H-Quad Part 2

Here's where I am so far on the H I started before the holidays. Ended up trimming the arms and drilling out some of the plates to lessen the weight. Will likely add some CF rods as prop protection during the tuning process.

Using 10x4.7 props for now, though the motors could handle larger. Testing has it hover at just under 50% throttle, so I think I am in a good place. Not tuned yet - that's next when the rain lets up.

The APM is enclosed in a very stylish $0.99 plastic box from Office Depot. The stack sits on a fiberglass plate attached to the body plate with 3M double sided foam squares. The lid of the box is velcroed to the FG plate and the APM is velcroed to the lid. The bottom of the box forms the cover for the stack and clips on.

Still need to rig up battery straps, the external LEDs for GPS and arming indicators, some running lights, a GPS enclosure, and general cleanup.

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Comments

Scott Berfield January 7, 2013 at 9:43pm

The all in weight is just over 1.5Kg with a Turnigy 2.65MaH battery. I am thinking about swapping the arms for wooden ones to save some additional weight, but haven't decided yet. As to the GPS, I had nothing but trouble with the on-board Mediatek - slow to get a fix, inaccurate, and no backup battery. I have it disabled on both my APM 2 units. On this one, I am using the newer version of the 3DR Mediatek that has a larger ground plane and a backup battery. Seems to get a fix faster and much more stable readings. Re-acquires lock very fast. Haven't flown a mission yet, but should be good. On my other quad I have the LEA6 unit and it works much better than the on-board setup.
criro1999 January 7, 2013 at 7:24pm

Looks nice for me. What is the weight with your Lipo (which type)?

Question: using external GPS do some improvement? It looks to me that the APM2 embedded GPS has sky visibility, why another GPS? Is more precised?

Just continue and keep us in touch.

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