Good morning, I’m a relatively new entry to larger quads, the largest i’ve worked with being 12s 13 inch x class monsters, but i wanted to make something more suited for mapping, ideally something that i can slap RTK on, and have hover for 35-40 mins at a 4kg takeoff weight. What kind of frame style would be good for something like this, along with prop size?
I was looking at the TL8X000 tarot octo frame, or something like the t15 but i’m honestly a bit clueless. Making an efficient drone turns out to be a lot harder than a x class power first monster it seems.
Do you want a quadcopter, hexacopter, octocopter, X8?
Quad has no propulsion redundancy, hexacopter has some if tuned/setup well with ample thrust overhead, octocopter and X8 pretty much have gauranteed propulsion redundancy (if setup well).
honestly, I’m open to any config. After a bit of searching around i ultimately ended up with this
if the attached link doesnt work, this is roughly what i got, tarot iron man 650 frame, t motor mn4014 400kv motors, t motor 16x5.4 inch props, and a 6s4p molicell p50b dual 6s2p power system. should be 20,000mah, 2.7kg drone auw with battery and no payload, with the capability of hovering about 40 mins at full 3.7kg with the 1kg payload.
if i havent gotten anything right let me know please
Those motors/props make sense for trying to carry 1kg for 40+ min. Li-Ion batteries are a bit harder to design/tune because of the large voltage range they have during flight. I am not saying to not use those cells (they are great) - but you may be better off using a more conventional Li-Po or Li-HV for your first build.
That’s an awesome kit, but I have a few drawbacks of it
The problem with that is, I cant really go over 3.7kg max weight with camera and everything onboard. That kit you sent states a maximum payload of 1kg without battery, this build i have bodged together is just about 2.7kg with batteries and all.
I’d also like to use that tarot frame as it has a direct mount on the bottom for the camera system i’m wanting to use, alongside the folding legs and arms to reduce the footprint.
And lastly battery wise I’ve got a load of those p50’s on hand already so making a pack out of them would make more sense too, as theyre around the same weight for almost double the power density.
Is the main concern you stated about the motor/prop overkill? i’d rather have too much than not enough flight time, since it will need to be facing a bit of wind too
And i figure i should ask, this build is actually thesable, right?
if i cant avoid it, i will go the kit route, but i’d honestly prefer to build rather than buy because it’ll help me learn the system inside out.
it’s an interesting challenge, since the camera system i’m planning on using consists of a gimbal and a mapping camera that in total is around 800g, and my absolute max weight limit with payload and battery is 3.7kg. so i have to make a quad that weighs about 2.7kg, and can handle an additional 1kg (800g payload plus all acessories like rtk gps wires etc) and still hover for a minimum of 35m. the quad will rarely ever see more than 1m/s in use so if i can get even 40 mins out of it at 1m/s or even 2, that would be absolutely perfect
The kit description is a bit confusing - it is saying it can support 1KG of payload (not inclusive of battery weight). Basically it is saying it can do the airframe + 6s 12Ah battery (or the one I sent) + 1kg of payload. It can actually do 1.5kg of payload - but they play it safe and say 1kg. Some of these kits list payload as battery inclusive weight - which would be too limiting like you state.
Your parts look good and would work well. I share the kit just in case you wanted an easier system to learn/use as you get experienced with this type of aircaft.
I built a Tarot 650 Sport, utilizing T-Motor MN5008 KV400 motors mated to 17” Tarot foldable props. There were some construction issues such as having to lengthen the arms in order to accommodate the large props and the diameter of the motors obscured two of the mount holes which required some inventiveness on my part. But it flies well and has a LOT of power!
