Blogs

Ducted Fan Tricopter

Posted by Ed Kirk on February 8, 2012 at 5:00pm

I have been experimenting with a ducted fan tricopter.  It flys much better then I thought it would, flying time is about 5 minutes on a 4 cell 3300mah battery.  It is a blast to fly.

E-mail me when people leave their comments –
Follow

You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!

Join diydrones

Comments

  • kyi September 10, 2012 at 6:27pm
    does the size of the copter matter for this type of copter?
  • Ed Kirk September 10, 2012 at 10:18am

    I have tried different servos and it really doesn't matter, the slower high torque servos are my first choice.  I also prefere standard servos over the smaller ones but they work fine, just don't hold up when banged around or abused, gears strip out easier.  The mechanics are very important, no slop or lose play, things get out of control.

    Ed

  • kyi September 10, 2012 at 8:06am

    what type of servo did you used? does the type of servo matters?

  • Ed Kirk August 31, 2012 at 6:01am

    It is a tricopter, the rear EDF rotates to control thrust angle instead of using motor mix to control yaw.

  • kyi August 31, 2012 at 12:50am

    how do you get it to yaw?

  • Ed Kirk February 10, 2012 at 12:33pm

    PS, I also fly a counter rotating coaxial version of my tricopter with motors form Hobbyking.  There is video on Vimeo where this video is posted.  Ed

  • Ed Kirk February 10, 2012 at 12:31pm

    I flew the ducted fan tricopter at a park today, flew over grass and had some room to fly around with some confidence.  This thing really flies great.  Battery life is short about 5 minutes on a 4 cell 3300mah pack.  Seems noisy but I got used to it pretty quick.  Very different.

    I use E-flite 15/69mm EDF,s with E-flite motors.  60 amp Cobra ESC,s and single servo on a rear rotating boom which I designed and made.  I gave the design and a prototype to Multiwiicopter who now sells the rotating boom with their V2 Scarabs.

    I am working on modifing a 120mm or 5 inch EDF to run at lower RPM's.  Like someone commented "proof of concept".

    Ed

  • Helitrasher February 10, 2012 at 11:49am

    jet turbines.. ooH you tease !

  • Cliff-E February 9, 2012 at 8:56pm
    @Mark

    Purpose for an EDF VTOL? There's the T-Hawk
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_RQ-16_T-Hawk

    Anyway, tried a trifan with 60mm EDFs and old school analog gyros, still worked, but yes, loud... There are some benefits to edf's but all at the expense of battery power (efficiency)
  • Rob_Lefebvre February 9, 2012 at 6:33pm

    Pretty neat experiment, but it sounds like 1000 cats having their tails pulled simultaneously. :)

This reply was deleted.