It's alive! ALIVE!

My resurrected Rotor Concept HPQ-1 (aka the LotusRC T380) is finally back among my operational models! The replacement motor endbells and their tendency to pull shafts upward when tightening props were fixed once and for all by Diego, one of the techs at Rise Up Hobbytown. I had mounted the motors facing downward, an interesting feature of this model. I didn't like the looks and it was noisier. The photo shows it connected to Cleanflight while I was tuning the PID settings after I faced them upward.

There's still a hint of wobble while banking, but it flies and quite well! The frame baseplate, battery straps, landing gear, two of the arms and all four motor bases are original. I was able to retain the very nice hard-shelled carrying case as well as the original radio! It works well for this application. I'll soon be adjusting the PID a bit more until I'm totally satisfied, but for now, it's a real joy to see it fly again. Some LED strips might be called for.

Another one back in the hangar! It's a nice feeling.

Tiny Whoop motors, to be precise.

These came from Rise Up Hobbytown and they were going to be used for an online review project. The FC I received from one of my overseas contacts arrived in inoperative condition and I haven't been able to get hold of her since.

Lots of turnover, it would seem.

In the meantime, I was sitting on twenty bucks worth of motors.

I did what anyone else would do, namely get the rest of the parts and build a Tiny Whoop at my leisure! Here's the parts listing:

• Tiny Whoop "Special Sauce" motors; 17500Kv
  
• Inductrix "clone" frame, FrSky BetaFPV FC and three-blade props from Multirotor Mania
  
• Lectron Pro batteries from Rise Up Hobbytown
  
• Crazepony camera/VTX combo from Amazon

Sadly, MRM is all but shutting down, but Brian has assured me that their fine multirotor frames will still be available. As for the camera, it's quite good for only twenty bucks through Amazon Prime. I had to swap the power pins since they were the wrong polarity. Other than that, I now have a terrific little machine which I can use to practice some acro and advanced freestyle.