Is it possible to set up a QuadPlane with the 2 front rotors a shorter horizontal distance from the fuselage centre line than the 2 rear rotors?
Yes - in most cases you can just run with the normal quadcopter frame and do this. If the difference in positions is extreme tho, you might have to compile firmware with custom motor locations.
You can use lua script for motormatrix instead of changing anything in the main firmware. I had similar situation and this is what developer recommend me.
Here is the sample: https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/blob/master/libraries/AP_Scripting/examples/MotorMatrix_setup.lua
Thanks Dhruvil and Manav,
The horizontal distance between the front rotors and the fuselage centre line is ~50% less than the horizontal distance between the rear rotors and the fuselage centre line. Hence, thinking vectored thrust or yaw tilt and custom rotor locations may be required to provide sufficient yaw control in hover. However, not sure if it is possible to set this up for this configuration?
What i learnt from the developer is that, for this kind of configuration more power would be required either from front rotors or rear rotors. Custom rotor location is possible with lua script as mentioned.
https://www.iforce2d.net/mixercalc/
This website can be used to create a part of code for custom motor location.