Quanum Nova PRO (Without Battery or Radio) - PNF

• Overall
• Quality
• Value

Nice versatile quad for a nice price

Sep 20, 2017

After flying a nanocopter within my living room and a lot of years experience with RC planes, I finally bought my first quadcopter. First I wanted to buy a DJI F450 kit, but I was also looking at the Nova.
After a 50 Euros price drop and because of the nice specs and features and because of the many mods which can be done on this aircraft, I decided to buy one.
Shipping from the European warehouse (to The Netherlands) was fast as usual and all came in good order.
I don't want to bring several different transmitters when I go out for some flight hours, so I bought the PNF version to use with my beloved Taranis X9D Plus. I ordered a D8R-ii Plus receiver, but because this one came from the Hong Kong warehouse it took a bit longer to arrive.
In the meantime I was able to play and learn a bit with the Nova and the Mission Planner Software.
The first time it connected, it did an upgrade to firmware 3.2.1 but after reading it should be better not upgrade directly the first time, I did a gyro and compass calibration, just to be sure. After that the Google maps display in Mission Planner showed my Nova pointing in right direction....
A helpful HobbyKing employee told me in a chat session that the upgrade should be no problem. It may be possible that some minor settings will be changed and he said that a calibration would be wise.
My maiden was in the darkness with some wind, so that was maybe not the wisest moment, but wow, this thing is flying so easy! In position hold mode, everyone can fly this thing!
The second flight was during daytime and I wanted to know the flight duration with the 5200 mAh Lipo.
It flew sooo long.... more than 25 minutes.... but no automatic landing..... the flight ended with a free fall from about 1,5 meter!!
No damage at all (who said that the carriage legs are fragile?)
At home I checked all the settings. Battery failsafe was set on 10,6 Volts, so I did not understand why the failsafe didn't work.... finally I discovered! The failsafe settings were okay, but the voltage input was not set, so no voltage was measured!
But after that, the first flight was already over after about 10 minutes as the battery failsafe came in….after charging I found out that only about 2500 mAh where used (5200 mAh battery).
So it seemed a short voltage drop caused the quad to land.
I have also added some resistors to the receiver so in my Taranis screen I can also read the battery voltage and the failsafe came in already if the battery still was on 11 Volts.
So for some reason, if the voltage drops for a short period of time, the failsafe already kicks in... Now I have setup some battery failsafe through a lua script in my Taranis.
Nice thing is, that the Nova saves logs from the flight so you can evaluate several values like voltage, height, position, flightmode, etc…
I have ordered a Arduino board for adding a APM to FrSky converter, so I get more telemetry data from the quad in my Taranis screen like Satellites, flightmode, etc.
With lua scripts I have made myself a nice telemetry screen in my Taranis.

• Overall
• Quality
• Value

Customer Rated

May 19, 2016

Got mine yesterday and took it apart.The usual few bad screws fixing the body but inside is a different story altogether.A full APM,a new power distribution board that looks well made,great motors are identical to the Multistar 2312/980kvs.All new ESCs which is a good thing.DJI style 9450 ST props which are excellent,a larger bottom half of the body to take the 5200 Multistar batteries and that includes the LiHv one.Telemetry works but wires need switching if using a 3DR clone type.Ublox Neo 7 GPS/compass combo in the puck and comes loaded with 3.2.1 arducopter firmware.I'll be changing the nasty foam FC mounts for Zeal but that's about it for improvements.It looks really good and very similar to my highly modified Nova.Not flown it yet but all the signs are good.RX is present and works with my old stock TX.It's a twin tail receiver so range should be good.I'll let you know how it flies.