FullspeedRC Tiny Pusher Cinewhoop Review
• Chris Landa
The FullspeedRC TinyPusher is, as the name suggests a pusher whoop, meaning that the motors are mounted upside down and are pushing the air down. This is done in order to have more space on top of the whoop to mound an HD camera platform of your choice, making it a cinewhoop.
Instead of going for an all in one cam, which is responsible for FPV feed and HD recording, this model is intended to be used with a dedicated HD camera. There are mounts available, one for a naked GoPro and for the Insta360 Go.
Electronics
FullspeedRC decided to go with their own 16mm stack instead of an all in one board. On the bottom of the stack there is the ESC, above it the flight controller. The video transmitter is mounted on back the back of the frame and the receiver on the side of the frame.
The stack is connected with nylon spacers that screw into each other. I would have preferred it to be one long screw instead, since I have bad experiences with those nylon spacers breaking pretty easily.
The top of the stack is made from a carbon plate to which the battery, using rubber bands, is mounted. At first I thought this mounting option seemed very improvised, but it actually does work pretty well and you can swap batteries pretty quickly without having to fiddle with a battery strap.
Flight-controller
Your typical F4 flight-controller, not much to say here. The connector from the ESC is plugged in, the rest is directly soldered. The Beteflight target is MatekF411 and comes flashed with version 4.1.1 of Betaflight.
One thing that is a bit annoying ist, that the USB port powers the whole quad including vtx, receiver and ESC’s - I had to attach a battery since Betaflight would keep disconnecting.
ESC
The ESC is pretty much plug and play, motors are plugged in as is the connector to the flight controller. The pigtail comes with an XT30 connector and an external capacitor is not included.
I was at first a bit surprised by the plug and play motor connections, since you would usually not use them on a 3S setup, but the copter worked fine with them - and with this setup you are not going to go for maximum power anyway.
The ESC is rated for 12A continuous and 16A burst. The deadtime of 120 is on a pretty high side, but according to specs it comes flashed with a 48kHz version of BLHELI_S.
As mentioned before, the ESC is on the bottom of the stack and thus very close to the ground, completely without protection. This made me a bit nervous and I decided to design a 3D printable bottom plate to give it at least some protection. This way, I don’t have to be afraid of landing on gravel or similar.
Receiver
The FullspeedRC TinyPusher comes with different receivers options: FrSky, Flysky, DSMX and Crossfire. Or you can get it without receiver and run whatever receiver you prefer.
I went with the FrSky version which includes an FrSky D16 clone receiver supporting telemetry.
CAUTION: This receiver will unfortunately not work properly with the BetaFPV Lite Radio 2.
VTX
The included VTX is the NamelessRC Nano 400, which I have reviewed previously. It is switchable between 25, 100, 200 and 400mW via IRC Tramp protocol. It comes locked to 25mW and certain channels are not available in the locked state. To unlock it, follow the unlock instructions in my dedicated article - if you do not unlock it, some channels will not be available and you will be stuck at 25mW output power.
Cam
The FPV cam is a Caddx EOS2 - with a resolution of 1200TVL and an aspect ratio of 4:3. As it is common for me with Caddx Cams, this too unfortunately came with dirt on the sensor. The cam is mounted with a 3D print to the frame and you can adjust the camera angle to your liking.
I do not think that the cam mount is quite optimal, since you get quite a lot of jello and a rather shaky picture. I think a slightly more rigid cam mount would be beneficial here.
Frame
The baseplate of the frame is made from 1mm thick carbon to which the plastic hoops are screwed to with three screws. The frame has quite some flex and since the carbon is so thin I was a bit afraid that it might break quickly, but this does not seem to be the case. I crashed a couple of times, and once got stuck pretty high up in a tree from which I fell all the way down and everything is still in perfect working order.
The mount for Insta360 Go and naked GoPro are mounted to the FPV cam’s mount. Keep in mind, that they are not included in the set and you need to order them separately or print them yourself:
Motors & Props
The motors are unbranded 1103, 8000KV motors with a 1.5mm shaft. They seem to actually be very similar to the Fullspeed branded D1103 motors.
The props are Gemfan 1635 tri-blade props, but you can use any other similar sized (40mm) prop. You might want to go with a similar aggressive pitch though.
Batteries
This cinewhoop is intended to be flown on 3S. I tried 3S, 300mAh batteries, but the flight times were super low - around a minute and thirty seconds. I was a bit hesitant to put heavier batteries on, but this whoop has absolutely no problem carrying 450mAh batteries, with those and a Insta360 Go I can fly for around 4 minutes. And this is actually pretty nice, since the Insta360 Go can only record for a duration of 5 minutes at a time.
I am pretty sure that the copter will also handel 3S, 520mAh batteries, but I do not have any of those to confirm that.
Accessories
You get a couple of spare screws, rubber bands and stickers. And that is it, no spare props, no mount for the Insta360 Go. I would really have loved to see a couple of spare props at least.
Performance
A pusher flies completely different from a regular oriented copter and definitely needs some getting used to - and I was really surprised how much different it handles. It is absolutely not made for acro. I recommend lowering your camera angle and just cruise around.
It took me a couple of packs to really get used to the flying style, but it has something really zen to cruise around and find nice, cinematic lines.
This is some footage from my Insta360 Go, and I really dig it:
Conclusion
This whoop is by far not perfect, but if you are interested in getting HD footage off of a whoop, this is the way to go: After having seen footage that this whoop is capable of producing, the AIO HD/FPV cams make absolutely no sense for me anymore. Sure, you are carying more weight, but the resulting image is just so much better, especially considering the amazing stabilization of the Insta360 Go.
I understand that it is a bigger investment since you also have to get an extra HD camera.
The price-tag of around 110$ for the FullspeedRC TinyPusher is absolutely fair in my opinion.
Keep in mind, that this whoop is made for one specific goal: Recording cinematographic footage. Thus it lacks in all other categories. So I would absolutely not recommend to get it if you are planning on doing acro or zip around fast - there are better options for that.
Chris is a Vienna based software developer. In his spare time he enjoys reviewing tech gear, ripping quads of all sizes and making stuff.
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