Quadcopter details:
-Custom CF frame built from 12mm tubes and 1m~3mm CF plate.
- RCTimer 17x5.5 CF Props
- Turnigy Plush 12A ESC's running BLHeli firmware
- RCTimer 5010 - 360Kv motors
- Panasonic NCR18650 13,600A battery pack
- Bareduino Arduino FC with MPU6050
- OrangeRX DSM satellite RX
- AUW 1296 grams with battery
- Frame AUW is 499 g
Everything is COTS (standard, off the shelf) equipment.
More details to be posted on the massive thread and amazing duration quadcopter's built and posted by EoD here.
RCGroups current all-time duration multicopter thread
- RCTimer motors had original 18awg wires replaced with 24awg bringing the total weight to 79.9g
- Props were sanded and balanced, motors balanced.
- Motor-prop screws are 3mm aluminum.
- Motor screws are 4 x per motor and nylon. All 16 screws are less than a couple grams.
- Super light frame came in at 66 grams
- Barduino Arduino board from seedstudio along with an MPU6050 breakout board was used to build a tiny Multiwiicopter flight controller.
- A Spektrum satellite RX was used for the radio link. A larger MWC board was used to tune the flight parameters first then the bareduino was installed. You have to load the firmware, edit the PID"s using the MWC software, then again reflash the board to enable Spektrum support on Arduino's with one shared serial port.
- The Plush ESC's are running BLHeli firmware, and were stripped of one voltage regulator each. Heatsinks were added.
- Most "data/esc" wires are ~36awg.
- The battery pack is the awesome Panasonic 18650 cells as posted by EoD on his duration quadcopter flights.
The flight:
- It started at about 11:30am. Battery pack was charged at 2A for about 7 hours. Rested for 30min, then flown.
- I installed a small battery voltage monitor so I could land before the pack got to low. 5grams, cost me a minute.
- About 30 minutes in I was at about .400mv down, I had about 4.2V of power. Looking good!
- 1 hour in. Still lots of power, however the voltage started to drop a bit faster. Every 0.01v ticked by and I could tell it didn't last as long as when the flight started.
- 1.15 minutes in. Still looking good, starting to realize maybe we won't make 120 minutes.
- 1.25 minutes in. Wow we are dropping faster and fast, I still need 11 minutes. After flying for almost 1.5hours I hoped I would not be seconds short of the record. Going for it!
- 1.30 minutes in. I can't remember where it was, 3.15 per cell I think. But I was able to quickly calculate how long a 100mv was lasting and what I had left to 2.7V (my personal cut-off point) and it I'm not sure if I will make another 6! minutes.
1.35.45 . The longest 5 minutes, 45 seconds ever.
- 1.36 minutes 2.80v per cell, some at 2.79, one at 2.75. I knew here I beat the current "hi-score" record! Pushing ahead.
- 1.37 minutes Started hitting 2.7 on some cells, decided to land. According to EoD he had a "couple" minutes at this point. Not wanting to damage my battery I landed it here.
Could this design fly longer? 100 minutes? maybe. I could remove the heatsinks on the ESC's, they didn't add any minutes and 'cost' me 5 grams of time, copper enameled wires, direct solder the battery instead of connectors, and not use the battery voltage monitor. This would save at least 20~30grams and I think you could safely fly to over 100 minutes. Maybe 101!
The 97 minute video!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ScZ8zDsVvk&feature=youtu.be
Some pictures inserted into the video. Any questions just ask. Sorry for the "Alien Autopsy" quality video it was hard to capture this indoors in poor lighting and it has been to windy outdoors.
contact: cptfrazz(at)gmail
