Hi Guys. New to the forum, but not to the craft. I decided to post a positive S800 thread, because based on all that Ive read, the S800 is junk, but Im here to give others some hope. I have an S800 with Evo arms and the new landing gear vibration dampeners. I decided to put a GoPro Zenmuse on it while we are perfecting our 3 axis AlexMos gimbal to fly a 5D Mark III. The GoPro Zenmuse, being very low mass, was extremely sensitive to any vibrations, and lead me down a long road of 2 months to sort it out. I knew if the Zenmuse was experiencing vibrations, so would the Wookong, as both were mounted to the landing gear to benefit from the DJI vibration dampeners made for the S800.
In the end, despite balancing the new style DJI carbon props, and dynamically balancing the motors, jello and vibs were killing the video, and my confidence in the S800. The decal on the motors certainly throws them out of balance, and a little tape in the right places really smooths them out.
My brother is a custom fabricator in the automotive world, and often works with carbon fiber and fiberglass lay ups, and I showed him the youtube video of the carbon fiber arm mod. We decided to attempt it, and it was actually easy enough. This made the arms unbelievably rigid, but didn't solve the vibration issues at all.
Since both of us come from 3D helicopters, we have flown 450, 500, 600 and .90 size helicopters for years, we know how critical blade tracking is. Since the S800 15 inch blade tips come very close to each other, I thought about how flexible they were, and realized how during yaw and other inputs, some blades speed up, others slow down. As the tips flex up and down based on RPM, they don't track in the same z axis as the neighbor prop, and I quickly started to see that this is where a bunch of vibration could come from. I ordered Seacraft prop adapters and Xoar wood props. Despite being very well balanced out of the packages horizontally, the vertical direction on the prop balance test showed all the hubs to be out of balance. After fixing that, the first test flight showed the best video out of the S800 I had ever seen. I should have started with the props, but it took me weeks to figure out the flexing of the props was a much bigger issue than I thought.
In the end, with 15000 mah 6S packs, it hovers perfectly at mid stick, gives me a solid 23 minutes of runtime, and has between 20-30% left when I land. I have no concerns of this thing flipping over and crashing, and we have done tests where we weighted the craft to nearly 20 pounds to see if any problems would arise when we add the retracts and 3 axis SLR gimbal. Other than a Center of gravity change in the Wookong software for the IMU and GPS, no problems.
Hope it helps others.
Joe
In the end, despite balancing the new style DJI carbon props, and dynamically balancing the motors, jello and vibs were killing the video, and my confidence in the S800. The decal on the motors certainly throws them out of balance, and a little tape in the right places really smooths them out.
My brother is a custom fabricator in the automotive world, and often works with carbon fiber and fiberglass lay ups, and I showed him the youtube video of the carbon fiber arm mod. We decided to attempt it, and it was actually easy enough. This made the arms unbelievably rigid, but didn't solve the vibration issues at all.
Since both of us come from 3D helicopters, we have flown 450, 500, 600 and .90 size helicopters for years, we know how critical blade tracking is. Since the S800 15 inch blade tips come very close to each other, I thought about how flexible they were, and realized how during yaw and other inputs, some blades speed up, others slow down. As the tips flex up and down based on RPM, they don't track in the same z axis as the neighbor prop, and I quickly started to see that this is where a bunch of vibration could come from. I ordered Seacraft prop adapters and Xoar wood props. Despite being very well balanced out of the packages horizontally, the vertical direction on the prop balance test showed all the hubs to be out of balance. After fixing that, the first test flight showed the best video out of the S800 I had ever seen. I should have started with the props, but it took me weeks to figure out the flexing of the props was a much bigger issue than I thought.
In the end, with 15000 mah 6S packs, it hovers perfectly at mid stick, gives me a solid 23 minutes of runtime, and has between 20-30% left when I land. I have no concerns of this thing flipping over and crashing, and we have done tests where we weighted the craft to nearly 20 pounds to see if any problems would arise when we add the retracts and 3 axis SLR gimbal. Other than a Center of gravity change in the Wookong software for the IMU and GPS, no problems.
Hope it helps others.
Joe
