hi I'm going to loan with iFixit and
today we have a very special guest in
our studio this is David Hoyt he is our
resident guru for drones this is awesome
I am so excited that you came in today
and you're gonna tell us a little bit
about not just building drones but
repairing them right yeah that's right
now I know they're awesome and they're
addictive to fly they're a lot of fun
yeah but tell us how you got into them
so I started flying airplanes when I was
in high school and when I got to college
I didn't have a runway so I figured well
it'd be cool to have a helicopter
problem with helicopters that they have
really big blades and they're scary and
dangerous so that was about the time
that multi rotor drones were coming out
and I figured vertical takeoff would be
a lot of fun to play around with did you
start with a kit or did you build your
own I started with a kit to build my own
kind of like this one BAM I started with
the hexacopter version of this this is
neat f450 frame I start with the f-550
so how many have you built yourself
since you started sure I've got about
five drones at the moment they range
from some as small as this one to stuff
as big as probably the size of this
table whoa and what do you do with
something that's that size the
moneymaker right now is definitely
flying cameras someday they'll be
delivering packages the time-being
cameras are where it's at so I'm
guessing that crashes are just part of
drone life it happens I'm sure what is a
great tool to have on hand or maybe
tools to just keep with you while you're
flying just in case something happens
yeah so we've got sort of your top five
tools that you have on hand at any at
any time you're flying with crashes the
big thing is you want to have spare
parts on hand everyone crashes and it's
not a big deal and so if you've got the
spare parts already available to you you
can fix it a lot faster than waiting for
shipping to arrive at your front door as
far as tools go certainly probably the
most common one are your hex drivers
I've got a two millimeter right here and
a 2.5 millimeter these are really common
you do you sometimes use a 3.0 but 2.2
and 2.5 or fifties in a bag
great um let's see we've got our
mounting tape this is 3m double-sided
sticky foam mounting tape it's got
adhesive on both sides of it you can cut
it exactly
the right size that you like and then
you've also got your just a pair of like
wire sniffers or these are called dykes
and they're great for snipping zip ties
or other hard to get to places exactly
you don't want to if you're cutting a
zip tie you don't want to accidentally
cut a wire right so these are really
precise cutters at the field you want to
have a couple of spare zip ties these
are great for mounting down anything
that might come to dance so we've got
two sizes here there's the 8 inch zip
tie and their 4 inch use a lot to get d
8 inches but the 4 inch ones are great
for really small components also we use
quite a bit of velcro
you've got your voice link and your sort
of rough side these are the hooks and
these are what they hook onto you use a
lot of velcro with your battery packs
gotcha
as far as monitoring your batteries go
this this digital battery capacity
checker makes it really really easy to
do if you plug it in and it gives you a
really easy to see readout you can check
the voltage of any of the cells that are
inside the battery pack as well as you
get a really quick readout of the entire
capacity em if it's charged or if it's
discharged and then last but not least
we've also got a 12 meter millimeter hex
wrench that we're gonna be using today
to replace the the propellers on this
phantom with with multi rotor drones
you've got propellers that spin
clockwise as well as propellers that
spin counterclockwise to loosen them you
actually spin the nut you hold the motor
steady and then you should not the the
direction opposite the propeller spin
direction so this propeller spins
counterclockwise so we're gonna spend a
nut clockwise and that loosens it up and
normally it's lefty-loosey righty-tighty
right this one is one of the
counter-rotating ones so to tighten this
down you actually spin it to the left
yeah exactly
so just double check that you're the
concavity of your rotor blade is sort of
concave facing the ground so just look
at when it's gonna spin make sure it's
going to be pushing air down and
definitely don't end it so almost lay
down that is super easy I think anyone
can do it and I am so ready to see these
guys good which one are we taking out
we're gonna take this one out and
we're gonna actually get some video from
the gimbal out down here with a GoPro
attached excellent very impressed with
the quality and the smoothness of the
video
David this is so awesome thank you so
much for coming in and showing us your
drones and how to repair them if you're
interested in drone repaired check it
out at ifixit.com or we'll have the link
below in the description