Mini Talon QuadPlane Conversion (cont.)

[GregCovey]

From RogerR:

@RogerR

I’ve got a mini-talon on order for a VTOL project. However, I keep wondering about options to reduce the motor count (from 5) to make things lighter.

1. I’ve thought about extending the rear motor away from the tail and tilting it down for tri-copter mode and then tilting to point back for forward flight. This would take advantage of the larger motor for dual functionality. Unfortunately, at least one of the three motors would also need to tilt port/starboard (a bit) to control yaw.

2. If I did a quad setup, either the rear motor pair or the both front motor pair or all four motors could rotate from a quad orientation to an orientation that provides forward thrust.

Is there any hope that either of these schemes could compete on efficient with the 5 motor configuration?

Roger asks a very good question. Since we now have a VTOL Plane forum, and the QuadPlane firmware has many new features, it was a good opportunity to continue the thread here.

You might be interested in mark_q’s new design in progress where he plans to use tiltrotors up front and maybe a rear motor that tilts down and side-to-side for yaw control. In others words, a tricopter tiltrotor. Mark shares all his 3D printed designs and has been an excellent source of information on the mini Talon.

So keep in mind that the 5-motor quadplane design that I did gives up some efficiency for added simplicity. You can control yaw on a quad or Y6 configuration but on a tricopter, the tail typically rotates side-to-side for yaw control. This is supported in the APM quadplane suite.