SlopeJunkies: You bulid it, I fly it.....Not this time

Monday 9th January a parcel arrived from http://www.uavshop.co.uk/ . Its was not a sports glider, more of a toy to enhance the whole radio controlled experience.It was the X4 Pro Quad Glider....

There's alot in this little box

The box is now empty, where do i start??

Now for those of you that know me, you will know at this point I was stood looking at all these bits in a cold sweat with the shakes. I wasn't sure what I should do. Should I proceed to build it or stuff it all in the cupboard out of the way. I chose to continue. I loaded the instruction manual onto the laptop and proceeded to build, and to be fair there was alot of screws that needed putting in, to build the frame together with some simple soldering but it wasn't too tricky at all...

Soldering the legs to the centre

Here we go!!

Pretty much once all the supporting struts were screwed in , the legs were soldered to the centre plate and the motors were secured to the frame I connected the ESC's. It was now time to calibrate / programme these. At this point I had probably been working on the Quad X4 Pro for an hour and a half. The calibration of the ESC's did prove to be beyond me, but would be easy enough for most aero modellers. I gave Alex at the UAV shop a quick ring, he gave me some very clear instructions over the telephone. I returned to the QUAD, the programming / end points for all 4 motors was done in 20 minutes.

I plugged in the Flight control box (FY91Q), tidied up the wiring and pretty much that was it. I couldn't wait to fly it outside but it was dark. The dining room table looked like the ideal place for powering up!

Ready for a power up
X4 PRO QUAD FY91Q Balance

Powered up
Looking forward to doing some UFO flying over the local estate.

Well today ( Saturday) and it was time for the maiden flight. I took it to the local football field, gave it one last check over and that was it. I increased the throttle until it lifted off . To be honest it took about 2 batteries ( 20 minutes) and I felt as though I had a reasonable amount of control . I was able to get it to hover and move about where I wanted it to go.

I think once I get a few hours in and become much more confident with it , it is going to be great fun and should provide a good platform for sticking a Go Pro on

Rob also has one of these ( or a similar thing from the U S of A) he has got through so many propellers that I am sure he has shares in the Prop manufacturer. I have no idea what the problem is ( probably too much for his little brain) , he has been telling me for the last 6 weeks quad flying is very difficult. My summary would be it is relatively inexpensive, takes a couple of hours to bulid / set up ( with a little help from Alex at the UAV shop ) and if you take it steady in a big field you will get the hang of it quite quickly. Only thing I would say is I have strapped some foam on the bottom of mine as a precaution until I become more experienced.