TITAN Tricopter - 2.6HV Style

I have owned a few quadcopters over the past 2 years. I have always loved putting my gopro on them and getting some cool video. As I started getting serious about aerial video I started a looking for my next platform, the tricopter seemed to be the obvious choice. I wanted a rig with a decent payload capacity, at a reasonable price and with a certain "swooshyness". The parts I have chose are based on what I think is the perfect balace between price, performance and quality.

Here is the parts list:

-3x NTM Prop Drive 28-30s 800KV
-3x Afro ESC 30a
-Multiwii Pro Mini Flight Controller
-Turnigy 390DMH Metal Gear Servo  
-Carbon Fibre Square Tube 10x10x750mm 
-12x4.5 Props 

-I decided that the TITAN tricopter was the perfect frame for me, I realize that is is quite pricey, but the pros  outweighed the cons in my instance. 

Here are all the parts layed out begging to be assembled

The first order of business is to cut the booms to lenth and drill holes for mounting. The booms come in 75cm lengths, so I decided to go for 37cm booms, allowing .5 cm on each boom for cutting and sanding. I cut the booms using an abrasive composites hacksaw blade I found at home depot.

The hole for the screw is 5mm from either side and 1.5cm from the end of the boom.

I am using Afro ESC's because they are designed for multirotors. I like the fact that they are SimonK but the one problem is the fact that they are damn ugly! I was going for a red and black colour scheme for this tri and the purple and yellow wrecks that. I removed the heat shrink, soldered 50cm 18AWG extensions to the power and servo wire and then used this 30mm black heatshrink from hobbyking to protect the ESC's. 18AWG wire is only rated to about 20-25a, but this is plenty as my motors are only consume up to 18a.

I then proceded to solder the servo extension to the yaw servo and feed the wires through the booms. I decided to put the ESC's at the end of the boom directly underneath the motor to avoid clutter along the booms.

Putting the screw through the booms with the wires inside was not the easiest thing in the world, But I managed to do it.

All that was left to do was put on the top plate, plug in the flight controller and attach the motors.

And my tricopter was born!

I mounted my gopro on a ghetto vibration isolater I made with some earplugs and a 2 pieces of plexiglass I had laying around.

Here are a few more pictures of the finished product

**In flight pictures coming soon

All in all I am very happy with the outcome. The Tricopter has about 3kg of thrust, which is plenty considering that it weighs a mere 800g with the gopro and battery installed. If you have any questions or comments I would be glad to answer them.

Sam