Turnigy Talon V2 Build: Part 2

After the frame was bolted together, motors and ESCs wired up, the next step was to connect the receiver to the Hobbyking multirotor control board. For this, you need male to male servo cables. I didn't have any of these handy, but I did have some male servo connector ends and some servo cables I could cut up.

How to attach Servo Cable Ends
The last time I tried to put on my own connectors I didn't have a proper crimping tool, I just tried crimping the electrical connectors on the wires with a needle nose pliers- to disastrous results. So, I picked up a crimp tool at RadioShack. It isn't quite right, even the smallest notch is slightly too big, but it's really close.

D-Sub Crimping Tool

Servo Cable Cut, Ends stripped ~3mm

Connectors Crimped, Applying flux

Holding Connectors In 3rd Hand Tool, Prior to soldering

Once the connectors are soldered onto the ends of the cable, they simply snap into the molded plastic connector body. Take care to snap each wire into the correct slot in the plastic connector so the ground, VCC, and signal wires correctly map from end to end of the cable.

Finished Cable, 1st one- a little ugly but it works

Initial Setup of the Hobbyking Multi-Rotor control board with a Spektrum DX8 (or DX6i, DX7)
Now that the system is wired up, it was time to fire up the motors and set the rotation direction before the props are attached.

After doing some web research one surprising thing I learned was the radio needs to be in ACRO mode rather than HELI- totally different than a Tri-copter setup.

I connected the receiver, (an AR6110) bound it to the DX8, and attempted to spin up the motors. Nothing. I couldn't get the LED on the multi-rotor control board to light. I followed the instructions off the Hobbyking website, dropped the throttle trim all the way down, moved the throttle stick to the bottom and full right. Still nothing. I tried re-binding the receiver, testing to make sure the receiver was properly bound, etc- still nothing. Finally, I realized that the rudder channel might need reversing. Reversed it, and the control board armed right away. It still needs the throttle trim to be completely bottomed, but now it easily arms by going to minimum throttle and holding the rudder in full right position for a few seconds.

Once the control board would arm, it was easy to check the motor rotation directions and switching two of the motor lead wires for the motors that needed to be reversed.

The pusher props are still on order- as soon as they arrive I'll be able to install all props and finish the setup and try the first flight!