Part A: Bench setup

Do these three steps before any of the airframe goes together. Step 3 is the one that matters: the motor bullets are easy to swap now and hard to reach later.

#Step 1: Unpack and check

1. Lay out every item and tick it off against the parts list.
2. Inspect the main plate and ESC. Look for cracked carbon, loose ESC screws or bent bullet connectors.
3. Check each arm. The motor should spin freely by hand, and the three motor bullets should be undamaged and fully sleeved.
4. Sort the screws by length: M3 × 6, M3 × 30 and M3 × 35.

#Step 2: Battery plate

Parts: main plate, battery plate, 2 rail tubes.

Hardware: none. The clamps and their screws come pre-installed on both plates.

1. The rail tubes clamp to the ESC side of the main plate, and the battery plate clamps to the tubes below that. Work with the main plate whichever way up gives you the easiest reach to the clamps.
2. Slide each rail tube through its pair of clamps on the main plate, running front to back, parallel to where the skids will go.
3. Slide the battery plate's clamps onto the tubes, with the plate centred under the ESC and the tubes overhanging equally at each end. The optical-flow sensor mount clamps onto the front ends in Step 8.
4. Square the battery plate to the main plate, then tighten all the clamp screws evenly. Snug only; overtightening crushes the tubes.
5. Check that the XT90 battery lead exits at the rear.

#Step 3: Motor setup over the telemetry radios (props off)

Set motor order and direction now. Each motor's direction is set by the order of its three bullets, and they are hard to reach once the arms are in their mounts. The flight controller is powered from the battery and talks to your ground station through the kit's telemetry radios.

Parts: the battery plate assembly from Step 2, 4 motor arms, ESC signal cable, XT90 to XT60 adapters, telemetry radio pair; your flight controller, power module and battery.

1. Set the assembly ESC side up, resting on the battery plate. Set the four arms around it in their final positions: front-right, rear-right, rear-left, front-left.
2. Connect each arm's three bullets to the ESC lead set on that corner.
3. Plug the ESC into the flight controller with the JST-SH to Dupont cable. The JST-SH end goes into the ESC. The 4-pin Dupont plug goes on the signal row of AUX OUT 1–4, and the black ground lead goes on the ground (−) row. The plug fixes the motor order, so motors 1–4 are always AUX 1–4.
4. Power the flight controller through your power module, using the included XT90 to XT60 adapters: battery XT90 to the module's XT60 input, and the module's XT60 output to the ESC XT90. Plug the module's cable into the flight controller's power port.
5. Plug the air-side telemetry radio into the flight controller's telemetry port, and the ground-side radio into your laptop's USB port.
6. If the flight controller has no firmware yet, load ArduPilot or PX4 over USB from your ground station, then unplug the USB cable.
7. Plug in the battery and connect your ground station over the radio link at 57600 baud.
8. Select a generic quadcopter X airframe and apply it.
9. Set the ESC protocol to DShot300 on the AUX outputs, with motor 1–4 on AUX 1–4.
10. Run your ground station's motor identification or motor test, one motor at a time at low throttle.
11. Check each motor's spin direction against the table below. If one spins the wrong way, unplug the battery, swap any two of that arm's three bullets, and test again.
12. Unplug the battery. Mark each arm with its position (FR, RR, RL, FL), and leave the arms connected to the ESC.
13. Unplug the ESC cable, power module and radio from the flight controller so it can be mounted in Step 4.