Frosty Acrylic Blue

I thought I'd share this video I made of the test flight of my hand made 50g quadcopter. The bright January Sun, frosty ground and misty conditions make it look amazing. It was filmed using my RunCam2 and then edited using LightWorks.

In case you're wondering , this is what I'm flying:



The idea behind this was to see how easy it is to build a micro quadcopter using cheap, everyday materials. The blue acrylic material came from an art shop and I cut it to shape using scissors. A top and bottom is glued to a piece of Depron foam to give some rigidity and the motors are a friction fit in plastic tubes. This is the only sticking point at the moment, as it requires a lot of skill to get the friction fit right and to get the tubes to fit tightly into the frame. I have an idea for solving this, but it's still a work in progress at the moment. The frame only weights about 8g, though, which is lighter than a 3D printed one, so I must be on to something.

As for the electronics, I'm using the F3 Evo Brushed flight controller with a FrSky 8 channel receiver. This is wired using an SBus connection to the flight controller. The motors are the ubiquitous HubSan 8.5mm coreless DC motors and I'm using a 400mAh 1S LiPo.

Flying it around outside, the throttle doesn't pick up the thrust fast enough, which is why I bounce off the grass early on, then crash into the ground at the end when the LiPo is exhausted. It's also drifting around a bit and not as locked in as I would like, but, then, these were just the initial PID values. My plan is to keep developing the frame, see if I can get a bit more weight off and add an FPV camera.