Simple Tcopter Build

Hi,

This is my first article so I hope that its up to the mark. I am very new to the hobby(5 months). Although in this very short time I had the previlege of building(and crashing :) several planes (FTFlyer, FT22 * 2, FTVersaWing and a Viggen). I will now stop rambling and get to the point.

My first tricopter was the X900 frame from hobbyking. I crashed it and lost the tail and hobbyking doesnot sell replacement parts for that frame atleast here in Australia. So I decided to just make one out of wood. I looked at a few t-copter videos on youtube and started building mine. I didnt really follow a design and just wanted to size it down so that its not too big. This is my first scratch built multi-copter so its not a looker. The platform that I built is also not in the right spot although it does leave a lot of room for FPV equipment (I have none, so I dont really know, I am guessing). This is how it looks:

Specifications are below:

Frame:

2 * 18X18mm wooden beam --- 47cm long Front Beam --- 34.5cm Tail beam

2 * 4mm Sheet wood from Bunnings -- 18cm X 14cm Bottom Plate -- 14cm X 14cm Top Plate

3mm Screws and nuts to hold the frame

9 popsickle sticks for landing gear

3 * 4mm Sheet wood -- 4.5cm X 4.5cm Motor holds

Electronics:

3 * D2822/14 1450kv Turnigy motors - HobbyKing

3 * Plush 40amp ESCs (I have no idea how much power it needs so just using 40amps, pretty noob sorry)

3 * 8 X 4.7 SF APC props - 2 std rotation and 1 pusher (you can also use the same I believe)

1 * MultiWii NanoWii - (bad idea for your first control board) with bluetooth add-on

1 * AR600 DSMX reciever

3 * led strips, preferable 2 of one color and 1 of another for orientation

1 * Corona Digital Servo

I really apologise for how it looks as I built in 1 day. You can easily use a container or tupaware like stuff to make a cover. This is how it looks with leds on:

Tail Servo:

Just using 9mm fencing wire with plastic tube to stop it from flexing. Please use thicker cable. I have also drilled a tiny hole into the wood, where one end of the wire sticks in. the other end is tied to one arm of the servo. I thought of using 2 wires, but it was limiting the movement quite a bit. Here is how it looks:

NanoWii settings:

I am just providing stuff that I had trouble with to start with. If anyone wants anymore infortation on what I did on the nanowii just ask. Although keep in mind I am a noob and will not know much about this. Also I am hoping with the feedback that I get here I can improve my tricopter further.

1. Servo Settings: Because I have been using the corona digital servo I had to change the "servo refresh rate"in the config.h file. Easy way to find stuff, press ctrl + f and type servo refreshrate. I used 300HZ

2. Yaw Direction: If the copter corrects yaw in the wrong direction(servo direction controlled by Nanowii). Look for yaw_direction, change to 1 or -1 depending on requirement.

3. MINCOMMAND : My escs were beeping as the startup signal(i believe) was wrong. It was fixed when I changed the MINCOMMAND value to 900.

4. MINTHROTTLE: I am using 1040.

5. MAXTHROTTLE: I am using 1950

6. Using roll to ARM the copter: define ALLOW_ARM_DISARM_VIA_TX_ROLL in the config file

7. PID settings:

I am a complete beginer at this and just starting to learn how the values work. I was able to do a hover test with these values:

Thanks fo reading through all of that. I havent obviously said everything (excuse any spelling or gramatical mistakes, dont have the time to read through again and english is not my mother tongue), if there is any thing else you guys might want to know that I have missed out, just ask.

Also Thank you very much Flite Test for making this hobby easy and accessible for me.

I will leave you with a short video of the hover test.