One thing about Chinese motors. They are cheap and you can build a prototype quickly, but the Chinese can't make ball bearings to save themselves! After 13 flights I had a motor fail. I ordered two replacement motors from hobbyking since there's a change I'd get a bad motor. Well now my quad no longer dips towards the from starboard side! I'm going to try to locate American made ball bearings for this motor. I think once I install quality bearings the motors will last.
It's windy today so I can't test loiter but my large 6000mah Lipo is here and pretty soon it will be time to test with that. A 6000ma is heavier. I can lift it without any problems but I do not want to risk a hard landing. A hard landing under load just might be too much for the fiberglass arms to take. So far I've been lucky, I can take pretty hard landings with the 2200ma battery I have. I've only broken props. I figured with the additional weight it might be a good idea to absorb the shock of a hard landing with foam or rubber. Have any of you tried to build shock absorbing landing gear? I was even thinking of using air filled wheels mounted on spring loaded shocks.
Replies
Knut Graf has some neat wheels to fit the 3DR legs (it looks like) http://diydrones.com/photo/arducopter-shock-wheels-4?context=user
This blog post used 3DR legs, some shocks, and wheels http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/3dr-quad-suspension
This blog post used another approach http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/shock-absorber
I admit to buying rubber balls but integrating them in to the stock legs...not yet implemented. To this end, I am sketching out parts for a truck shock loaded leg that will use the stock 3DR mounting.
Here's a post where I wrote about my landing gears I have a 1900grams tricopter (6000mA lipo and 250grams camera + FPV gear and more...)
I'm extremely happy about how it helps on landings.
Look at the Hobby King x525 frame. I used it for my second quad, as it has a simple cantilever spring loaded landing claw at each corner. The pivot point is above the point of the landing gear and there is a small spring that keeps tension and the gear in the full up position. It is actually a pretty simple idea and I think it absorbs landing bumps but I guess that is all speculative. I am going to be taking them off for taller gear to clear my camera mount. I may have to fabricate something similar.
If you dont mind me asking what kind of flight times are you getting, I average about 6 minutes on a 2200mah and I am also using 4 of those 28-26's at 1350kv on a 1.25kg quad.
I have a couple 4AH 3cell packs coming in and by my calculations I can get 11min safe with about a minute in reserve.
I've just built myself a landing gear out of 5mm solid CF rods and some rubber T-junctions from a kite-building shop. The ones for 4.5mm rods fit extremely tight. Now I'm about to add some foam tube, the one used for insulating refrigerator conduits, to the horizontal rods.
There's alot of "springyness" to the whole CF/rubber combo, and the foam will add some "puffyness" :)
Too bad I can't find but grey foam, as I was looking to dump my orange tail-ball and use the landing gear for orientation.