Introduction

First blog, no idea how to do this. Oh well, picture time! A complete list of parts can be found here(Gdoc).

I went with AFRO esc's because A) they were cheapish B) they already had simonK firmware preloaded on them.

I chose to build my own flight controller. I am at the hump between basic knowledge and real skill in both electronics and programming and I figure that building my own is a sufficiently challenging project.

The parallax MS5607 and the Sparkfun MPU-9150 modules were chosen simply for the fact that I cannot do SMD soldering at this point in time. In the final board I plan on having everything on one board, and may change which sensors I use.

XBee radios were chosen as I did not plan on shelling out cash for a real radio. I am also planning on adding several things later that will require the use of a laptop, and an XBee is much simpler to interface than the various RC plane controllers.

Hobbyking NTM motors were chosen as they are both cheap and reletively high quality.

10*4.5 SF props were used. I am using a Turnigy 5000 MAh battery. At 412g it is pretty heavy, put the long run time for testing will be a great boon. I do have a couple 1200 MAh battery packs that I can loot to create a lighter pack if need be. The frame is 450 size.