Gonna Fly Now... Maiden Flight of my SK450 Quadcopter

The day has finally arrived.  I have been waiting a long time for this moment.  Time to turn on the transmitter, plug in the battery and let my Quad take wings....   um... props  and fly.
I have tested, retested and tested again every possible thing I could test, check and confirm but now is the moment of truth.

The truth is, I think I am a little scared...  Scared for several reasons.  Will it actually fly?  Did I make some fatal mistake in the construction?  Was I wrong about the parts?  Would there be enough thrust to lift off?  Would there be too much thrust and the dang Quad will rocket off into the sky never to be seen again?  Will I be able to control it, since I have absolutely no Quad flying experience and very little helicopter or even RC plane experience?  All legitimate reasons to we a little nervous - and nervous I was.

So, time to head out to the back yard and give it a shot.  My other concern was my backyard has a bunch of bushes and buildings and trees so the only clear area I have is about 20 feet wide and about 10 feet deep.  Kind of tight for someone with no Quad flying experience.  The only good thing is the wind is very light.

Without further ado, here is the video of the maiden flight of my Quadcopter:

I do have to admit, this video was not the absolute first flight.  I did a number of short hops to check the configuration settings.  What I found out pretty quickly is that I needed to turn on Self Leveling or the Quads days were numbered.  So this video shows the first flight with the Self Leveling turned on.
My total flying time for all the hops was about 10 minutes, which I thought was great.  I had estimated my total flight time on a battery would only be about 6 minutes.

I was ecstatic, the dang thing flew and it actually flew pretty well, once I turned on Self Level.

For those of you that might be interested, my initial flights were using the default tuning values for the KK2 board under firmware version 1.5.

Roll & Pitch: P Gain=50 P Limit=100; I Gain=25 and I Limit=20
Yaw: P Gain=50 P Limit=20; I Gain=50 and I Limit=10
Self Level Settings: P Gain=100 P Limit=20 with ACC Trim Roll and Pitch both at 0

I had a very hard time controlling the Quad with Self Level turned off, it was just all over the place.  I suspect someone with good piloting skills would have had no trouble controlling it.  But with my "limited" Quad skills and my nervousness, I switched on the Self Level and was amazed how much easier it was to control.  I still had to make a lot of corrections with the sticks, but I could keep it in the air and in the same general location pretty easily.

All in all it was a very successful maiden flight.  I confirmed I had the right parts, put together properly so that even with my limited skills, I was able to fly the Quad. 

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