- eight 1/4" spacers (I bought at the local hardware store)

- four bolts similar to the 20mm in the kit

- four wing-nuts or threated spacers that you can grip (for the four bolts above so you can finger tighten them)

With the current kit design, the Arms are secured by a two guide bolts at the front to prevent lateral movement, and single metal bolt tying the end of the arm at the center of the Main Frame. But because this bolt attaches to a threaded spacer, and onto the battery holder, it is not easily removed.

My Solution: Add a finger-accessible bolt closer to the outside and a pin at the interior.

First, with the Arms mounted normally, mark the Arms at the existing frame hole. This is the only hole that is on top of an Arm. Mark all four arms.

Create the Pin:  With the Arm removed I added a 1/4"spacer to the existing Arm-to-Battery-mount bolt and tightened. The spacer become the pin and insures the Arm will still fit snugly between the Main Frame boards.  I also added a 1/4"spacer to one of the two front posts and tightened. This keeps top-to-bottom tight, and also pinches a little on the Arm when inserted. i found two spacers (a left and right) to be too tight.  This picture shows the 2 new spacers: On eonteh Battery mount, one at the outside left plastic bolt. You can also see the retaining bolt in its new location (the bright silver bolt) 

Next I measured, centered and slotted the end of the Arms with a dremel to match the thickness of the battery-mount-bolt spacer. I then drilled a hole in the Arm where I marked the outside frame hole. Repeat for all four Arms. 

Now you can mate the slotted Arms to the main frame

Secure with a new bolt and threaded spacer or wingnut/etc. You'll still need to secure the acrylic GPS/Top ring in the standard fashion.

I mounted my ESCs on the Arms to simplify the leads - 1 power and 1 servo cable on each and I'm good to go.  Because the ESC is on the Arm, the extra cabling length can be tucked into the Arm's precut slot and tie-wrapped securely.

Now I can dis- and re-assemble the Arducopter in about 5 minutes and hit the road.

Paul

I was fortunate to be a part of the DIYDrone trip to NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) yesterday at Moffett Field in Santa Clara. We were treated of wide variety of conversations with NASA's UAV professionals including Chad Frost, our sponsor for the day. (Thanks Chad and everyone else @NASA!). For those who couldn't make it, here is a little writeup of the excursion:

Chad began by leading the dozen of us through security checkpoints to the 'escort required' side of Moffett Field and the UAV hangars. The first stop was a commercial UAV platform, an orange Calaban heli airframe, customized with an array of mission video and scanning laser sensors (in addition to the flight related sensors). Interestingly it used a PC running a tweaked Linux as the top layer managing OS. Sensors (ie GPS, 3axis accs, etc) were running in their own environments and feeding the outer loop(s?) system. The ground station(s) were housed in a trailer and received realtime updates from the UAV. Check out the imaging of us standing in front of the heli!

The Sierra frame has flow 41 times, 11 with payloads. It was just returned from Norway (No, it did't go off course!) doing some atmospheric science.

We were next shown a 41' wingspan Swift glider that is to be retrofitted with an electric motor and converted to a UAV. It should be able to take payloads up to about 220 lbs in total toward their goal of learning about green efforts in the UAV arena.(See my album for the spec sheet) Last we saw a 1/3 scale Piper cub that is being worked on to research dynamic adjustments of control surface, unless that was another one of the many other projects and offices we crashed.I was pleased to meet a sampling of the DIYDrones.com members too. I think we all learned quite a bit from NASA and each other and our projects. More pictures are in albums under:

• Joshua
• Tim
• Paul

I know I've left out a ton of detail (like Google's Dornier Alpha) so please comment on you experiences below and post links to your pix.

Thanks again to Chris and Chad for getting this together. The next time a field tip that comes up, I recommend you jump on it.

• Return to starting point when pilot looses the plane

• GPS input and parsing based on several NMEA codes
• Waypoint storage (one for now)
• SD card support
• Radio control receiver interface
• Servo control
• Video output of any GPS and microprocessor values
• As a separate unit, 2.4Ghz video downlinking.

• Video overlay on the downlink
• Google Earth Integration for setting routes (via KML file read/write)
• Pan/tilt/snap camera control integration

• Call the airline ahead of time and let them know what you are bringing and get their suggestions.
• Tell the counter agent you are traveling with sensitive equipment. Ask for a hand search of your cases. Secure it with Tie-wraps/zip ties after it is inspected.
  
• Pack all your items in smaller clearly labeled cases. Labels help everyone.
• If you have to pack a plane, separate the plane from everything else this gives them one less thing to destroy.
• one person sugested packing a (legal!) gun in a guncase that also contained you gear. That way it can be locked after TSA inspection.
• or Ship everything ahead of time with UPS or FedEx.