Mistakes have been made, Lessons have been learned (2)(Interview)

A slightly off topic lesson:  

For a Christmas present, I received a racing quad called the Eachine Falcon 250. I flew it around and had a lot of fun with it. Two days after I have received the quad copter, I made a mistake that I will never forget. I broke off part of the XT60 connector that prevents the user from plugging in the battery to the quad copter the wrong way. I was overly excited and didn't think through my actions and plugged the battery in the wrong way frying who knows what on the quad copter and giving me a lot of work to make it work again. This really taught me the importance of reverse polarity connections and how it can ruin all your components. This also taught me not to get too excited before I do thinks and think them through because even the most minor of mistakes can cost you a lot of time and money.

Back to the quad:

On Thursday night, all the parts for my quad arrived. This meant that on Friday I can start work and have a lot of extra time to reach my bonuses that I want to work on. 

Parts I forgot about:

There are two minor parts I forgot to include in the build of this quad copter. I forgot that I bought all clockwise motors. If you don't know, quad copters are supposed to have two clockwise and two counterclockwise motors and propellers to keep the quad flying stable. I overlooked this and bought four clockwise motors, this can be solved by switching any two wires that connect the motor to the ESC. However, the propeller adapters that connect the propellers to the motor are all clockwise. This means that if I spool up two counterclockwise, the propeller adapters will fly off. I plan to remedy this by adding superglue to the propeller adapters to prevent them from flying off. The second part that I forgot was the battery connector. This connector is vital to the quad copter because it connects the battery to the quad copter and gives it power. I plan to take one of these connectors off of my broken quad for the time being. I would like to purchase counterclockwise propeller adapters and a new battery connector but just to get the quad copter flying, what I have will do.

Getting to work:

The entire blog post so far has been about things that have happened in the past, lets talk about what I am doing now. Currently I am working on soldering the ESC's to the PDB. I have a time lapse of the work that I did at school to show.

Stanley Sharke by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Source: http://www.twinmusicom.org/song/306/stanley-sharke Artist: http://www.twinmusicom.org

As you may have noticed, my first solder joint was terrible, here is a comparison of the first joint(Higher) compared to the second joint(Lower). The first joint also took me around 20-30 minutes while the second joint took me about 3-5 minutes.

I didn't finish the goal for the week which was to solder the ESC to PDB and ESC to the motors. So I took my work home with me. I armed myself with a soldering iron that I bought at the dollar store and huge solder and got to work.

Big Bird's Date Night by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Artist: http://www.twinmusicom.org/

I stopped soldering because the solder just wouldn't stick to the PDB and was just to big and hard to work with. I went to the store to buy smaller solder, electrical tape, and cable ties much to the dismay of my father as he insisted that the solder that we had was fine. 

Unfortunately, after soldering I realized that I used plumbers solder. This differed from electronic solder because it uses corrosive flux to break oxidation on metals to become waterproof. This also meant that it was bad at conducting electricity. I now needed to scrap all the work that I did over the past weekend and start from scratch. Thanks dad. Armed to the teeth with new knowledge and solder, I went outside and back to work. I went to grab my dollar store soldering iron and saw this:

Resting the soldering iron onto my homemade stand when it cooled down ended up making the hot iron melt the plastic and make it rest at and angle. I thought nothing of it at first glance and plugged it back into the wall (This was a stupid decision by me because I easily could have had the iron catch fire in my hand because it was obviously broken). I sat waiting for 20 minutes even gaining the courage to touch the iron and didn't feel any heat. The mighty dollar store iron was dead.

RIP

2/25/17 - 2/26/17

In loving memory of Dave the Dollar store soldering iron.

You worked well for the first day.

It looks like I will have to do the rest of the soldering at the school now.

Interview:

While I was doing this, I also was able to interview a pillar of a very popular company that produces premium racing quads, Team Black Sheep. Here are the questions/responses.

What first got you interested in quad copters? 

The fact electronics and math can make something fly what doesn't look airborne at all. Also the ability to hover with something uses much smaller propellers than regular RC helicopters. 

What is the average time it takes to complete one quad copter build from start to finish?

 It really depend on what you buy and how familiar you are with quad copters. For the first build I would say a day or two. Later maybe a few hours. 

When did you first build a quad copter and what was it like?

 It was a custom frame using micro copter FC from Germany back in 2010 (I don't remember the exact year) 

Did you come from any previous hobby before building quad copters? 

I'm into RC since I was a kid.

 Do you have any advice for brands to stray away for when building a quad copter? 

I think the regular discovery is a good choice to start with if you want to build it yourself. 

Do you have any tips for someone who is building a quad copter? Rookie mistakes? 

Use a power source with limited power or fuse if you plug in power the first time. In case of a short you will not fry everything. ;) 

Is there any advice you have for someone who is just getting into the hobby? 

Go for an FC with GPS support. It helps you to learn fly a lot. In case you don't know what to do you can get it back and landed with a switch on your remote. 

What made you to decide to pursue building quad copters as a profession?

I think as a team (team blacksheep) we are able to build and develop really good solutions. 

Is there a build that you are proud of, that is your most complex/creative build? 

The discovery and discovery pro where one of the best build at the time we released them. 

Finally, what is your impression on the community of quad copter hobbyists? 

Mostly friendly and open minded people. 

Although the answers to these questions were relatively short and biased, they did give me some useful information. I was going to initially use USB to power my quad copter when I will be making sure that the motors turn the right way, I now know to use a battery encase I soldered something wrong. I also should probably use a flight controller with GPS hold but I can't afford one because money is something that I do not have.