Paul Thompson's Posts

Quad Flight Testing

Posted by Paul Thompson on December 4, 2010 at 5:30am

Here is a bit of video I have put together of my quad flight testing. Have been getting about 7mins of flight time with the very inefficient props I have at the moment. Will be putting larger two blade props on it when they turn up.

The flight I did after this video was a little less successful, doing some more aggresive flying I found out a heavy quad does not like high rates if decent, It seemed to get a lot of prop wash spilling around and being drawn back into the props, and stalling them (not very fun :-o) It got away from me after that, APM could not keep it level, nor could I and I dumped it into a tree at about 30-40kph :-(
The result was this:

It looks pretty bad, but after checking it all I only broke one prop and the plastic joiner in the middle.

So if you have a heavy or larger quad be careful with the decent rates particularly with no or slow forward speeds.

My First Quadcopter

Posted by Paul Thompson on December 2, 2010 at 4:30am

Well I have finally moved to the dark side and made myself a Quadcopter, and had my first successful flight tonight.

Some Specs:
Weight: 2100g (4.6lbs) Without Flight battery
Span: 102cm (40")
Airframe: Black Anodized Aluminium square tube
Motors: Turnigy 42-50-600kv
Props: Master Airscrew 12x6 3 Blade
ESC's: 60amp Hobbyking SS ESC
Batterys: 3 or 4cell 5A/hr Lipo Flight Battery and 2cell 1800mah Lipo for Avionics
I hope to get some flying videos in the next day or two.

My APM Test Platform

Posted by Paul Thompson on November 16, 2010 at 5:30am

Hi guys, thought it was about time put up some photo's and some details of my APM aircraft.

First up I have to give a big thanks to the DIY Drones community for developing such a great system, particularly the support documentation. After setting up, tuning and test flying APM the last few months, I have now had many long auto flights with this aircraft without a hitch, with the longest being around 15km.

The aircraft is a 1940's design Trenton Terror originally for free flight. This particular airframe is 20years old and still going strong. Wingspan is 2m, All up weight is 2.2kgs. Powerplant is an electric .32size rimfire outrunner turning a 14x8 prop. I normally run it on a 5Ah 3cell lipo, giving it an endurance of around 25-30mins in a 40kph cruise

Along with APM, I have also installed a 2.4ghz Video link, with a Remzibi OSD.

Belly mount camera

The Trenton Terror prior to being refurbished for APM testing,