MakeFlyEasy Believer 4G/LTE - Lots of Changes

I've been working in my free time on the Believer. I swapped out the Tmotor MN3110 470Kv for KDE 2814 515Kv. The Tmotors were very efficient but I noticed on windy days I was needing about 70% throttle to maintain cruise speed. I didn't like not having enough reserve power if needed. The KDEs are pretty efficient too and have more thrust with the same 11x7 APC props. I actually limited the throttle to 90% on takeoff and will probably limit it to 90% globally now that I've flown it a few times. 100% throttle can peak just over the max spec of the motors.

I've also been testing out a new modem setup to see if I can get better signal when in-flight. The Huawei stick works good but the antennas are built-in to the PCB and external antennas suck. Also, I'd like to get away from relying on Huawei modems. So I installed a Sixfab HAT and a Quectel EC25-AF modem. Another bonus is the modem is certified for Verizon so I have a legit data plan on it. This has dual antennas which works out pretty good so I can orient them in a way to get good coverage. I orient the main antenna straight up vertically and the diversity antenna is on a slight angle. I noticed I can fly deeper into areas that I know were dead zones with the Huawei.

I also swapped out the Mauch HS-100 current sensor as I noticed the readings of total consumed mAh compared to how much I put back in the batteries was starting to drift. The Mauch PL-100 is an upgrade. It's more accurate and with the Mauch 2x 5.3v BEC I have two power outputs to the Pixhawk. This allows failover redundancy should one of the BECs fail.

I also added the Benewake TF-Mini Plus Lidar for autonomous landing. I've done some tests with it and it works great.

Finally, the Arduplane Devs (Andrew Tridgell) fixed the issue with the takeoff parameter TKOFF_THR_SLEW so that I can gradually ramp the motors up when using Takeoff as a flight mode. Arduplane stable has been really good and I'm at v4.1.2 now without any issues.

In this flight I just do some medium range flying to make sure everything is working. My previous tune was not good as I was seeing some micro oscillations in the pitch. I believe this was due to running autotune in somewhat windy conditions when I re-maidened after swapping the motors out and upgrading Arduplane. After running an autotune during this flight, the pitch oscillations seem to have cleared up.

Build List:
MakeFlyEasy Believer 1960mm Wingspan EPO Twin Motor Aerial Survey Aircraft FPV Platform Mapping RC Airplane KIT - https://usa.banggood.com/custlink/DDv...
Pixhawk Cube Orange - https://amzn.to/3zyuxe2
Pixhawk Here GPS -
2x KDE 2814XF 515Kv - https://www.kdedirect.com/products/kd...
2x APC 11x7 Props
2x Hobbywing FlyFun v3 40A ESCs
4x Emax ES3054 Servos - https://amzn.to/2FjkOkk or Banggood https://usa.banggood.com/custlink/vGK...
mRo I2C Airspeed Sensor JST-GH MS4525DO - https://store.mrobotics.io/mRo-I2C-Ai...
Mauch PL-100 Current and Voltage Sensor - https://www.mauch-electronic.com/apps...
Mauch 2-6S BEC / 2x5.35V - https://www.mauch-electronic.com/apps...
Benewake TFmini Plus Lidar Range Finder - https://amzn.to/3EPaWrV
Castle Creations CC BEC 10A 6S - https://amzn.to/30UA93k
Hawkeye Firefly Q6 Camera w/ battery delete. Wired to BEC - https://usa.banggood.com/custlink/DDv...
DMI to CSI-2 Adapter Board Module - https://amzn.to/340lntJ
Dorhea Raspberry Pi Zero Camera Ribbon FFC Cable - https://amzn.to/2E5VnC8
Raspberry Pi 3 B+ running Raspberry Pi OS Lite https://amzn.to/2DJCKEz and UAVCast Pro https://uavmatrix.com
SixFab Raspberry Pi 3G/4G/LTE HAT with Quectel EC25-AF modem - https://sixfab.com/
2x 4G LTE Low Profile Antenna SMA 4.6dBi - https://sixfab.com/product/lte-antenn...
Spektrum InterLink DX Simulator Controller (for 4G/LTE Control) - https://amzn.to/3kLq1Sf
RadioMaster TX16S Max - https://amzn.to/2MZ8xWc
Jumper R8 Receiver - https://amzn.to/3fYjzUz https://usa.banggood.com/custlink/m3D...