MJX Bugs 3. Smaller Version With Acro Mode

Introduction

Mod­el 2018. Pro­posed by the devel­op­er in response to the crit­i­cism of many users regard­ing the lack of the pop­u­lar MJX Bugs 3 flight mode “Acro”. The MJX Bugs 3 Mini is a rac­ing ver­sion of the quad­copter for begin­ners with a drone rac­ing per­spec­tive who have gone beyond the poten­tial of col­lec­tor UAVs and want to try some­thing more seri­ous, but at the same time inex­pen­sive and ready to fly out of the box.

Peculiarities

• Frame 175mm
• B/C 1306 2750KV motors in tan­dem with 2‑blade 3.7″ props
• 2 × spend­ing modes (50/100%)
• Flight modes: Angel/Acro
• Bat­tery charge and dis­tance con­trol
• Con­trol at 2.4GHz
• 6 axis gyro­scope
• Max. flight time 10 min
• Max. removal dis­tance 300m
• Flips 360°
• Built-in buzzer
• LED back­light (switch­able)

Equipment

The devel­op­er offers the drone in three trim lev­els:

1. with­out cam­era
2. With С5810 cam­era + FPV mon­i­tor
3. With С5810 cam­era + FPV mon­i­tor + FPV gog­gles

The stan­dard kit will include:

1. Quad­copter BUGS 3 mini
2. Bat­tery 2S 7.4V 850mAh 45C LiPo
3. Equip­ment 2.4GHz (pow­er sup­ply from 4 × AA sold sep­a­rate­ly)
4. 4 × rotors
5. 4 × spare rotors
6. 4 × rotor pro­tec­tion
7. USB charg­er
8. Adapter for mem­o­ry
9. Tool (screw­driv­er + wrench for dis­man­tling the rotors)
10. Instruc­tion (in Eng­lish)

Add. Accessories

Specification

Drone

Brand:

MJX

Mod­el:

BUGS 3 mini

Col­or:

Black

Sta­bi­liza­tion:

6 axis gyro­scope

Radio fre­quen­cy:

2.4GHz

Trans­mit­ter Pow­er:

4 × AA 1.5V (sold sep­a­rate­ly

Motors:

brush­less 1306 2750KV

Bat­tery capac­i­ty:

2S 7.4V 850mAh 45C LiPo

Back­light:

LED

Max. flight time:

10 min

Max. FPV flight range:

300m

Fly­ing envi­ron­ment:

Out­doors

Cost Adjust­ment:

50/100%

Flight modes:

Angel/Acro

Charg­ing time:

≈ 180 min

Mate­r­i­al:

ABS

Frame:

175mm

Dimen­sions:

220×220×65mm

Drone weight (with­out bat­tery):

186gr

Age lim­it:

14+

FPV Camera C5810

Lens:

65°

Video res­o­lu­tion:

648×488p

Video For­mat:

VGA

Video trans­mit­ter:

24CH 5.8GHz 25mW

Fre­quen­cy range:

5645 — 5945MHz

TV for­mat:

PAL

Max. trans­mis­sion dis­tance:

300m

FPV Monitor

Max. per­mis­sion:

1280×720p

Diag­o­nal:

4.3 inch­es (10.9cm)

Video receiv­er:

8ch 5.8GHz

Max. removal dis­tance:

500m

Food:

1S 3.7V 800mAh Li-ion

Charg­er:

microUSB cable

Charg­ing time:

3h

Time of con­tin­u­ous work:

12 min

Appearance

Motors

The MJX Bugs 3 Mini is equipped with inex­pen­sive, time-test­ed 2750KV 1306 B/C motors, work­ing in tan­dem with 2‑bladed 3.7‑inch props. The poten­tial of the pow­er plant, cou­pled with a light weight, pro­vid­ed the drone with demon­stra­tive thrust in the UAV niche occu­pied, which advanced begin­ners will appre­ci­ate.

• Bugs 3 Mini han­dles any GoPro action cam­era with ease.
• The pilot has two modes of con­sump­tion “Low / High” (Pow­er: 50/100%).

Camera

FPV cam­era MJX C5810 (head­ing) — pro­vides ana­log video stream trans­mis­sion with­out delay in the 5.8 GHz fre­quen­cy range for first-per­son flight. Works in tan­dem with a built-in 24-chan­nel 25mW video trans­mit­ter. Lens view­ing angle: 65°. Video qual­i­ty: 648×488p. Video for­mat: VGA. Max. trans­mis­sion dis­tance: 300m. In prac­tice, this dis­tance was no fur­ther than 100–150 meters.

• The MJX C5810 can be paired with a vari­ety of ana­log FPV devices, includ­ing the MJX D43 FPV Mon­i­tor, either alone or with the MJX G3 FPV Head­set.
• The FPV Wi-Fi cam­era MJX C5007 was pre­vi­ous­ly avail­able. Cur­rent­ly, the devel­op­er has com­plet­ed the release of this mod­el.

FPV Monitor

MJX D43 4.3 LCD RX is a ver­sa­tile 4.3‑inch LCD FPV mon­i­tor with man­u­al bright­ness con­trol. The built-in 32-chan­nel video receiv­er oper­at­ing in the 5.8GHz band is respon­si­ble for receiv­ing the video stream from the drone’s cam­era. Pow­ered by a built-in 1‑cell lithi­um-ion bat­tery with a capac­i­ty of 800mAh. Charg­ing with the includ­ed USB cable. It mounts to stock con­trol equip­ment using the includ­ed mount, and also sup­ports pair­ing with an FPV head­set — MJX G3 for full-fledged first-per­son flight.

FPV headset

MJX G3 5.8G FPV Gog­gles — when paired with an FPV mon­i­tor, pro­vides a ful­ly immer­sive first-per­son flight expe­ri­ence. Avail­able in a top-end con­fig­u­ra­tion, or pur­chased sep­a­rate­ly.

Flight modes

The pilot has two flight modes at his dis­pos­al:

1. Angel — mode for begin­ners. The 6‑axis gyro­scope 100% con­trols the hor­i­zon­tal posi­tion of the drone, dynamism and tilt angles are min­i­mal. The mode is suit­able for begin­ners.
2. Acro — elec­tron­ic sta­bi­liza­tion is dis­abled, tilt angles are max­i­mum. Unleash­es the full flight poten­tial of the drone. The mode is suit­able for advanced users.

The change of modes is car­ried out by a switch on the con­trol equip­ment before turn­ing on the remote con­trol and the drone. Launch­ing in Acro mode is accom­pa­nied by a pro­nounced audi­ble drone alarm.

Food

The Bugs 3 Mini is pow­ered by a 2‑can (2S/7.4V) lithi­um-poly­mer bat­tery with a capac­i­ty of 850mAh 45C, made in a kind of box like in pre­mi­um UAVs. Accord­ing to the spec­i­fi­ca­tion, it pro­vides a flight dura­tion of about 10 min­utes. In prac­tice, with­out an FPV cam­era with a mixed style of pilot­ing, this time was 5 min­utes 35 sec­onds. Charges with the includ­ed USB charg­er in 180 min­utes.

B3 Mini inher­it­ed the func­tion of feed­back from the drone to the equip­ment in case of low volt­age and crit­i­cal dis­tance (short beeps of the equip­ment + flash­ing of the drone back­light = low bat­tery; Long beep = far away or strong inter­fer­ence in the flight site).

Control

The quadro­copter is con­trolled by a 4‑channel con­trol equip­ment oper­at­ing at a fre­quen­cy of 2.4GHz. Pow­ered by 4 × AA (pur­chased sep­a­rate­ly). Pro­vides max. removal dis­tance — 500 meters.

*Remote con­trol in com­bi­na­tion with FPV mon­i­tor.

Anten­nas on con­trol equip­ment are dec­o­ra­tive. The anten­na itself is stowed inside the case, and in the future it will be bet­ter to move it out­side. Such an upgrade will sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve the qual­i­ty of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

Price

The MJX Bugs 3 Mini quadro­copter is suc­cess­ful­ly sold through var­i­ous Inter­net trad­ing plat­forms at a price of $ 99 — $ 160 (depend­ing on con­fig­u­ra­tion).

Recommendations and remarks

• Before installing the bat­tery for the first time, do not for­get to remove the safe­ty plug from the con­tact group in the drone’s bat­tery com­part­ment.
• The C5810 FPV Cam­era is only suit­able for first look. In the future, we rec­om­mend replac­ing it with a more tech­no­log­i­cal one (Tur­bow­ing DVR CYCLOPS 3, AKK A5 and oth­er ana­logues). A visu­al upgrade process can be found on YouTube. The end result will sig­nif­i­cant­ly pro­long the enjoy­ment of own­ing the BUGS 3 Mini.
• Eachine ROTG01 — the device allows you to dis­play the image broad­cast from the FPV drone on the screen of a smart­phone / tablet (on Android).
• It will be bet­ter to upgrade and stock pow­er to a more pro­duc­tive one. The process, as in the case of the cam­era, is not dif­fi­cult, although it requires the use of a sol­der­ing iron. As a pow­er source, lithi­um-poly­mer bat­ter­ies 7.4V 1300mAh 30C with a JST con­nec­tor (dimen­sions: 69 × 30 × 16 mm) will be opti­mal
• Regard­less of the lev­el of pilot­ing expe­ri­ence, it is rec­om­mend­ed to start the first flight of the B3 Mini exclu­sive­ly at the min­i­mum cost, espe­cial­ly in Acro mode. This approach will allow the user to go through the process of adap­ta­tion to con­trol with­out seri­ous crash­es.
• To force-pair the con­trol equip­ment with the drone, you must:

1. While hold­ing down the “Start and stop motors” but­ton, turn on the con­trol pan­el.
2. Then turn on the drone. The air­craft light will flash rapid­ly at first and then turn to a steady glow, indi­cat­ing that the pair­ing process has been suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed.

• Before the first flight, it is rec­om­mend­ed to cal­i­brate the gyro­scope.

Cal­i­bra­tion process:

1. Turn on the drone and place it on a hor­i­zon­tal sur­face
2. Turn on the remote con­trol
3. Bring both sticks to the low­er right posi­tion and hold for about 2–3 sec­onds, pay­ing atten­tion to the drone’s back­light, it will start flash­ing. Wait for the back­light to change from blink­ing to sol­id. Cal­i­bra­tion com­plet­ed.
4. If nec­es­sary, achieve accu­rate posi­tion hold­ing by adjust­ing the off­set (trim­ming) from the con­trol pan­el.

• If after the next crash you can­not find the crash site of the B3 Mini, turn off the con­trol equip­ment and the drone will start beep­ing.

Conclusion

MJX Bugs 3 Mini from $99

Func­tion­al­i­ty

6/10

Flight time

5/10

flight qual­i­ties

9/10

com­pact­ness

9/10

Equip­ment

9/10

Reli­a­bil­i­ty

8/10

Price qual­i­ty

10/10

pros

• Qual­i­ty work­man­ship / High impact mate­ri­als
• Easy to use
• Flight poten­tial / Han­dling
• Angel/Acro flight modes
• Activ­i­ty Modes Low/High
• Equip­ment (3 options)
• The mod­el allows for uncom­pli­cat­ed refine­ment process­es
• Bright LED back­light with the abil­i­ty to switch off
• Check­ing the remain­ing bat­tery charge and the removal dis­tance
• Price/Ready to fly out of the box

Minuses

• Stan­dard FPV cam­era (extreme­ly nar­row FOV)
• Poten­tial of a stan­dard bat­tery
• Stick sen­si­tiv­i­ty in Acro mode at max. expens­es (requires get­ting used to)
• Shut­down of motors only with the but­ton on the remote con­trol

Def­i­nite­ly deserves the atten­tion of those who have already mas­tered the pri­ma­ry skills of pilot­ing with col­lec­tor UAVs and are in search of some­thing more pow­er­ful and fast, but at the same time inex­pen­sive and ready to fly out of the box. When the stock poten­tial of the drone gets bored, the mod­el allows you to imple­ment an easy and inex­pen­sive upgrade, dur­ing which the novice user will get acquaint­ed with the inter­nal struc­ture of the drone and the process of set­ting up ana­log FPV radio elec­tron­ics. It acts as one of the best FPV sim­u­la­tors, after mas­ter­ing which you can safe­ly move on to more expen­sive and advanced UAVs. Age lim­it 14+.

A photo

Pho­to with Bugs 3 Mini drone.

Video

Video with Bugs 3 Mini drone.