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. 

Next Post: Always Wear Protection (and other stuff).

Flashing and Other Fun Stuff

Not too much excitement right now...

At this point in time the Quad build has slowed to a crawl due to the ESC's.  After a lot of soul searching I decided it was best to bite the bullet and order four new Plush 30 Amp ESCs.  Unfortunately they were backordered when I ordered them several days ago and they are still backordered.  I had hoped I would get lucky and they would get them back in inventory right away but that doesn't seem meant to be.  I can find them at a few other vendors, but they are almost twice the price and since I have to buy four of them, and since I am basically a cheapskate, I will have to be patient and wait.

While I am waiting I have been making a little progress.  Yesteday I did some initial testing of the KK2 Flight Controller Board.  I powered it up using one of the ESCs I had.  I connected it to the receiver I plan to use, which is a Hobby King Orange RX 610 receiver.  The 610 receiver is a Spektrum DSM2 compatible receiver.  I have been using one of these receivers very successfully with my Dynam Hawk Sky RC Plane.

I bound the receiver to my Spektrum DX6I transmitter and connected a series of five male-to-male servo lead between the receiver and the KK2 board.  The KK2 board worked right off the bat with the receiver and I was able to run through a number of tests of the KK2 board as well as set up the transmitter for the Quad.  I had planned to wait until I had flown the Quad successfully before I flashed the KK2 board firmware to version 1.5.  But, being the impatient guy that I am, I decided to try a KK2 Flashdance.

Flashing (or updating the firmware on the KK2 board) requires a few things.  First you need a USBAsp AVR Programming device (a little circuit board and cable that provides the connection between the KK2 board and a computer).  You also need drivers for the Programming device as well as flashtool software.  Once you have all of that connected and working you need the actual new version of the firmware, developed by Kaptain Kuk, the creator of the KK (Kaptain Kuk, get it) 2 board.

I found a great video that does a wonderful job of providing a detailed video explaination of how to perform the flashing of the KK2 board.
Here it is (thanks to eluminerRC):