My drone pool

During time and usage the number and kind of drones one flies change... so I wanted to show here my current pool of drones. This will change over time, of course. These things tend to get broken more or less often - if you do it right So, hier is a list of all flyable drones...

Some words for the technology behind it. Not everyone does know, what these mean:

• the Frame: I name my drones like my frames. As all frames are different, this is no problem. Usually made of carbon or something that is similar stiff (needs to take an impact), determines the size of the quad and which propellers you can mount (for FPV-Racer usually something between 3 and 6 inch). These frames are available in a lot of different shapes, but you can put them more or less in two classes: X and H-shaped. I own more H-Shaped drones - they look better.
• the flight controller. This is the brain of the thing. This is controlling all motors and speeds them up or down to hold a certain angle in the air. This is what makes the flying so much easier than it used to be. There are hundreds of flavours, but I prefer KISS (Keep It Super Simple) - like that motto. The Hardware of those FCs is more or less similar, but the software available for them differs: KISS, Betaflight, CleanFlight, BaseFlight, RaceFlight (KISS and Raceflight are closedSource!)
• the ESC: these are the speed controllers for the brushless motors. They actually pump in the Amps to the motor to make them spin faster. The FC tells the ESC to increase or decrease speed and they will send these speed settings to the motor accordingly. I also use ESC from KISS here, as they work great in conjunction with the KISS FC.
• The motors. As mentioned above, those are brushless electro motors. These are also available in tons of different shapes and colors. If you build an FPV-Racer with a 5" prop you usually have 2206 Motors (this number describes the with and height of the stater, the part of the motor, that actually produces force). For 3" racers usually 1306 Motors are used. Then there is the KV-Number. This has nothing to do with kilovolt, it determines rather the rpms per volt. Meaning, if you put 10 Volts to a 2100KV Motor, the RPMs the motor does would be 21000. For 5" racers these KV is usually in the range of 2000-2500kv wheres for 3" racers it is about 3000-4000kv. I use in my 5" builds Schubkraft 2205/2500kv and Cobra 2206/2100kv motors, for the 3" I used Emax RS 1106 (you need to buy those in 2 spin directions!) and DYS 4000kv.
• the FPV-Camera: this is no HD camery, this is just for transmitting an (analog) signal to the googles of the Pilot! you just connect it to the video transmitter and the pilot will see, what the camera sees. I use a Runcam Swift Rotor Riot Edition and a Runcam Owl Plus and the 3" use a Eachine 1000tvl.
• video transmitter (VTX): very important. But actually, most of the different flavors are similar to use. Some of them have additional features like Smart-Audio. This is cool, as in FPV you usually do not need audio transmission. (you would only hear feeping and rushing from the props and motors). So you can use that, to actually have the FC change settings of the VTX! So you can change the VTX-Settings via an osd or with your Taranis!
• OSD - on screen display. This is put in the middle of the Vide Camera to the VTX and will add some text to your video feed. Like current Voltage of battery, currently drawn AMPS and such. But you can also use that to change settings in some cases
• PDB: Power distribution board. This is taking the power from the Lipo and puts it out to the different consumers (motors, VTX, Camera etc). Sometimes there is additional funktionality added to it like a integrated osd or special LED controllers. I build the Matek PDB with OSD into the 5" quads - the 3" have an integrated kiss board.
• the Transmitter: It took me quite a while to understand that, but if you have a transmitter, you also need a corresponding receiver that understands, what the transmitter is sending. Every vendor do have their own system. I went for the ecosystem of FrSky and use the Taranis X9D Plus which I can really recommend to anybody. If you want to get in to this hobby, you should first get yourself a propper transmitter! This one you can plug into your computer and can practice until you finished your real quad. I got mine from Amazon

but now back to my list:

1. Phantom 3 Pro - super cool drone, but no comparison to the others. This is simply a different thing, A flying camera. Not a copter with a camera. You can do areal photography or filming with it super easily. Just love shooting vids with it:
   …591dff534027386272e8d728… I got mine from Amazon
2. the first FPV-Racer. From big to small the Lisam210 Frame. is a 5" Racer, KISS based, Schubkraft 2206/2500KV Motors
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3. the Emax Nighthawk 200 - my first self build or self rebuilt drone...
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4. my first under 250g copter: Redux 130. There is a KISS AIO CC in use, that is one board, that combines FC, PDB and 4x ESC. Super easy to built. my only X-Frame... hmmm...
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5. my second u250g copter: a Shendrones Shrieker 130 - super nice. But it seems, the motors are a bit to strong for the little one. The Lipo is empty after about short flight already.
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6. Eachine Qx95 - does not fly at te moment, but it is a fine indoor racer. (although it as brushed motors!)
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7. Blade FPV
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8. and Blade FPV Pro
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   - great to fly indoors if the weather is bad

So, that’s it for now. It will be changing over time. And I will post some things about how to build them, and what I learned during time.