Tricopter v3 build

Published on October 22, 2014 RC

As you may have seen at the end of my first Tricopter post, after the crash I decided that I was going to upgrade the body to the v3 Tricopter kit on David’s new shop.

The new kit has shorter arms that are also hollow, so the ESC cables will be able to go through them. It also comes with a 3d printed yaw mechanism, which works much better with the servo to provide a smoother turning system.

Assembly was quite easy, the hardest part being fitting all the cables without making a huge mess. Halfway through the build I ran out of heat shrink and I started using black tape. I also had a slight problem with the motors: the shaft extended slighly longer than David’s motor holders, so I had to add washers and then the screws were not long enough…

Long story short, I stopped the build video I was recording embarrased by the way the build was turning. In the end it didn’t turn out that bad though, and I managed to get flying.

Flying was much more stable than with my first Tricopter. I could almost have it stop midair, the only problem left being the PID settings, I’ll get to those a bit later.

I went to a field near my house with my dad for some flying and recording, I’ll show some of that below. Although it ended up in quite a big crash… Pictures of that after the video. Since I have to rebuild it, I decided to take proper photos and video and do a better build this time.

Videos, photos, and the new build will be up soon :)