Replacing A Motor On My FPV Drone Prepping For Sloss Drone Derby

Here we go again. The Joker is back on the workbench for another repair. A couple of weeks ago, I was having some fun out in my yard and ended up power looping into my powerlines. That usually doesn't go over very well. It landed right side up, so I tried to arm and take off and it just flipped right over, so I knew I had smoked a motor. Fast forward a couple of weeks, and here we are with a new motor in hand and ready to repair it in preparation for the Sloss Drone Derby in Birmingham, AL next weekend!

First thing I had to do was expose the connection at the race wire on the arm of the drone. I like using race wire because it allows me to replace motors without having to mess with my ESE every time and risking messing up my entire quad. It's kind of like a breaker or fuse if you want to think of it like that, kind of, but you get the picture. I also had some waterproofing on this connection so I had to scrape that junk off too. The rest burned off with the soldering iron.

After exposing the connections, I went ahead and unmounted the old motor so that it would be easier to remove. I heated up the soldering iron and disconnected the old motor, and got the new one in place, cut the wires and got setup for the installation.

Soldering is my absolute least favorite part of this hobby. I don't know why I suck at it and it gives me anxiety, but it does, lol. After a couple of messy attempts, I finally got the wires all soldered on. Certainly not the prettiest of jobs, but as long as they work. And on that note, that is where BetaFlight comes into play.

Before buttoning everything up, I wanted to make sure that the motor worked and was in spinning in the correct direction. I plugged it into BetaFlight Configurator on my Mac, not without having cable issues... I found a good micro USB data cable and it was able to connect. These flight controllers are picky about the cables you use.

While I was in BetaFlight, I took the opportunity to configure my new Radiomaster Pocket's buttons in the Modes area. I got the buttons and switches all setup the way I wanted, so now it should be all ready to go!

I disconnected from BetaFlight and brought it back over to the workbench to get it all wrapped up and ready to go now that I know that my shitty soldering connections work, haha. Now it looks all nice again with a fresh motor and it's time to put the props on so that it's all ready for Sloss Furnaces! Sloss is an old iron works plant that is now used for metallurgy training and special events. It's going to be a SICK place to have an FPV drone event! I will be making a vlog about those crazy 2 days that are coming up next weekend! It's going to be a blast!

Until next time...

Be cool, be real, and always abide with the skies!

Posted Using INLEO