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Beginner to drone racing 4s or 5s?

Onyx

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Hello,
I'm new to drone racing and I'm picking out my components to build my first racing drone, but I am hesitating a lot between getting a drone that runs on 4s batteries or 5s? Will it make much a difference? Which one is better?
Thank you :)
 
Most of the world runs 3s and 4s, 5s is crazy power and fast, likely more than someone new can control. You're going to crash a lot in the beginning, 5s will make it worse and be more expensive to repair, 4s is plenty fast, but having something that is 5s capable will allow you to grow into it over time if the quad lasts that long.
IMHO
 
Just noticed you just joined the forum @Onyx, welcome!

If you're just starting 4s will be plenty fast, and really the whole world of mini quads just started with 4s not that long ago, and before that 3s was the cats meow. The new 5s capable stuff is definitely the new hot lick but also adds weight and cost. I will be getting my first 5s or 6s capable quad but will be running 4s on it for the foreseeable future.

What are you looking to build or buy? Is this your first race quad and have you ever flown one before?
 
Just noticed you just joined the forum @Onyx, welcome!

If you're just starting 4s will be plenty fast, and really the whole world of mini quads just started with 4s not that long ago, and before that 3s was the cats meow. The new 5s capable stuff is definitely the new hot lick but also adds weight and cost. I will be getting my first 5s or 6s capable quad but will be running 4s on it for the foreseeable future.

What are you looking to build or buy? Is this your first race quad and have you ever flown one before?
Thank you, i joined the forum yesterday, it's been very helpful :)
Oh ok, i hope it will be a blast with 4s too, maybe i'll get 5s in a year or two. Well since i'm a beginer, and have to buy everything, my budget isn't very high, need to buy the remote (the taranis Q x7), and the googles (i don't really know wich one to buy, bcs they are really expensive, the only one i saw that were looking good is the eachine EV100), and as for the drone i thinking of building the same one as the youtuber "UAVfutures" at 180 dollars that he posted on his youtube channel, and if not that one then i think i will buy the eachine wizard X220 that is very cheap at the moment.
What would you recommend me? :)
 
most of pilots run 4s, and as a beginner I recommend you run 45C Rating lipo
Oh ok thank you, i was thinking of getting the dinogy 1500Mah 4s at 65C, would you recommend me something else? :)
 
Eachine EV100's get bad reviews by people who know and it is all about the picture you get, not the cool factor. Do yourself a favor and get these instead, they are prefered by experts on this forum who know

Eachine Goggles Two 5 Inches 5.8G Diversity 40CH Raceband HD 1080p FPV Goggles for RC Drone

And no matter what the haters say, the Eachine Wizard x220 works pretty good. I bought 3 of them on sale for USD$99.99 and xsr receivers for USD$14.99 so I was in the air for less than $115.00 a piece, just had to wait on the slow boat from China to get the free shipping no tax benefit in cost.
Why 3, cause it's too easy to break the first 2 and I can't stand being grounded waiting on parts.
IMG_2271.jpg
 
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That battery will work fine, a bit heavier than a 1300 but you may get 30-60 seconds more flight time possibly. as you can see by the picture in previous I am running all 1300 adrenaline series cause I got them on sale for $20.87 each total cost so I couldn't pass up the sale.
 
I notice on the ev100 page that the original price was US$349.99, now they want US$99.99, that ought to tell you something, but I understand the desire for an affordable goggle style, display but the cheapest I'd buy in those is the Aomway's
 
Oh ok, though so too, people said that they were bad but wasn't really sure what to think, yeah aomways, i have heard a lot about them, they look great but they are way too expensive for me, i'm looking for something in the 80 dollars... would you recommend me anything else than the eachine gogles 2?
Oh ok, i will think about it, because it doesn't bother me to stay grounded for a week or two, i don't really have a big budget so i would like to buy/build a drone that will be durable, fast, agile and that i can fix if i break it while keeping the price as low as i can, so i'm still looking around a bit to be sure i'm not making mistakes :)
Nice picture, i can see that you really love racing drones! (all those batteries haha, i'm only gonna buy 2) :p
 
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(all those batteries haha, i'm only gonna buy 2) :p
Famous last words! ;)
Seriously, you need to see good to fly good. Spend the extra $20 from the ev100 price and get the Goggles 2, or else your $80 could be wasted money.
Let's ping @VirtueViolater to see what goggles he is using and how much they cost, or see what he would suggest at the low end budget.
 
Eachine EV100's get bad reviews by people who know and it is all about the picture you get, not the cool factor. Do yourself a favor and get these instead, they are prefered by experts on this forum who know

Eachine Goggles Two 5 Inches 5.8G Diversity 40CH Raceband HD 1080p FPV Goggles for RC Drone

Hi and welcome Onyx, I am also new here and I'm still waiting for the parts to build my first drone. I bought these Eachine VR-007 Pro VR007 5.8G 40CH FPV Goggles 4.3 Inch With 3.7V 1600mAh Battery for RC Drone as they were suggested to me here by a couple nice people. They are cheap and apparently they are pretty good. They have good reviews so fingers crossed.
View attachment 1759
 
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Oh ok ok no problem, i'm gonna buy the googles 2 then :) So i'm still looking around for budget drones and i just saw the furibee x215, what do you think of it? is it a good drone? Would you recommend me another drone that cost approximately 170 dollars? :p
 
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Oh ok ok no problem, i'm gonna buy the googles 2 then :) So i'm still looking around for budget drones and i just saw the furibee x215, what do you think of it? is it a good drone? Would you recommend me another drone that cost approximately 170 dollars? :p

There is so much to consider here... and this is just my humble opinion. But remember we can help point you in the right direction when you have trouble, so please don't feel too overwhelmed and do have persistence, if so then you can do this.

I have been in the electronics industry for 40 years and know how to solder very well, that made things a good bit easier on me than most. Below is simply my humble opinion and something to ponder as you make the decisions that are right for you.

First let me say one thing, things will break... ESC's will blow up and a motor bells will get bent, you will break a connector off your VTX and lose an antenna.
You will NEED to repair your quad(s) and test it before you can try again. In the beginning you will likely spend more time fixing than flying, I used to have to fix mine every single time I went flying in the beginning. You will need to consider that the initial cost of the bird is not all there is, you will need to buy replacement parts sooner rather than later.

I am helping a new forum member now get his new Furibee X215 ready to fly. He could not get the X215 receiver to bind to his transmitter. The X215 (and I suspect many other RTF quads) came with EU (European Union) firmware on the receiver and he needs the Non-EU version. So there he is with a fully assembled quad that will not bind and fly. He needs to learn and do some very specific things to get the quad and receiver updated so he can fly and focus on learning to control his new aircraft. I had to make a special cable and send it to him to get him started so that he did not have to tear apart his new bird, and cut and solder wires, just to try and fix it. But in the long run you can't avoid this type of work altogether or you will only fly once and then it will sit broken on a shelf.

When I got my ARF Eachine Wizard X220 which did not have a receiver (I wanted FrSky and not FlySky so I didn't go with the RTF version) I had to get the receiver separately and that made a huge difference since I could use the wiring harness and connector that came with the receiver to make the special cable and update the receiver before I installed the receiver and wire harness in the quad. The other person I am helping would have had to cut wires and make the special cable to get his updated so he could just bind it to the transmitter if I had not made and sent a cable to him.

You will NEED to be able to solder to be in this hobby, do you have a soldering iron and have some experience with soldering yet? There is nothing worse than arming after a crash and seeing one of your props just twitching instead of spinning like it should. You've blown an ESC and you will be grounded until you can get it fixed which means ordering and waiting on an ESC, un-soldering the old one and soldering the new one into place.

I have 3 of these in my fleet and they have held up very well to all the hard crashing I have done while in the beginning learning stage of this.

Eachine Wizard X220 FPV Racing RC Drone Blheli_S F3 6DOF 2205 2300KV Motors 5.8G 48CH 200MW VTX ARF

It isn't as sexy as the Furibee but it is very simple and easy to work on comparatively speaking. Your first quad is going to get busted up pretty good as you learn, so I would wait till you can fly halfway decent and have more repair experience before getting something so compact.

Here is my current squadron that I learned on, 3 of the Wizard X220 birds. They are on sale for US$109.99 but I had found them on sale there during the 11th Anniversary sale for US$99.99. Then I got 3 FrSky XSR receivers for US$14.99 each to match up with my Taranis X9D+ transmitter and I was in the air for US$115 a piece.

Fleet.jpg

But I have just added this to my fleet since I can now fly reasonably well and don't crash and break my quad every single time I go fly. But I put 3 Wizards in the air for less than this one quad costs.

Rooster_5_Ready_to_ship-1__70793.1514209485.jpg
 
Someone once asked me "why do you need 3 of them?" to which i honestly replied "because its too easy to break the first 2 at this level in my flying experience".

In the end I think you will find that you have a number of birds. I just couldn't lose a month of flying everytime a quad broke and I saw how much it cost to get replacement parts and realized I wanted 3 of the same so that it was easier to swap parts and keep at least one flying. So I ended up with 3 of them (and asked myself how in the heck did that happen, I wasn't even drunk ordering when I did it :) ). But that kept me in the air at all times so I could focus as much on learning to fly as I was on repairing.
 
Oh ok, thank you very much for your reply, it was very helpful. I think I'm gonna go with 4s than, I hope it will be fast too :)

Yeah they definately fast...first time i took mine out i broke a 4mm arm on my quad...
 
Must have been a hard smack Pixel, hope you got it flying again quick.
Yeah it certainly was a big hit...i was running it without googles and lost control driving it into the ground, damaged a motor as well. I havent had it fixed yet...bit disappointed i cant fly atm. Will have to get on it...cheers
 

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