ImmersionRC Vortex Setup, Maiden Flight and Issues
I’ve been getting a lot of questions about setting up the Vortex. It sounds like some people can’t even get their quads to fly. My Vortex was pretty much plug and play but I did encounter an issue while setting it up. Keep reading to find out.
I’m using a Taranis X9D transmitter and FrSky D4R-II receiver. Check out the video above to see the set up.
The video above was flown in preset 1 with the PIDs that came with the Vortex. I didn’t get a chance to tune any PIDs because the mosquitos were out in full force. With these PIDs the Vortex had some crazy yaw drift. It was hard to fly in a straight line. I’m not too concerned about it thought. It can be corrected by tweaking the PIDs. I can’t blame all the shaky video to the PIDs, some of it was me stomping my legs and swatting mosquitos, sorry.
Overall the Vortex flew great! Even with the stock T-Motor 1806 2300kv motors and 5030 props it felt like it had plenty of punch and was really smooth. I’m thinking about going beast mode and swapping the motors out with Cobra 2208 2000kv motors but I’m not sure the stock ESC’s will handle it.
The dampened camera mount on the Vortex works great! I had to ghetto rig my GoPro on it with a folded post-it note for the tilt in the meantime. I’ll be making custom GoPro and Mobius mounts for it. Check back soon. I love how the FPV camera is mounted in a way you can adjust the angle by just moving it with your fingers.
There is a C.G. (center of gravity) line on the bottom of the Vortex that helps you balance the quad. Having the battery mounted directly on top of that line helps give the Vortex a smooth balanced feeling. You can adjust the forward/backward position of the battery with the velcro straps to help counter balance the GoPro or Mobius.
I had a minor crash and all it did was bend one of the arms back and broke the prop. The build of the Vortex feels great, the frame feels rock solid. All the parts on the Vortex feels like they spent a lot of time developing and are top quality.
During my setup of the Vortex I did have something weird happen. After I did my settings in Cleanflight, unplugged and powered back up, nothing worked! My rx was bound but no stick movements, video feed in the goggles but no OSD, and no rear LED’s. It would connect to Cleanflight but it wouldn’t let me select any of the tabs. Sometimes I could arm the Vortex with stick movement and the LED would change green but the motors wouldn’t spin.
Sometimes the LED’s wouldn’t even come on. I had to reset the Vortex several times to fix it. To reset the Vortex, plug in the battery (and hopefully the rear LED’s will come on) and push the button on the top right of the LED board for 8 seconds. Resetting the quad will return the Vortex to the factory state in PPM rx mode. Not sure what happened here but hopefully it will be fixed in the next firmware update.
The Vortex is not full carbon fiber. The arms, top plate and camera mount is carbon fiber. The bottom plate is fiberglass reinforced circuit board. I wouldn’t say this is bad or good. It’s super stiff though.
The Fatshark 600TVL CMOS camera is not so great. I prefer the Sony 600TVL CCD camera. I haven’t flown the Vortex at night but I’m guessing the CMOS will not perform as well as a CCD. It’s going to be tricky trying to swap out the camera because the CMOS is 5v and the CCD is 12v.
I’ve only had the Vortex for less than a week but so far everything except the minor programming glitch has been great. With just some minor PID adjustments the ImmersionRC Vortex is going to be a smooth flying beast!