Jun's Scribbles: Built a cheap quadcopter, then fly it to places where it may never return

I had this post on draft edit for a long time, never gotten to finish it as I was too busy having fun flying the V550. This cheap quad turned out to be a great one to use, and it was flown it on flights where a mistake would mean it will never return.

I am not advocating to buy the cheapest components, however it's possible to selectively purchase components and still come up with a quadcopter that does not cost a fortune without sacrificing performance.

Here is my basic setup:

Reptile V550 frame (TBS Discovery clone)
HK Pilot32 (Pixhawk clone)
T-motor air gear 350 set consist of: T-motor 2213 motor, 9545 propellers and air 20A esc
1 axis gimbal using Alex Mos board

I have flipped my HK Pilot32 so that I can see the LED when its flying, set AHRS_ORIENTATION to 8. My GPS puck is rotated 180, so COMPASS_ORIENT is set to 4.

On my Walkera Devo 10 to have 6 flight modes on channel 5 I have done the following:

Travel Adjust Gear
+83.0%
-100.0%
Subtrim Gear:
-30.0%

Program Mix 1
Master: Flap
Slave: Gear
Pos 0 Up: +65%

Device Output
Gear: Mix SW
Flap: Gear SW

For PID settings I used autotune start, it flew really well. I then turned down a bit so it would be smoother for aerial videos

For althold I reduced the trim dead spot on alt hold from 10% to 5% setting THR_DZ to 50
Increased max vertical parameter from 2.5 cm/s to 3.5cm/s setting PILOT_VELZ_MAX to 350

I have installed minimOSD 1.1 on it using Minim OSD Extra 2.3.2.0 CT tool flashing in 2.4 r726 hex file.

Installed a 3 in 1 battery monitor, lost model alarm and used Aux 5

Some flights done by the V550