Week #11: Maintenance and Flight Prep

Intro:

Welcome to Week 11 of my blog. Last week, I mounted most of the electronics. This week, I did some more maintenance on it, and have began prepping the drone for flight. Let’s get into it.

Maintenance:

As I mentioned in the comment section of my Week 10 blog, I accidentally caused a short circuit when in my system when testing voltage. This short blew one of my BECs. This BEC powered my Raspberry Pi and thermal camera stream stack. Luckily, nothing else was damaged. I’ve replaced this component, and ordered backups of all my other components.

My other piece maintenance work is to be done on the AKK Video Transmitter. While swapping the antenna for a better one, I accidentally snapped the antenna off, leading to part of it getting lodged into the AKK’s port. After replacing it with the backup I ordered, I accidentally did the same thing again. I’ve ordered replacements, and the fix is easy. I’ll be sure to be extra careful when installing the new one.

Flight Prep:

I started off by ordering the batteries for my transmitter/controller. The one’s I initially ordered were too big to fit in the battery slots, so I had to order a second pair. Luckily, these batteries are rechargeable, meaning I don’t have to constantly. I then calibrated the transmitter to work with these batteries, which required me to use a multimeter to measure the voltage.

I also started creating a flight profile on the transmitter for my Hexacopter. This will save the specific preferences for the my drone.

Finally, I finished soldering the receiver that connects to my transmitter to the drone. When I had originally tried doing so, I noticed that it wasn’t getting the 5V it needed to turn on. This was how I actually discovered I had blown my BEC. But it’s now up and running:

Figure 1. Transmitter and Receiver. Photograph by author, 2026.

Next Steps:

My next steps will be to finish the setup of my transmitter, test the motors, and fly. I don’t have any questions for this week, as my next steps are pretty clear. See you all next week!