LY-250 reaching new highs for toy grade copters

Longing Manufacturing have just released a brand new take on a mini FPV quad,  this one moulded in strong flexible polymer plastic materials,  its a surprisingly complete package including a FlySky radio and a 7inch video screen for FPV.  click through for a closer look at the new LY-250 FPV quad.

Wind a LY250... check out the contest on RCgroup here

 

 

Mostly I test and review aerial video drones, and mini-quad racers, however lately I have been looking at some of the super cheap toy-copters, one of the amazing things about these is that they often fly better than some high-end stuff I had 3 years ago. And as you can imagine the bar is being lifted quickly and firmly with every new release. The new LY-250 is pushing the upper end of toy-coppers with its $350 price point. But with that it also come with a bunch of un-typical features and solutions.

So let's dive in and take a look at what you get for your money with this quite different plastic quad. For starters, the RTF FPV kit really IS full featured, the quad come with a full featured control radio, a 7" 5.8ghz screen for FPV and all required batteries + a charger and naturally the quad itself, there is also included a mount for a camera like a GoPro or a Möbius. The plastic... Oh the plastic. When I first pulled this out of the box I was thinking that maybe I should do the video review before I test flew... Because I was worried I would destroy this entirely in the first crash. Well it turns out, not only did the LY-250 survive pretty well, I had some pretty good crashes and not even the skids have broken. The arms and cover are made of a stiff but flexible plastic that can bend a surprising amount, you can bent the landing-gear to touch the other skid and it will flex back when you let go. Amazing. Bottom line - 5-6 crashes late and I have not broken anything. I'm not saying this thing can't break, just that it's stronger than expected, a lot stronger.

 



Motors...
The LY-250 have brushless motors, this is a great feature and unexpected for a toy quad. Importantly this also means you can hack the quad easily and connect a 3S battery for much more power than what the included batteries can provide.
   The motors have right and left hand treads and you can use props like the twist on props from Walkera runner 250 directly on the motors.

LIT-ION batteries?
You can't miss the power system, unlike traditional quads, the LY-250 use off the shelf lithium iron batteries, those are both cheap and easy to get online, interestingly it's possible to drain these batteries all the way down and charge without noticeable damage to the battery, that alone is a big difference from the regular lith batteries we use. On the down-side, they are fairly heavy for the C rating they provide, so while they have a large amount of power, they give up the power slowly. This affects how you can fly the quad and frankly you can forget about aggressive 4s style flying with this quad. It's tempting to consider making a adapter for 4 instead of 2 batteries to get a higher C rating for more aggressive flying.
*** QUICK note,  I did get some cheap batteries off Amazon, however they had even lower C value than the OEM ones,  I would suggest getting cheap batteries and use them for the radio, then use the good ones from the manufacture for flying the quad.  

FPV-CAMERA
The LY-250 come with a combo-unit camera+VTX,   its a simple and elegant solution and can be replaced in literally seconds by pulling it forward and replacing it with a new one.
the range is surprisingly good for a 5.8 budget kit, however on the downside the video resolution is fairly unimpressive,  thats not a huge deal as this is not a fast quad and beginners won't notice.   on the upside the field of view is wide enough for comfortably flying using goggles.

The RADIO 
the radio is obviously not native to Longing Manufacturing, its a rebranded FlySky FSi6, honestly, thats not a bad thing,  because unlike a lot of budget drone kits with crap radios, the FlySky is a fairly decent radio.  and its compatible with a lot of other gear, so you can bind it to future quads you may buy, just pick up a compatible RX.

Flight Controller
like the radio, the FC is pretty much straight off the shelf,  Longing Manufacturing have chosen to use a well-known CC3D clone for the LY250.  again that is another good thing,  its a well known value and your can get help with CC3D systems anywhere on the internet.  
On the downside, the engineers at Longing frankly are clueless about tuning flight-controllers, and when you open the box the LY-250 flies pretty badly,  on the upside you can easily tune it yourself.   keep a eye on this blog post, Im going to be adding a couple profiles for the LY-250 so you can update it for either beginners or more experienced pilots.

 

The LY-250 is available now from HobbyWow.com CLICK HERE FOR THE LY-250 page

For more about the LY-250 check out this thread on RCgroups.com  CLICK HERE FOR FORUM

 

Comments

[SlimT]

Hi Bo. Thx for the great tip. Ok i will try first with the LIPO battery and see how it behaves.
Actually the reason why i want to upgrade from LI-ION to LIPO battery is because of the LI-ION battery at my quad copter is cutting off power. It seems that the conductive plates do loose contact when the battery heats up resulting in power loss and the quad goes to a what i like to call - DEATH ROLL -. I am getting new conductive plates from Longing send in but it has been now quite a while so i am thinking of upgrading it to the LIPO battery.
First i was thinking of directly soldering the cables to the plus and minus pole on the main-board but than i saw that it can be screwed on using a ring connector. this way i can switch back and forth between LI-ION and LIPO battery.
But than again - soldering would probably mean better contact and when screwed on there would be a slight risk of loosing contact again. Both options have their advantage and disadvantage. One would be the option to switch between the two different battery types.
Which one would you recommend to go for?
Sorry for bothering you that much.

Thx a lot

[Bo Lorentzen]

Slim put the 3S battery kit on there BEFORE you mess with the CC3D tuning, because more power completely change how that quad flies, its stock flight profile is a bit loose and is caused mostly because of lack of power.

I would review the eachine goggles but they don't like sending me stuff ha ha, at the moment Im doing the video for the Walkera goggle4 which turned out to be surprisingly comfortable. with a huge FOV for about $180

[SlimT]

Hi Bo. Yes i am going to upgrade it to a LIPO battery asap. Anayway thx - going to mess with the CC3D on my own then. I guess thats the best way to learn something new.

Are you going to review the new budget FPV goggles from Eachine? The EV800?

[Bo Lorentzen]

Hey Slim, unfortunately Ive not had a lot of time to fly the 250 and have not been messing with the tuning. the BIGGEST improvement is adding the pig-tail for a XT60 battery and fly with a 1000mah 3S

[SlimT]

Hy there. Nice review.

Question: Did you get a chance to tune the CC3D? You mentioned that you would post some profiles for the LY-250.

Thx