I finally got the correct motor installed for forward flight that will give me a proper balance using my GoPro H7 gimbal. I had replaced the original 350 watt Sunnysky x3508 700kv motor with a larger, more powerful Sunnysky x3525 720kv motor. It had plenty of power but caused me to add additional weight to the nose for a proper balance. I was disappointed and tried another swap.
The Turnigy SK3 Aerodrive SK3 3548 700Kv motor with an APC 10x8 prop allowed me to drop 2.75 oz off the tail. Both motors had 25mm mounting holes so I could use the same x-mount. Iām happy with the balance and performance now and will continue to test this setup.
Here are some photos of my new motor setup and GoPro H7 gimbal with an HDMI to A/V video downlink. Iāll post a video soon.
Excellent projet Greg,great detail and superb documentation cant wait to see the video of it flying and could you please for this old daft scotsman try and get a video of it doing the transition from hover to forward flight,well done Greg
Thanks for the kind words. Your wish is my command. On my bucket list is to travel to Scotland and not leave until I have sampled every version of scotch that your country has to offer!
My video guy and best friend passed away several years ago so I have been asking anyone at the field to help video my flights while I fly. Sometimes it works out, sometimes not.
In this short two minute video, I was testing the new forward flight motor on my mini Talon Quadplane. It was lighter and provided a better balance for my GoPro Hero7 gimbal. I slowed the plane down until the Q_ASSIST_SPEED feature enabled the quad motors below 14m/s.
I started looking at the logs, mainly to determine my transition efficiency and speed at half throttle in FBWA mode. I was happy to see that my half throttle speed in FBWA mode is close to my half throttle speed in automatic modes like CRUISE and LOITER. This second mini Talon conversion doesnāt (yet) have an air speed sensor so part of my discovery is to see if it makes a significant difference for the way I fly.
In the first image below, my transition speed seemed normal using only GPS speed. Does this mean that my head wind of 10m/s caused me to push harder to obtain a GPS speed of 17m/s?
In the second image, I looked to be averaging 23-25m/s at around half throttle on the transmitter.
The third image shows that my mid-throttle setting of about half is also using around half power to the ESC to provide 23.5m/s. This is about where I want to be using the APC 10x8 prop. The power level was 400 watts.
Yes, the Weathervaning and Wind Hold features will work on the mini Talon quadplane. I tend not to use them in my manual flight mode flying because I end up fighting for control. For autonomous missions, the features work great!
Hi @GregCovey,
I hope you are healthy, always. Your red color of mini Talon looks interesting. What is AUW this time? Is it more than 3 kg? I plan to build my MT, and hope it is less than 3 kg. Based on eCalc, if Auw max. 3 kg, it is good to use 10x8 prop. with Sunnysky X2820 III Kv860. This motor (version III) has enough Thrust for 3 kg MT Vtol. Max.power is 960 watts, weight is 143 gr. Have you tried using this version III motor ? I am sorry for not yet going through your graph log. Maybe later. Regardsā¦
Hi Greg,
sorry for the delayed reply. Iām not sure, especially since another type of synthetic airspeed is obviously being logged in the meantime. Here is the log with AP 4.10beta4, which logged CTUN.As and CTUN.SAs. I donāt know the details of this.
I made it from aircraft grade plywood and spray painted it black. The foam end of the mini Talon was cut off back to where the original mount was positioned. I glued the plywood mount with Beacon Foam Tac.
I found a mount on thingiverse that acts as a spacer so to speak, that lets the motor sit farther backā¦ but Iād like it to sit back even fartherā¦
while Iām hereā¦ and not to hijackā¦ but if I was to follow mark qvās tilt rotor, tri-motor vtol planā¦. If I wanted to make that more efficient, and get longer flight times, what motor/prop combination would some of you recommended?
Hi Greg, great project!
Can you tell me why did you attach the vertical motors to the fuselage instead of the wings?
What is your final take-off mass without gimbal?
This thread inspired me to push into the world of VTOL. Had my first test hover and PID tuning sessions today with great success. Iāve taken the good ideas Iāve seen employed and tried to replicate them into my build.
So far so good. Big thanks to Andy Piper for his 7" Arducopter build for helping me get the basics down.
My primary concern is heat. It seems my Quad propulsion battery gets quite hot and as does my 4in1 ESC. Logs show temps around 100deg. Is this due to my cable run being too long? Without the fuselage hatchās it seems to be a lot cooler. During all flights motors and cables remain cool from ESC to motor. Obviously the craft wonāt be in āQ Modesā past takoff and landing but this just seems very unusual.
Well that was short lived. I lost control during the FW Autotune process and didnāt manage to recover. I feel it is 100% user error.
Iām gonna write this one off that I didnāt follow procedure. After a Quad Plane autotune I didnāt take my Auto Tune and aggression levels down. This may have led to the gains being far too high. Other than that it was awesome.
Through a strange twist of events, my friend sold me several VTOLs that his friend had built before his health declined. Since I didnāt have much knowledge on quad planes I Googled Mini Talon Quad plane that lead me here. Which later I found out the builder was Greg Covey.
