I tried flying with the GoPro mounted this time. I already had broken part of my landing gear last flight but managed to hold it in place with some duct tape ;) Everything went ok until I broke the landing gear again and had to remove the camera mount not to break it. I did a couple of flights without the camera and with the broken landing gear until I snapped 3 props and had to stop. I'll probably end up ordering a custom made plastic (delrin) landing gear from ponoko instead of ordering a replacement CF one, they break too easily.

Here are videos from my maiden and second flight. First one ended with a bad crash on a garden house, my bad I didn't realize how much space I needed to fly it for the first time. The second one isn't complete as my girlfriend forgot to pack her memory card and we couldn't capture it all. On the second one I managed to control it in circles much higher than what you see in the video, but you'll have to take my word for it ;)

Flew my quad for the second time today. I decided to skip the acro mode with which I had so much trouble keeping the quad stable last time and give it a try in stable mode. With the default PID setting I was able to flight it pretty stable under light wind. I made a few hard landings and finally broke my landing gear and a prop but overall I'm pretty satisfied with the performance I got from it. Last time kinda discouraged me but now I feel more comfortable controlling it (a couple hours in a sim also helped).

I'll have a few videos soon!

So today I finished building my first quadricopter based on APM+Oilpan and running ArduPiratesNG. I did some preliminary tests inside with no intention of flying the thing in my kitchen but just to get a feel of how it behaves up to the moment it actually would take off.

I noticed a couple of things:

• Motors don't start to spin all at once. I saw a couple of posts here discussing that and everyone seem to agree it's normal.
• Motors make strange noises (can be heard in the video)
• The quad only begins to feel light on the ground at 75% throttle. I'm using 10x4.7 props, maybe they are too small for the quad's weight, which I can only say is heavy because I don't have a scale :P

This is my first quad and I have no background flying RC Helis (beside crashing one on first flight and giving up on it a couple of years ago) so with the money and time invested in this quad I'm kind of afraid to fly it for the first time :P

Just received the plates I ordered at Ponoko and mounted my electronics on it. My measures were good but I chosed to put the xBee on the side instead of on top so I missed two holes for it, fortunately tie wraps saved the day! Next version will account for the new placement of the xBee and protect it better. If people are interested I can upload the eps files for Ponoko after I make some adjustments.