I recently had the chance to test out the P130 Battler FPV quadcopter which is a tiny 130mm brushless FPV quadcopter. At this size you can almost fly this quad indoors (although its not a good idea as the brushless motors can cause some damage if they hit someone, or something). None the less, a […]
I recently had the chance to test out the P130 Battler FPV quadcopter which is a tiny 130mm brushless FPV quadcopter. At this size you can almost fly this quad indoors (although its not a good idea as the brushless motors can cause some damage if they hit someone, or something). None the less, a quadcopter of this size opens up many more possibilities as it can fit through much smaller gaps allowing you to try new FPV courses. Plus since it is under 250g, there are just about no regulations when it comes to flying this. Especially for those of you in the USA, it means you do not need to register this quadcopter with FAA.
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The P130 Battler quadcopter is available as an ARTF (almost ready to fly) if you already have a radio control, and a RTF (ready to fly) version with a flysky i6 radio depending on what you are after. Both kits include batteries and a charger which is relay nice considering the price.
The P130 is a very affordable FPV quadcopter that includes all the bits you need, it is well built (strong frame, but very heavy) but is definitely suited to beginner FPV pilots. The rather sluggish performance with stock batteries will put many more experienced pilots off this quad, but for beginners the slower flight response makes it easier to fly.
Shown above, a full throttle punchout in the P130 is not particularly explosive!
At the end of the day I feel there are much better options available for your first quadcopter if you are not specific about the 130 size, such as like the Falcon 250 Pro. But if you want something smaller check our our best indoor micro quadcopter list.
If you upgrade to a 4S battery you get decept performance, but that requires upgrading to a new battery which defeats the point of buying a RTF quadcopter. I guess that is why they called it the battler, because out of the box it battles to fly!
You will still need to get some FPV goggles or an FPV monitor on the ground to view the real time video feed from your P130 quadcopter. You will also probably want to upgrade your battery at some time, so here are a few suggestions of what you should get at the same time as your P130 order to save on shipping.
Furthermore there are a wide selection of reasonably priced spare parts should you crash and break something.
Included in the kit is a great little FPV camera with built in video transmitter. It has a decent resolution at 800TVL and performs well as a FPV camera, although it is still not as good as something like the runcam swift (HS1177), but this camera is smaller and it has a built in transmitter!
The antenna is circular polarised so you should get decent signal but the problem is that the antenna itself is relatively short so depending on the angle of your quadcopter a large portion of the battery and the top carbon fiber plate will block alot of the signal. However with close range flying (less than 300m away) the FPV signal was more than good enough.
In order to change the channel on your FPV transmitter there is conveniently located push-button that you use, it can also be used to switch the camera between PAL and NTSC modes. The button functionality works as follows:
Although its not a huge deal, it is abit tricky to know what band/channel you are on with the VTX. There are a bunch of LED’s and depending on which are illuminated will be what channel/band you are on.
If you are comfortable its a good idea to upgrade to BetaFlight firmware as in general i think the betaflight PID controller works very well. Below is my suggested PID’s you should use when running gyro updates and loop times at 1.33KHz
As I mentioned its great that you get a 3S Lipo battery charger with the kit. However the only issue I had was that it only comes with a USA plug (no adapter included), So I just used a plug converter.