Since my last post I've upgraded this quadcopter. Most important upgrade is the motors and props:

• HK NX-4006 530kv motors
• Graupner 14x8 props

With these, and a 170gr dummy weight on the gimbal, I get these numbers when hovering the quad:

• 5000mAh 4S: 14A current consumption
• 8000mAh 4S: 18A current consumption

It runs arducopter 3.0.1 on an APM2.5. Compassmot shows 12%.

Closeup of the motor mount:

And the crate it sleeps in:

Farnell has some nice small ABS casings that can fit both 3DR style radios as well as XBee's on their breakout boards. You can cut parts out easily with a hobby knife. I use them for both the airborne and ground radio's. Link & pics:

RX2007 ABS casing

I've been building a new Arducopter recently. Here are the ingredients:

• RC Timer X650 frame (with Xaircraft cowl iso the supplied transparent dome)
• RC Timer 30A ESCs with SimonK firmware
• AX-2810Q 750KV motors with integrated prop adapters
• GF1245 (12x4.5) props
• APM2 with disabled GPS
• LEA-6H GPS
• XBee 2.4 (will be replaced with XRF module)
• FrSky RC transmitter (8ch)
• 3S 4000mAh battery

This setup is intended for hovering and endurance. Although I did not select the parts on color, I like the fact that it is all black ;-) A camera mount will be added to the setup after the initial test flights. Some things encountered during the build:

• Weight: 1129gr (without battery), 1447gr (with battery)
• Although space is available near the motor mounts for ESCs, this will only hold smaller ESCs. I decided to mount the ESCs under the cowl.
• The arms can be folded in for transport. The legs are removable, but doing this often might weaken or break the plastic clamps I fear (see next point).
• The curved landing gear legs are made of fairly stiff plastic, I will probably add some rubber bands or wire between the legs to prevent them from bending out too far.
• The supplied transparent dome is nice, but the cowl from the Xaircraft original on which this frame is based looks way better in my opinion. It is lower and wider than the dome though.
• Another advantage of the cowl over the dome is that the cowl locks the arms in place in both normal and folded configurations.
• Compared to the Xaircraft original this kit misses one part: a relatively small rectangular piece of carbon intended as 'battery tray'.
• The motors are low-kv, and are selected due to similar performance to other pancake-style motors. 

DogfightOSD is a custom firmware for the popular Remzibi and MinimOSD boards that allows your plane to broadcast its own position data (lat/lon/alt) and receive and display information received from a second aircraft onto the display. To this end, a RFM12 short range radio board is connected to the OSD board via some simple hardware modifications. Currently the Remzibi version is ready, watch the video above for an impression of the functionality.

We're working on the minimOSD version at the moment. Once that's finished, expect a video with a dogfight between the two versions!

For the Remzibi board the hardware modification is really simple: Just free up the additional analog pins (two of the pins had resistors connected to them on my board), and connect the pins to the SPI connections available on the bottom-center of the board. In the picture below you can see the blue wires on the Remzibi board doing just that. Then connect a Jeelabs board with an RFM12 radio on it to the five pins. That's it! (and upload the custom firmware ofcourse...)

For more information on this project, and to download the firmware, please go to http://code.google.com/p/dogfight-osd/

Currently only the Remzibi binary is available for download, sources will be released shortly.