happy to report WE HAVE LIFTOFF

After like 2 weeks of agony, I finally have a drone that flies.

The biggest THANK YOU to everyone who commented on my posts offering advice and help. Offering your time on discord and guidance. Yall have been the most welcoming and supportive community to a newbie. I appreciate everyone!!!

For those wondering what was wrong with my drone:

If you want to see the full saga of my troubles visit my post history.

I am brand new to tinywhoops and fpv.

In short, I got a mobula8 1-2s 85mm HappyModel Drone, with a DJI O3 Air Unit, about 2 weeks ago. I got a Radio Master Pocket Radio and DJI goggles 2.

I was under the impression it would be a simple process of binding the radio to the drone, but after a few tries nothing would work. I followed JB on YouTube and watched his vids and tried following along but still nothing. I made my first reddit post after a few days of no progress and got an overwhelming amount of advice and sympathy which was reassuring. I was glad to see i wasn’t just going insane.

After following the advice of many redditors I was still left without a binded drone and at this point i was thinking about just giving up and selling my stuff away. Someone recommended for my own sanity that I book a call with ItsBlunty. Shoutout whoever suggested that because without ItsBlunty I would have never figured out how to fix the drone.

On the call, I explained my issues and we went through some troubleshooting. Turns out that since I had upgraded to the DJI O3 air unit there was an extra wire from the flight controller to the air unit that was forcing the flight controller into some kind of SPI receiver mode. But since the drone is configured with a UART serial elrs receiver I was absolutely incapable of binding.

I had to carefully go in and cut the yellow wire from the back of the air unit and the connection to the board. I pulled just that wire out and then we tried to bind the radio once more. After that, BOOM. Binded no problem.

I was kinda flabbergasted because I would have never guessed to cut that wire and nobody commented or mentioned that in any of my posts or videos or forums I visited.

So if you find that your Mobula8 1-2s 85mm Happy Model tinywhoop with a dji o3 does NOT connect to your radio master pocket radio for any reason at all, no matter what you try, you MAY have to cut the yellow wire from the back of the air unit and remove it from the board.

After that, I was finally ready to fly the drone and then all of my batteries were shot ☠️ so then I had to wait another two days for batteries to arrive. Then I was finally getting the motors to spin but they would sputter and stop so I had to update the ESC firmware to bluejay and then configure some changes for my drones needs.

All in all, without having any knowledge of drones before this or any experience with rc cars, radios or anything of that nature, this was pretty overwhelming and at times painful to get flying. BUT, ITS SO WORTH IT. i cant stop flying it now and im having so much fun. Thanks again to all my new friends here that helped. You’ll be seeing lots more from me :)

Happy flying 🫵