I am nnewbie and almost total noob in multicopters. Purchased APM the latest fully assembled with telemetry, GPS, barometer but without sonar yet. tried on DIY tricopter frame, have 10+ flights on stablize and alt hold. then reload Y6 on DIY frame. after painful crashes manage to fly it for 5 minutes using 4000mah 3S1P lipo. esc and motors barely warm but battery get hot. sometimes it melt the battery connector and cut off the power. using G15 turnigy motors, 70amp HK esc, and MAS 3 bladed prop 10*6. AUW 2.8kg. all the above using code 2.0.44 and below.
Scared to fly higher I decided, to take out 2 motors and DIY quad frame. motor to motor is 40cm. AUW is 2.2kg with 10x6 3 blade prop. Don't realy know what's wrong, I only manage to fly for about 2-5 seconds the most before the quad started to violently roll right and left and fliped. (loaded latest code 2.0.47 x quad. I had tuned the P's stab roll/pitch down to 2.0 but still same result.. now I am scared to fly higher than 3 feet off the ground. ESC been callibrated individually and code reloaded few times, radio recalibrated more than 5 times..
following are log (latest) 2011-10-08%2003-24-04.tlog
Replies
it seems you have escs way too strong for this try the 20 amp or 30 amp
18 amp is good too
also you must put motors around 1000 kv or max 2000 kv
motors must not exceed 50 g per motors if you can choose a brand that have lighter its even better
i fly 20 min with my 4000 mah bat so you did some wrong in the power core
also try pittin more solder paiste or solder a few more fresh layer of solder on your connections
make sure that all connections to board ( gps sonar compass are secure
and that your apm connections are as instructed . or as shown in arducopter version 1 is good too
you can also make a connector switch that will definitly take off a few mamp to your circuits if you want to stay like that
you can aslo try connecting 4 batteries ( one for each motor connected separatly to extend your flight time ( try creating a 4 battery input connector board such as a audio switch board for cars or some similar to connect the 4 batteries and then connect the respective motors on the power of each plug.
then connect the apm to it to all 4 batt in parrallele. important do not connect it in serie or you will burn everything
but lets say you connect each motor to one battery you will then be able to fly much longer .
hope this help
For the second part regarding the quad, I suggest to you to follow carefully all the Wiki, because I had same behaviour at the first, and I can list to you some error you can check based on my experience.
1) Check the right mounting of propellers. Usually, that behaviour is due to pusher propeller intermingled with normal propeller. In the Wiki there is a clear picture.
2) Check you frame mode in AMP. If you set X mode, you must ensure that the APM points in the middle of the frams
3) Check that all ESC are calibrated
4) Check the all motors spin at equal speed. This is the last thing to check after the three points above. If one motor spins at different speed, the quad will never go straight.
5) Check YOUR TRANSMITTER. If your transmitter is of bad quality, sometimes it will send spurious signals. This can depend on low voltage of tx battery or, worse, on wrong tx electronics.
Making the stuff flying is quite a stressing job, if we do not count the money you have to prepare to spend.
Whats the C rating on your lipo. If the battery is getting that hot and the connector hot enough to melt anything you are surely pulling way more amperage than the setup allows. With that much pitch on a 3 bladed prop and 6 motors i bet it is pulling some.