We are a group of photographers and film makers from Stockholm, Sweden that recently started a production company called Heimer Lundmark Produktion. We are currently looking to invest in Cinestar 8 heavy lift aerial platform and have a couple of questions regarding the best parts to consider for best performance; heavy lift engine with most possible flight time, best performing batteries, software, hardware etc. etc. To begin with the engines - we are looking for an high performing engine that manages heavy lifts but also doesn't drain the batteries too fast (good balance between heavy lift and the longest flight time possible). The Swedish dealers offers the t-motor MT2814 Brushless motors (basic) and t-motor MT3515-12 (HL) On American sights and blogs, many seem to recommend the TIGER U7 MOTOR 420KV, which seems to be a solid heavy lift engine but perhaps a bit extreme? Bottom line is that we don't want to be too limited in carrying camera equipment such as red epic, line of black magic, canon 5d, C100-500 etc. with the longest flight time possible. What is your input on this? Thank you in advance, Adam
HI Adam The most important detail you should figure out is what will your weight be? Many people have different definitions of heavy lifter. Some peopel think that a heavy lifter is flying 35 pounds, some thing its flying 25 pounds, or 20 pounds etc. My heavy lifter carrys a paload of 11.5 pounds and all together has a flight weight of 25.5 pounds. I get 18-19 minutes flight time with this setup. If I use a lighter Canon 5D camera I get about 24 minutes flight time. I use Tiger U5 motors and Tiger 16X5.4 props which are ultra smooth. I have a custom made setup based on a standard CS8 straight platform that uses 2 outrunner battery plates fastened to the hub. I also use all metal clamps on the center hub and frame which makes it more rigid. To get a good estimation of what kind of flying weight you will have you can figure that your copter will weigh at least 11-15 pounds plus your payload. It will depend upon battery choice, FPV gear and which electronics you decide to run. Just to give you an example the new 16,000 6S batteries weigh 4 pounds!!! If you plan on using a good brushless motor gimbal you can estimate your gimbal without camera will be about 5 pounds. Then factor in your camera and lens choice to get a good ballpark figure. Once you get a good estimation of what kind of weight you will fly you can plug in some data into Ecalc. Tiger gives very good data that you can use to plug in. Here's an example of one of their charts. You want to shoot for a 50% throttle at hover. The higher the throttle at idle from 50% the less ideal and the less headroom you will have to make heavy throttle responses if you need it. Another way to look at is you need X amount of thrust per motor at X weight. So for example say you figure out your heavy lifter needs to fly 25 pounds. 25 pounds is 11340 grams. Each motor will need 1417 grams of thrust to properly maintain hover. If you go on Tiger's website you will see that they give you a chart for each motor telling you how much thrust each motor will give you at 50%, 65%,75% throttle for 6S and for different propellers so you can see how different variables effect how much thrust the motor puts out. Hope this helps.
Hi Dave, Thank you for your quick and detailed response, this is exactly what I was looking for, now I will do my homework! So with your setup, do you use the 16.000 6s batteries or the 9000? Your setup seems much like what I'm looking for in terms of weight and flight time, actually your flight time is longer than I expected these were capable of. My team is using the Red epic with a various of optics, although they are the old nikon optics which are very light and almost all the same. Also using the black magic pocket & production camera with the same optics and also Canon 5D with canon optics so the weight difference could very a bit I suppose, can you monitor the chart at the same time as flying? I've had some difficulties in finding information on what software/hardware compatible with the Cinestar line in terms of communication, GPS, waypoint, hoover, fail safe function, video link etc. So far most I've found are from the DJI line: DJI Lightbridge, DJI NAZA etc. Is this what is used by most or does Cinestar have its own line of components? We are probably getting the Cinestar 3-axis camera gimbal to begin with but eventually upgrade to the MOVI MR! With these last gaps solved I will probably get a better picture on what I'm looking at! Thanks again!
No problem. I use two QC 10,000 6S batteries. You can read about my entire project here http://forum.freeflysystems.com/index.php?threads/my-new-mk-heavy-lift-copter-project.3091/ I go into detail about how I chose the U5's then tried thet U7's, and back to the U5's, tried different boom lengths and info on my homemade brushless gimbal. It is rather long right now with 15 pages and counting but there's a lot of good info about my testing and results. I fly the red as well you want to keep only the basic essentials for the red on because every accessory you keep adds significant weight. As far as monitoring flight control variables while the copter is flying, yes MK has that capabilitiy. I am not sure sure if DJI does or not. Freelfy doesn't make a flight controller or nav system yet. Essentially there are 3 ways to go with a Heavy Lifter. 1. All MK electronics using the new Dual XL power boards. (this is what I and several users on this forum use). There has been some issues with the new power boards because they are brand new but the bugs are getting worked out and MK has been very responsive about the issues. 2. MK flight control board with I2C converter and Freefly ESC's. 3. DJI electronics. There are a lot of people that use DJI and this was a popular option before MK came out with 6S capabilities. See next answer for more info. Which system is best? That's completely a comfortability preference. I think all 3 are options that work however I personally like MK the best because the owner of MK is very responsive about rectifying issues with new products and releases. DJI has virtually no support and it takes longer for issues to get rectified (IMO). Freefly is supposed to come out with a system called Synapse that is rumored to have a commerical GPS unit that has very precise GPS for pin point position hold but there has been no information about it what so ever. Even this bit of information is speculation. All we know is that it has been beta testing for over a year with no release information. Before MK came out with the 6S options I almost bought a DJI A2. The DJI WKM is the most popular system I see aerial guys using (from all different types of frames and platforms). I have also seen some guys using the new A2 controller. I would not recommend using the Radian-servo combo for the red unless you want to do a lot of post stabilization. You can get less costsing brushless gimbals such as this one http://brushlessgimbals.com/p/8780320/aerial-flex-af-10-v2---fully-assembled.html or build yourself one using Tiger GB85 motors and the Alexmos controller. I have under $3700 total into my homemade gimbal. My gimbal is a DIY unit uses the Tiger GB85 motors and the Alexmos controller. I am very happy with my footage as it needs 0 stabilization. Lastly I want to recogniize that Quadrocopter has done a lot of testing with heavy lifters for over 2 years and they now have a MK heavy lifter kit that utilizes the cinestar platform. You can find more information here https://www.quadrocopter.com/CineStar-8-Heavy-Lift-MK-Basic-Kit_p_1152.html The onlly difference between this kit and what I fly is that they use the Tiger 4012 motors and I use the Tiger U5 motors. IMO the Tiger U5 motors are much smoother and have less vibrations translating through the frame.