Syma X5C Explorer problem - help?

T

TerryW

Member
Hello! I'm a beginner, this is my first quadcopter. I got it about 2 months ago, been learning to fly it mostly out in the open desert across the street from my place. Don't get too much flying time in because of windy days.

A few days ago I had it way out in the desert where we'd driven to a bighorn sheep water catchment, was flying just fine but it got a little far away from me and I lost orientation so I brought it down and then spent an hour trying to find it. I didn't fly it again that day, we had to get home - hadn't planned on spending an hour searching for it.

Yesterday I took it across the street and it would fly but then would lose power and come down. I figured my batteries had been sitting too long so I recharged them all last night. Today I took it back out and had the same problem.

It seems like it's losing signal from the controller and from a very short distance, like even just 10 feet away. I will take it up and fly it a bit and then it starts coming down on it's own and when it lands, even when I have the throttle all the way down, the props are still spinning for several seconds before it shuts down, it doesn't respond at all at that point to the throttle.

So this time I put fresh batteries in the controller, tried again, same problem. It takes off, I can fly it for maybe a minute, then comes down without responding at all to the controller. And every time it comes down the lights are blinking - like it's not synced. To fly again I have to turn off the quad and the controller then turn them both back on, sycn, and fly again - 60 seconds or so the same thing happens.

Any idea what's going on and what I can do to fix it?
 
Do you have more than one battery? Check the voltage when it comes off the charger. Cheap multimeters ~$10 are usually good enough for jobs like these. You want to see about 4-4.2V.

Could just be a bad charger and or battery, a quick voltage test with more than one battery would help eliminate one potential cause.
 
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I have 5 batteries, I tried 3 different ones and the same thing happened each time, the only charger I have is the one that came with it, usb to the computer. I have a voltage meter, do I test at the battery's plug in?
 
Yup, right at the plug. Hopefully they are all low, meaning the charger is bad. Good idea to get a better charger anyway.
 
Just try to help out here. When trouble shooting it's always best to assume nothing, in this case are your batteries being charged properly seems like a good (and easy) first step/test.
 
Right, I appreciate that. Going to stop by the hobby shop today to see if they have a charger that will work for my batteries. Still though, I've had the batteries go dead in the quad and it just died, it didn't continue spinning the props with the throttle all the way down. But I hope the charger is the problem since that would be the easiest fix.
 
The hobby shop doesn't carry chargers for these batteries. But I was looking at them, I have 5 and 3 of them have become puffy, 2 are flat and square. I charged up a flat one and tried it in the quad and it worked fine. So I guess puffy batteries have gone bad?
 
The puffy ones should be retired, probably (in this case) it's the charger.

You're in a bit of bind as far as upgrading your charger, depends on if you plan on moving up one day.

There are many cheap little things available, seems no one has taken the time to test them a bit.

This one seems to be universally liked. USA vendor,

Hobby Tiger

There are also many variations of this combo, but it seems to be crap shoot on how well they work.

Multi Charger + 650mAh batts
 
Just had a look at Hobby Tiger and, sadly, they do not ship to the UK which is sad because that's where I am. Anyone recommend a similar piece of kit I can buy in the UK?
 
Puffy batteries is definitely not a good thing. I agree with Jackson...sounds like you've toasted your batteries.

What happened to the charger that came with the drone? It only chargers one at a time but it doesn't overcharge them. You seem to have a bad charger. None of my cheap Chinese chargers for these batteries over charges them even if I leave them connected all the time.

If I were you, I'd go ahead and order not only a charger, but also 4 or 5 new batteries (650mAh is what I use) The other ones are probably going bad internally if you were charging them with the same charger. The resistance goes up up up. Voltage could still be good, but mAh's available could be way down.

There are plenty of ebay sellers who will ship to your location.
 
TerryW said:
Hello! I'm a beginner, this is my first quadcopter. I got it about 2 months ago, been learning to fly it mostly out in the open desert across the street from my place. Don't get too much flying time in because of windy days.
Click to expand...

As long as the winds are under 30knots the H5C will do fine. Put it on High Power and stay downwind of the drone.
The biggest thing to worry about is lift. Wind makes the H5C climb really fast.
Just stay on top of the throttle and be ready to cut it back to prevent altitude gain.

I have found that flying on windy days is the best for sharpening your flying skills.
After flying on really bumpy, windy days, I can fly noticeably better on calmer days.
It causes your brain to work harder to sharpen your control skills.
 
Patton said:
Puffy batteries is definitely not a good thing. I agree with Jackson...sounds like you've toasted your batteries.

What happened to the charger that came with the drone? It only chargers one at a time but it doesn't overcharge them. You seem to have a bad charger. None of my cheap Chinese chargers for these batteries over charges them even if I leave them connected all the time.
Click to expand...
Interesting, all those single cell toy chargers I have overcharge. Sometimes I think they do it on purpose to extend flight times.

I've got one of these $2.80 chargers.
1426130466143-P-2468591.jpg

So cheap and chintzy, but the batteries always come off at 4.18V. And it seems to have independent channels as depending on the state of the batteries the red lights goe off at different times. Can I recommend it? IDK. Do the black ones out there work the same? IDK.

I use this adapter, don't know if that matters.

0089354100106_500_X500.jpg
 
Make that ONE X5C-1, not two!! One is stuck in the branches of a very tall tree :( I read the stuff about the wind and thought I would remove the prop guards and go for a flight on a local sportsfield. All went well for the first flight but then it was picked up by a gust of wind and despite my efforts to bring it down, the wind very kindly dropped it about 30 feet up a tree!! VERY annoyed with myself but a good lesson learned the hard way! It might be fairly calm down on the ground but it doesn't necessarily mean it will be calm 60 feet higher up! Now I am glad I bought two!
 
flew mine into the top of a tall tree the other day too - was practicing flying without self-level on but lost it in a big sideways skid into the tree. Fortunately it fell down through several branches and could be poked down the rest of the way, all luckily without breaking anything
 
That really blows captainbob. Hopefully the tree is in your yard and will get blown down...before it rains.

I fly in wind quite a bit, in fact I consider it a training necessity because it really sharpens my skills....but I don't fly near trees in gusty winds.
Also, I never seem to have the wind "drop" the quad, if anything it quickly lifts it. So much that I have to be good on reducing the throttle.
Are you sure it didn't lift your quad and then your lowered the throttle to compensate?

That said, maybe your X5C-1 is not as controllable as mine? Mine is bone stock WITH prop guards and I can maneuver mine just fine up to about 30 knot winds.
That's on HIGH power setting. It will not do it on low power.
 
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I totally agree with you, Mr Patton. It was when I read your words about you honing your skills in windy conditions that I thought, as it was fairly breezy here, I would give it a try. The sportsfield is a few 100 yards from my home but there are trees at one end, used ironically as a form of windbreak. I was standing on the centre circle (it's a football (soccer) pitch) and flying it into the wind and away from the trees but it made no difference. I will probably have to wait to see if the high winds promised for tonight will dislodge it but if not, I guess I will have to wait for the leaves to drop in the autumn (Fall) and hope it comes down then. By then it will have been through any number of rain showers so who knows if it will be any good. I guess I'll just have to bite the bullet and buy another. Oh BTW when I wrote " the wind dropped the quad" I was being a little ironic. It didn't drop it in the tree, it blew it into the tree! Still, I'm not deterred. My biggest regret is the loss of the video on the card because there should be some good footage on it.
 
Hey Captain,
Don't you give up! NO TREE could claim MY quad and keep it from me!
Get several bamboo fishing rods and tape them together and get that thing down!
Others have purchased 5 or 6 pvc pipes from HomeDepot and taped them together with duct tape.

You can DO IT !!

The silver lining here is you are going to learn to recover your quads from trees! If you have lemons....make lemonade !

Also, you do have to know your own limits. Never do something someone else recommends unless YOU are comfortable.
My flying skills may be considerably better? If you do decide to fly in winds again, please get as far upwind from trees as possible
and also try to keep the quad low to begin with.
It sounds like you made a series of beginner mistakes.
No worries...we all do.
Now go get that QUAD !!
 
Thanks for your encouragement - I appreciate it. I have a lot of bamboo in the garden and will do as you suggest. The main thing is that despite scanning with three pairs of eyes, we cannot actually locate it in the tree which is in full foliage. We thought a white X shape would be easy to spot from the ground but no luck. I have a friend who is offering to climb a ladder to get into the branches because the first branch is 20 feet up the trunk. We will continue to look for it, have no fear of that. But it may not be quite as simple as it sounds. Like I said earlier, I've had the quads for three weeks so I knew I would have the occasional problem learning a new skill. No problem!
 
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