...I broke out my piece of crap Diatone DT130 to see if I could get the thing running well enough to start practicing with a smaller bird. The thing had no guts, the FPV camera sucked, the SP2 VTX (usually a decent VTX) got no range at all and it had no low battery warning. It also provided no method to mount an HD camera. Just a POS (expensive) bird.
So yesterday morning I stripped the thing down. I found some really crappy solder joints on the VTX and the FC which I painstakingly fixed. The antenna lead wire was somewhat kinked, I was able to fix the kink and I worked the lead into a loop with my heat gun. I replaced the crappy FPV Camera with a new Runcam Swift Micro V2 that also has a bare bones OSD with Voltage info. I replaced several motor mount screws that were missing. I upgraded the VTX antenna to an Emax Pogada II. I fixed a few bad solder points on two ESC's. I then took a camera mounting plate from my Crusader GT2 inventory and fitted it for the top of the DT130. I mounted an old Runcam HD camera to the top of the bird.
I used the camera OSD to set all of the camera settings. I put a Venom 3S 850mah 75C and put the sucker in the air. It ain't gonna be no TGO SE but it is night and day from the bird I bought! For such a little bird with an HD camera mounted to it, I'm impressed. I'm flying it to almost the same range as some of my better birds (obstacles affect it worse than my others) so the bad solder joints and kinked antenna lead were definitely an issue. The Swift Micro V2 is awesome for this style of bird and I love that I now know my battery voltage. All-in-all, I'm quite pleased with it. (Video to follow)
Now I can get a little practice in with a small bird before "THE BOMB" shows up!
Jerry
So yesterday morning I stripped the thing down. I found some really crappy solder joints on the VTX and the FC which I painstakingly fixed. The antenna lead wire was somewhat kinked, I was able to fix the kink and I worked the lead into a loop with my heat gun. I replaced the crappy FPV Camera with a new Runcam Swift Micro V2 that also has a bare bones OSD with Voltage info. I replaced several motor mount screws that were missing. I upgraded the VTX antenna to an Emax Pogada II. I fixed a few bad solder points on two ESC's. I then took a camera mounting plate from my Crusader GT2 inventory and fitted it for the top of the DT130. I mounted an old Runcam HD camera to the top of the bird.
I used the camera OSD to set all of the camera settings. I put a Venom 3S 850mah 75C and put the sucker in the air. It ain't gonna be no TGO SE but it is night and day from the bird I bought! For such a little bird with an HD camera mounted to it, I'm impressed. I'm flying it to almost the same range as some of my better birds (obstacles affect it worse than my others) so the bad solder joints and kinked antenna lead were definitely an issue. The Swift Micro V2 is awesome for this style of bird and I love that I now know my battery voltage. All-in-all, I'm quite pleased with it. (Video to follow)
Now I can get a little practice in with a small bird before "THE BOMB" shows up!
Jerry
