through the capacity of the battery before voltage sag starts hitting my warning levels.

Other than the mentioned hiccups the build was much the same as the ‘base model’ 215 Hopper as I detailed here. I will put together a similar writeup for the FPV model in the near future. The design files will also be available. On top of that I now have a big stack of PCB’s for the build which I will make available for purchase. A full frame kit with hardware and 3D printed parts may also be an option.