Got my new Parallax ELEV-8 Quad into the air today

Did my maiden with the Parallax quadrotor today.  Mostly hovering and a lot of gyro gain tweaking.  Did a tiny bit of forward flight at the end, but really didn't have enough room to do much.  Looks really good so far!  Here is a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icdX4fccqDA&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

...Tiger

Your quadcopter looks really good.  I saw that Parallax is out of them for a while now.  Do you know if they will be getting more?

What is the dimension of the ELEV-8 motor spindle to motor spindle?

That's cool, looks very smooth and fast to me......

GPS - It's 26" from motor to motor.  It has plenty of power, but not quite as much as I expected.  Not sure what that expectation was based on.  They are saying it can comfortably carry a 2# payload.  That sounds about right.  Onc reason it's probably not as responsive as I expected is that I have a 3300mah 25C battery on it right now.  Most are running 4000+ and 35C.  That would give it more grunt for sure.  I just figured I wasn't going to have any payload and didn't want the 20min flight times so I went with something cheaper.  My flight time yesterday was about 12 minutes.  I'm charging the battery right now to see how much I took out of it.  I am usually looking for 8min on a heli.  That's about all the stress an old guy can take unless you're just hovering.

PP - It was actually really smooth I thought for being in the air the first time without any adjustments.  Even at the start of the video, when it had too much gain, it was still fine to fly.  It mostly "sounded" twitchy with the motors over correcting all the time.  You couldn't really hear that in the video because of all the heat pump noise.  That was running about 15' away and I didn't think about it until we played back the video.  It sounded like a load hum and really wrecked the sound quality.  You'll notice at about 5min into the video, when I got the gains better, it got noticeably smoother.  BTW, this thing is flying with the HoverFly board and you notice instantly that the MEMS gyros are a lot more sensitive than the Piezo gyros in my HK boards.  I'm not actually saying that's a good thing, but it's very noticeable.  The MEMS have a hard time with all the vibration.  At some point I'd like to try this thing with the (now $14) HK board.  I'll bet it flys about the same.

...Tiger

  The MORE I see those QUAD's Flying (Flying LIKE shown in this thread) and
especially the WAY they FLY the more I WANT one or the MORE I'm falling in LOVE 

... but that's NOT saying I haven't lost my love of CCPM. For those at least it's about the fast action and aerobatics w/ the look and feel'n of the traditional helicopter. In the words of my (limited) imagination it's about "piloting" w/ less of the FLy by WiRe as if in the cockpit flying missions of Seek & Destroy and coming home one piece, {LOL} or coming home without a STOP at the LHS to replace broked parts

Now w/ the QAUD for me I imagine the "precision", the ability to fly the bird w/ extrema accuracy! Again as in the words of the imagination I'm that CIA operative trying the photograph secret Wazit papers hidden deep inside the "terrorists" cave of the Willi the Wanker

Yes SIR Mon-Capitan I WILL have me one of those QUADS 
      [shadow=Orange,left]w00d[/shadow]

What kV are the motors and what Amp ratings are the ESCs?

GPS - The motors are about 850kv and the prop is an APC 10-4.7.  The ESC is a Turnegy 25A.  I measured the current at full throttle on a fresh battery and it was 15.3A.  That was static so max in the air would be a little less than that.

I talked to Parallax this morning and asked your question about when more quads would be in stock.  They said you should place a backorder because they go fast.  They are releasing 50 more units next Wednesday so you'd get one next week if you move now.

I'll bring mine to Redwood tomorrow if you want to take a look at it.

...Tiger

Thank you for the motor and ESC information.  I would like to see your quadcopter in person.  I have been looking at airframes a lot lately having decided that my first quad will be a manufactured airframe instead of the custom build I want to do for the reasons you mentioned previously.  There are a few that are looking most attractive to me, one being the Parallax ELEV-8 but I also very much like the GAUI 500X airframe, just not keen on their electronics although Juz70 in Australia seems to be doing pretty good with his 330 GAUI.  I do want a larger size ariframe and that was why I wanted to know the ELEV-8's dimensions.  The ELEV-8 must be around 160 mm wider than the GAUI 550X.

Will you be flying your ELEV-8 tomorrow weather permitting?