V-22 Osprey Project - First Flight Pre-Checks

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I had to take a few weeks away from this project while we moved to a new house, but I'm back at it and nearing first flight of the prototype.  I've built a little power distribution board to connect the power for servos, Arduino, and flight controller.  All of the electronic components I'm using are stuff I had lying around and are definitely not what I'll use on the final aircraft.  For now, I'm using:

  • FLIP32 + AIO flight controller running iNAV and NAZE firmware
  • Arduino Mega
  • 12 Amp ESC
The all-up weight at this time is 418 grams.  For comparison, the original Blade MCPx BL (without battery) weighed in at 48 grams.  I have serious doubts this will actually fly at all in the current configuration.



Before any first flight, I need to verify the throws on all the cyclic servos so they match positive and negative travel.  The flight controller should take care of small differences, but it's best to start off as neutral as possible.

I'm already looking into replacing many of the electrical components.  I'll leave the FC alone for now, but I'll replace the discrete ESCs with a 4-in-1 model that can mount under the FC.  I'll replace the Arduino Mega with an Arduino Micro.  Only certain Arduinos have the number of external interrupt pins necessary to read the outputs from the FC.  I have some Uno and Nano boards, but these only have 2 interrupt pins.  For reference, the interrupt pin compatibility for Arduino is here: https://www.arduino.cc/reference/en/language/functions/external-interrupts/attachinterrupt/.

For now, the battery I'm using is a 2S 2200mAh.  The original MCPx BL used a 2S 300mAh battery, so I'm way up on capacity as well as weight.  I'll investigate connecting some of the smaller batteries in parallel or just purchasing a smaller battery in the 1000mAh range.

That's all for now!

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