Just weighed again. WITH landing gear, she’s 2.219kg. The landing gear is 160g, which I haven’t removed while tuning, but… when she’s flying missions, I will remove and she’ll just land on the battery, which is fine - it sits perfectly on the battery (while tuning I was worried about hard landings).
So yeah, that means normal flying AUW is 2059.
Oh, and the frame is a modified Daya 550 frame, with longer 16mm tube arms to make her a 640, which with 17" props gives me about 1/2" clearance between them.
So there are two choices to buy it:
Helipal is expensive, so you can get it from FPVModel.com where it’s only $99 bucks, however, you need to buy CF tubes, which are $40 bucks on ebay or so. End of the day, I just got the frame from Helipal as they’ve modified and lightened it up a bit. It’s a 400g frame with 640mm arms. Hard to find that. (just read that link from helipal.com that says the frame is 700g estimated - yeah, that’s wrong. I actually didn’t weigh the frame when I got it - I weighed the landing gear, so I know that’s right. It might be close to a 600-650g total).
However, I saved quite a bit of weight. She has the FC/ESC - 4-in-1 - again, weigh savings - I took the bottom ESC holding CF plates off, used ETFE wiring. I have a Raspberry Pi 0w which weighs nothing. The GPS puck and mount are probably heavy(ish) - the motors are 66g each, props are 23g each).
Derrick
Tks.for all the details. Basically my quad AUW is about 2300 gr, but I need to install a gymbal and gopro style camera that is about 300 gr so total Auw is about 2600 gr. One important issue that I need to tell you is about using 4 in 1 Esc (holybro). I prefer to use 4 single esc. To be honest I am a bit worried using this esc. I read somewhere that this Esc is sensitive to temperature, so you need to make sure that the esc gets enough cooling during flying… That is just my 2 cents…
Look closely at the end of the arms. Custom airscoops - those are made to pickup air from prop wash, direct it down the arms and into the inside of the frame, directly over the 4-in-1 ESC. Also made to keep the motor wires cool - which turned out to not be an issue. I’m using 22 awg ETFE motor wires, which have no issue up to about 8 amps. Flying, I’m probably 3.5 amps per motor even even when ascending quickly, and the voltage drop is very negligible.
This is made to be “very” slightly loose in 16mm OD x 14mm ID CF tubes. I wrapped them 1/2 way around with some electrical tape to make a snug fit. The first version made was correctly sized, but required way too much sanding and then didn’t stay well - slippery light weight plastic. I think we used HIPS.
Thats a brilliant idea! I will try them. Thanks for STL
Do you have solid works files? I have one VTOL where I am using 25mm tubes and the ECS are inside the tubes. I can modify your files to fit my VTOL design.
I do not use Solid Works for STL’s. I’m very much a newbie at 3D design, so I’m using FreeCAD. It works for what I need it for. I can send you those, if you like.
Also, got your message about 22 AWG wires - and yes, while it’s true that the recommended “silicone” wire size is maybe 14 AWG, I wanted to save weight, so I used 22 AWG ETFE, which disperses heat a great deal better than silicone. With ETFE, you can get away with much smaller gauge wiring.
I cannot take credit for that idea - an EE friend of mine turned me onto it and I didn’t believe him. So I tested voltage loss at 8 amps (which will never happen on my quad, per motor - I’m seeing a max of 3.5 to 4 amps per motor). We observed much less than 100 mv loss across 300 mm at 6-8 amps. This was the original reason for designing the airscoops - so that air would flow over the motor wires and keep things cool. If we ran 15-16 amps over 22 AWG, the wire would actually handle it, but it does get pretty hot. It does not, however, go into melt-down mode where the resistance continually increases until the copper melts.
Manufacturers recommend a “safe” level given the performance span of the motor’s minimum to maximum wattage. I’m flying this more as a long range quad - and therefore the weight savings is significantly more important.
