After a lot of tweaking and a LOS maiden I had the fpv maiden of the Z-84 last weekend. I think think this would be a good 'travel wing'.
After some issues launching and a couple of broken props I added some elevator reflex up and off it went! By this time the weather had turned with the wind picked up; I suspect gusts were in 20-25mph range. Plus some light rain.
Setup:
3S 3000mah Lion battery, 20A max current (homemade with 18650 HG2 cells)
Cobra 2204/32 1960kv (max 13A current)
HQ 6x4.5 bullnose prop (the last prop!)
Hitec HS65MG servos
Castle Creations Talon 15A ESC
Vector w/ GPS v1 (both de-cased)
FrSky X4R-SB
VTX FX799T-2 5.8g 200mw w/ built-in (crap) mic
HS1177 camera
AUW of 470g, of which 150g is the battery. CG at the nubs.
Main mods:
Moved control linkages to top of wing
Moved motor mount back due to smaller motor
Amp draw at launch was way above spec, 17A!
The Vector did a good job with the frame at default values - tested Gyro, RTH, 2D Hold and loiter, all good. Just need to tweak the gains to reduce the bobbing up and down.
Total mAh consumed was ~1400mah for a 12km total flight which I thought was pretty good in those conditions and with no throttle management at all. On Monday I had a quick 10 min flight at much better conditions to trim it out and managed 10.1km at 940mah, again with not much throttle management.
Plane responsiveness is 'ok'; I haven't yet managed to get that 'locked in' feeling from it yet.
Next steps are to (1) get it a little nose heavy at the nubs to check if it flies better and then (2) install a (de-cased?) Runcam 2 for HD recording.
Raw DVR from the 1st rainy and windy flight below. Not the most exciting video I have to say...
https://youtu.be/fQT89V-vcjA
Highlights:
00:10 LOS Flying
01:18 Testing RTH
02:50 Testing Loiter
03:31 Loitering to walk to screen
05:00 Plane bobbing
05:45 same
06:30 same
07:50 serious bobbing
08:05 stall, flip and recovery
09:50 flying sideways at power off
wow great spec for such a tiny plane. under 500g with a full autopilot?! nice.
Lion batteries are certainly helping you out there! for really light builds they certainly seem to be the future. what sort of current draw can you safely get from them?
The cell I used is a 18650HG2 with 3000mah capacity. I can handle up to 20A current draw. There are bigger capacity one at 3500mah (18650MJ1) but these are limited to 10A.