Blogs

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.


E-mail me when people leave their comments –
Follow

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

Join diydrones

Comments

  • Developer
    Mark Colwell December 6, 2010 at 6:04am
    I hope you ordered some spares, I hate to wait for props! I bought a wide assortment when a local shop closed in 2006. I still need to order pusher types and 10 x 3.8 SF for ArduPilot test plane StevensAero SportStik 40" wingspan.
  • Paul Thompson December 6, 2010 at 4:55am
    The APC props are the ones I have ordered, but not the slowfly ones, they will still flex too much and the the hubs are a little small. The frame is 1" square tube. Have not done anything on it yet, still waiting for the new props, will only take 20mins to put together and get going again
  • Developer
    Mark Colwell December 6, 2010 at 4:30am
    APC makes stronger slow flyer props & they have pusher versions too, Much stiffer than GWS or E Flight,
    You have a good design, Easy and cheap to fix! Frame looked like 3/4" in pictures, It is all back together, ready to fly?
  • Paul Thompson December 6, 2010 at 4:15am
    They are 12x6 props, Seriously would not bother with the three bladed props, The more blades a propeller has the less efficient it is, Best to use larger 2 blade slow fly props with a nice low pitch, as we are really only interested in static trust/lift for a quad. The only reason to go to a three blade prop would be to reduce diameter. I was stuck with using 3 blade props because they were what I could get at the time, plus the slow fly props would flex too much and probably break under the weight of my quad. I am toying with the idea of using 250-350 size heli rotor blades on a fixed pitch hub for props
  • Magellan December 5, 2010 at 8:50am
    Talk to me about the props. What size are they? I was going to go with three blade props also but they seem so much narrower. You said they were less efficient event though they have an additional blade? Should I be trying to find a three blade prop with a much fatter blade?
  • Paul Thompson December 4, 2010 at 4:37pm
    No, the arms are fine, the plastic hub is the weakest point, so was the first thing to give. The arms are 1" square tube, will take a lot to bend them. One thing I found saved damage to the electronics is the connectors to the ESC's and servo extensions to the APM, they also provided a good break point and saved bending pins on APM
  • Developer
    Mark Colwell December 4, 2010 at 7:55am
    Did the any of the 4 arms deform at motor mount or central hub?
This reply was deleted.