We bought Cole a quadcopter for his birthday. I did a bit of research on model we bought was affordable, and reasonable easy to fly, but very small. It can fit in the palm of your hand.
They are notorious for burning out engines, and I bought extra engines right away in anticipation. The first thing we broke was a propeller and the second thing I broke was an engine - taking off the old propeller. Pro tip: use a small flat head screw driver to lever between the propeller and engine. I ended up ripping out the entire engine in my zeal and pulled off the wires to the engine in the process.
That was six weeks ago.
To replace the engine, I needed to remove the old wires and re-solder on the new engine wires. The problem is that I have never soldered before and I was a little afraid of destroying the circuit board in the process of learning.
We found a good soldering iron at the hardware store and it took a few weeks to find a solder sucker to remove the old solder; and then a few more weeks to find a good time to have both of us sit down and complete the project.
Fortunately, Cole was cleaning his room and we came across an old remote control car that was no longer working. We disassembled it and used the car's circuit board as the test board to sharpen up on our skills. After a few tries, we were confident enough to give it a shot.
It was not perfect. I put quit a bit of heat into the board, in an effort to clean out old solder and that deformed the plastic cover a little, but I was able to get the new motor connected. It is alive. It works. We were both surprised.
I don't think either of us will be manufacturing our own home electronics in the near future, but after the test flight of the quadcopter to confirm it was in working order, he came back to the bench and started practicing soldering again.
The thing I want to give him at this age is the fearlessness of learning something that looks complex, but just reduces to another form of craftsmanship. I like to say "if you can design one thing, you can design anything." The fundamentals of design apply to many different design activities. The same thing goes for craftsmanship. If you are careful, deliberate, informed and willing to mess up a few times to learn the process - craftsmanship is a method.
I can't wait to learn welding with him.
Update:
Less than 18 hours after fixing it, Cole took it to a park and was flying it near a tree and it got stuck in the branches. He then listened to his sister when she suggested throwing her boomerang at the drone to dislodge it.
Eventually, they realized this was a bad idea and got it down with a stick. It is somehow remains in working order.
I feel like I am being punked when stuff like this happens.
