Blogs

Hiking Sweeney Ridge on Thanksgiving morning was a perfect time for testing out my newly completed quadcopter.

This spot in the mountains, 1200 feet over SFO and the Pacific ocean, seemed like a perfect place to test out my newly completed quadcopter and my newly acquired piloting skills. I've been spending hours and hours flying collective pitch helis in a simulator using a PPM-to-USB joystick adapter I built – trying to get past the heading-aligned flying I've done for years now. It's also the first outdoor flight of my new custom quadcopter and my first time with the KK2.0 flight controller too.

Parts list:

• Turnigy Park300 1080kv motors
• 4xPlush 10A ESCs (3 years old, atmel versions I reflashed to run tgy)
• Slow Fly 8045 props
• KK2.0 Flight controller
• FrSky D8R-II+ receiver + DHT 8ch DIY transmitter (in Turnigy 9x w/ ER9X firmware)

The frame is all carbon fiber: about 1.5 meters of 6mm square tube and two 60x60mm 0.5mm sheets epoxied together. The motors are mounted directly to the motors using zip ties (with hot-glue holding them from sliding off). 

The battery mounts via velcro underneath (with an extra strap just to be safe). I built a modular camera attachment with some spare plastic pieces I had lying around from some cheap ikea curtain mounts. That's right.

Built / Design process

I picked out these motors for their weight/size/power and figured I could work around their idiotic peculiar design. I sketched out the design, computer modeled the specific dimensions I wanted, then measured everything out to a piece of cardboard (an insert from a new pack of t-shirts). Using foam tape to hold the carbon beams in place I used plastic weld epoxy to sandwich the plates on the top then the bottom. 

I'm running with my 3 year old 10A plush ESCs that I reflashed to run tgy firmware. I built a friction-contact programmer out of some wire, a clamp, hot glue, and a servo horn.  I wouldn't actually recommend doing this anymore, hobbyking sells these now (480Hz update rate out of the box) although I haven't tried them.