If anyone is looking to buy a cheap setup or spares, UnmannedTech have a bunch of Cetus kits going for rather cheap prices. The quads are likely broken in several ways (blown ESC’s are my best guess), but you get a set of VR02 goggles, Literadio and Lipos/charger, which IMO is the real reason for getting it. Might not be the best gear ever, but it ticks the basics box.
I picked one up for £30, the gogs and radio are for a family member, plus I want the camera and potentially vtx for a different build. They have a selection of brushed or brushless. Spare parts abound.
Might interest someone, or maybe someone looking for a cheap set of box goggles and a radio for sim use.
If it was in budget i would have liked one of the brushless Pro models, but it wasn’t. £30 for a brushed whoop was fine. The main thing I wanted was the radio. I believe it’s a Literadio 2 SE, which means for £15 I can convert it to ELRS and it solves an issue with a build i’m doing for my nephew. He has a D8 radio but most cheap parts are ELRS nowadays. i do actually have an F3 D8 FC now, but I have a better F4 ELRS FC in my parts box that is irrelevant for me (5A BetaFPV AIO). So all being well I can swap the pcb on the Literadio for the ELRS one and that will make life easier if I build anything further down the line and want to give him it.
The brushless whoop I will fix, when I can be bothered.
It’s slightly frustrating that they just say, “This product is a customer return and is assumed to be faulty.” I mean, presumably they know the reason the customer returned it. Even if they haven’t bothered checking, it would be nice to know why it got sent back.
I was about to pull the trigger on the Tron80 myself… Would be a nice base to start with 2-3s build. I was gonna ditch the vista stuff and convert it to analog initially and later transfer all to a toothpick frame but I was just to slow to act on it… lol
I automatically assume most customer returns are because they blew the ESC with turtle or bricked the FC by flashing the wrong fw, or the FC is dead for some other reason. But I got mine for the radio and goggles. The quad will give me a basic camera, but the rest of it will go in the parts box. There will be other bits I can salvage from it.
Seems like not much is left now, only the Cetus Pro. From that one you should at the bare minimum be able to salvage a set of 0802 motors, a vtx/cam and you will have a set of goggles and a Literadio.
I actually do want a Cetus brushless at some point. I like the aesthetics of it, but would want to convert it to a 2S ripper.
Your best bet is to keep an eye on UnmannedTech’s Bargain Bin. I’ve pulled a handful of whoops from it in the last 6 months. All had broken fc’s or blown esc’s, but the main thing I got with them was Lipos, spares and experience from rebuilding them.
