Batbone + MultiWii + V-Tail

[Tieman]

Hi all.
I like to building multirotors and I change my crafts few times per year. 2 months ago I decided to build V-Tail based on FT batBone frame and I wanted to share my experiences with you.

First of all. Final craft looks like this.


I followed the David's tutorial but my v-tail does not behave properly.
At the beginning I was not able to fly it at all (craft was spinning around). It took me some time to figure it out what is wrong. There are 2 versions of V-tail designs. The original one (looks like real V ) and inverted one (looks like David's example) and gues What? The MultiWii config option VTAIL4 refers to the first case.
if you wana build V-Tail based on multiWii and want to make it look like David's you must change motor layout in Output.ccp in multiWii firmware to that:

#elif defined( VTAIL4 )
motor[0] = PIDMIX(+0,+1, -1); //REAR_R
motor[1] = PIDMIX(-1, -1, +0); //FRONT_R
motor[2] = PIDMIX(+0,+1, +1); //REAR_L
motor[3] = PIDMIX(+1, -1, -0); //FRONT_L

Second problem I encountered was constant forward drift due to bad angle of back motors.
To fix that I made a simple hack to mount the rear motors at a proper angle:

And it looks like this:


And of course, for stable and smooth video brushless gimbal is a must, but there is not much space
on BatBone frame, so I decided to mount it in front. And again, a wooden bom on the top did the trick:



This allowed me to reduce the thickness of the model and keep it more compact.

Underneath i have a Power distribution board with 2 voltage regulators (5V & 12V) and battery holder similar to David's tricopter.


And here is a video example from this platform:

overall specs:
FC: MultiWii PRO Ez3.0 with uBlox 6M GPS
motors: NTM Prop Drive 28-26 1000KV
prop: Graupner E-Prop 10x5
ESC: Turnigy Plush 30A
FPV gear: Sony CCD camera with Boscam RX/TX 5.8 GHz
Battery: ZIPPY Compact 4500mAh 4S 35C
RC: FrSky D8R-II PLUS
Gimbal: Falcon Mini Brushless Gimbal from FoxTech

 

[Leigh]

Is Davids batbone vtail for sale yet?

 

[Craftydan]

Is Davids batbone vtail for sale yet?

Leigh,

Take a look at the batbone V-tail video -- it's a conversion of the tri kit which has been sold for quite a while now. Just buy 2 fixed mounts and the V-tail Quad Motor Mount instead of two fixed and one tilt . . .

. . . and if you're relatively new to multirotors, use the motor mounts, but skip the delrin landing legs -- they'll pop apart on a crash over soft ground, but shatter on a hard landing over a hard surface. Use something a bit more durable and won't require shipping to replace, like a loop of extra-large zipties or 1/2" slices of 2" PVC.

BTW, Welcome to the forum.