ChrisOlson
Member
I came across a nice, old unwanted Trex 600 flybar helicopter on craigslist and got it cheap. It had only been flown about 2-3 hours since new. The owner had gotten to where he could hover it nose out. On his first attempt at hovering nose left and right he had a mishap and crashed it. He gave up on helicopters at that point and shelved the heli for over 5 years. He recently advertised it on craigslist for $550. I ended up getting it for $400 and the damage was actually very light to it and cost less than $40 in parts to fix.
So I decided to build an autonomous heli out of it. I got 8300mAh of 6S power in it with the stock 5A battery under the canopy (along with a 1A 2S for servo power). And another 3300 Pulse 6S stuff inside the rear of the frame. On it's first hover time test I got 22 minutes to 85% discharged running 1,850 rpm headspeed, and was pretty happy with that.
So I put a Pixhawk in it with ArduPilot/ArduCopter 3.4.6. A Neo 6M GPS/compass module, 915Mhz telemetry radio for the ground station link. Got the Pixhawk tuned to fly a flybar heli in full autonomous mode, and it works VERY well. It completed its first successful "mission" yesterday, flying a 4.7 mile GPS waypoint course at 65 feet altitude and 18 mph ground speed. I did not use autonomous takeoff and landing for the first test - that was done flying the helicopter manually. But it is capable of fully automatic takeoff and landing with the Pixhawk in it
I'm going to add a GoPro and FPV camera and transmitter to it yet, as soon as I design a suitable mount for the GoPro.
Fully autonomous flight with multi-rotor drones is fairly common. But not many people have done it with a helicopter. It's kind of neat watching the heli fly itself with absolute precision and getting the telemetry readout on the ground station (an Android 12" tablet with Tower in it connected to a MavLink radio), with aircraft attitude, ground speed, altitude, and GPS position shown in Google Maps as it flies.
In flight it would probably fly longer than 22 minutes. It draws 22 amps at hover, but once it goes into ETL in forward flight over about 12-15 mph, the amps goes down about 16-17 amps. The helicopter was so stable in 12-15 mph wind during the flight yesterday that it won't require a gimble on the GoPro to get really nice flight video.
So I decided to build an autonomous heli out of it. I got 8300mAh of 6S power in it with the stock 5A battery under the canopy (along with a 1A 2S for servo power). And another 3300 Pulse 6S stuff inside the rear of the frame. On it's first hover time test I got 22 minutes to 85% discharged running 1,850 rpm headspeed, and was pretty happy with that.
So I put a Pixhawk in it with ArduPilot/ArduCopter 3.4.6. A Neo 6M GPS/compass module, 915Mhz telemetry radio for the ground station link. Got the Pixhawk tuned to fly a flybar heli in full autonomous mode, and it works VERY well. It completed its first successful "mission" yesterday, flying a 4.7 mile GPS waypoint course at 65 feet altitude and 18 mph ground speed. I did not use autonomous takeoff and landing for the first test - that was done flying the helicopter manually. But it is capable of fully automatic takeoff and landing with the Pixhawk in it
I'm going to add a GoPro and FPV camera and transmitter to it yet, as soon as I design a suitable mount for the GoPro.
Fully autonomous flight with multi-rotor drones is fairly common. But not many people have done it with a helicopter. It's kind of neat watching the heli fly itself with absolute precision and getting the telemetry readout on the ground station (an Android 12" tablet with Tower in it connected to a MavLink radio), with aircraft attitude, ground speed, altitude, and GPS position shown in Google Maps as it flies.
In flight it would probably fly longer than 22 minutes. It draws 22 amps at hover, but once it goes into ETL in forward flight over about 12-15 mph, the amps goes down about 16-17 amps. The helicopter was so stable in 12-15 mph wind during the flight yesterday that it won't require a gimble on the GoPro to get really nice flight video.
Last edited: