My homemade Windestål Tricopter

engywook

Junior Member
My homemade Windestål 2.5 Tricopter

Hi,

As a lot of us here, I looked at the FPV video David made with his tricopter and wanted one immediatly.

It took me about a month to gather all needed parts (I ordered from HobbyKing in 3 different warehouses and from shops in Germany, France, England, USA and of course, Belgium, depending on the stock level). I build/cut the frame from plywood of good quality.

Here is where most of the magic happened (yes, I cut on the ground as I don't have a vibration free holder):
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After uncounted hours of build/rebuild for improvement, I made the first flight on Monday evening. It was intense at the beginning as all of my controls needed to be reversed. After a minute or two, I was able to keep it stable at about 1 meter of the ground. I still need to trim it, but I wait to have cleaned the cables and added my FPV gear to finalize the fine tuning. (If I am doing stuff in the wrong order, please tell me as I am a real noob in multicopter)

Here is the current state of my tricopter build:
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Here, you can see the FPV power plug (above the red wire):
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Electronic used:
- Spektrum AR8000 (with a DX7S)
- KK2 (version 1.6)
- 3 Turnigy Plush 25A ESCs
- 3 DT750 engins
- Savox SH-0253 servo
- Turnigy 3S 2200maH LiPo
 
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engywook

Junior Member
Already 52 views and no one left a comment ...

I can take a critic, if you find my tricopter ugly or unclean or promissing, just say it ;-)
 

xuzme720

Dedicated foam bender
Mentor
Hey, Sorry I looked but was in a rush so didn't comment. It does look good and I really like the scroll saw on the floor. I mean that since I am currently shopping for one and now I don't have to go as high dollar as I'd thought to get a heavy one...
 

Johan

Senior Member
Looking really nice!

Noticed you also did a nicer job bending the wires for the camera mount than I did :)
 

kah00na

Senior Member
It looks like you used 1/4" plywood for the frame and 1/8" plywood for the camera tray. Is that right? I have been using 1/8" for everything just because I was trying to save on the weight. What size of wire did you use for your camera tray? I was thinking about bending a hanger but I think it may be too stiff and won't absorb much of the tricopter vibrations.
 

5 oclock charlie

Junior Member
"It took me about a month to gather all needed parts (I ordered from HobbyKing in 3 different warehouses and from shops in Germany, France, England, USA and of course, Belgium, depending on the stock level)"
how exactly are you ordering from all those separate warehouses? i d love to be able to order form the uk
 

vk2dxn

Senior Member
Great looking build,I to am obsessed with Dave's design.
I am in the process of build number 2 cutting out weight and using smaller motors and props to chase longer flight times.

Can I ask you how long your front and rear arms are?
 

engywook

Junior Member
Hello all,

It looks like I missed some reply notifications here ... sorry for the delayed answer. The fact that I am currently on holidays also reduce my time on the forum.

To reply to the questions:
xuzme720 said:
It does look good and I really like the scroll saw on the floor. I mean that since I am currently shopping for one and now I don't have to go as high dollar as I'd thought to get a heavy one...
It's a Hegner scroll saw, it cost me €450, so, not that cheap, but I also do some woodworking as a separate hobby. I have most of the tools I need, just not the space to set them correctly.

kah00na said:
It looks like you used 1/4" plywood for the frame and 1/8" plywood for the camera tray. Is that right? I have been using 1/8" for everything just because I was trying to save on the weight. What size of wire did you use for your camera tray? I was thinking about bending a hanger but I think it may be too stiff and won't absorb much of the tricopter vibrations.
You may hate me for this, but I will reply in millimeter. As I was not able to find stiff 4mm plywood for the frame, I glued a 2.5 and a 1.5 mm together. The battery tray is made of 1.5mm plywood, but all parts glued together make it stiff too. The piano wire is 1.7mm because it was what I already had at home.

5 oclock charlie said:
how exactly are you ordering from all those separate warehouses? i d love to be able to order form the uk
I can't order from all warehouses. I can't from UK, but there are other shops than HobbyKing selling from UK (try ebay, I just bought 2 KK 2.0 boards from ebay UK). The warehouses changed recently in Europe. They regrouped some of them. Less places, but better stock is ok for me ;)

vk2dxn said:
Can I ask you how long your front and rear arms are?
I sticked to David's build video. 350mm for the front arms and 370mm for the back one.
 

engywook

Junior Member
And now, some news.

It's not because I am on holidays in a foreign country that I stop building.

I disassembled the tricopter to clean the cables, resize them, tube them.
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Here is the finished product:
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And to move it, I needed a box. I made one of foam:
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The first compartment is for the ground batteries, the second is for the tricopter batteries, the third is for the propellers key, the propellers and the Fat Shark goggles, the fourth is for the ground equipment (a receiver and a recorder), the last one is for the cables. The main compartment is divided in two, the second part being for spare parts (mostly zip ties and M4 nuts with nylon ring).

Next step is to polish a bit the in air behavior so I can use it in FPV to make some aerial pictures of my parent's holiday house (the reason I build the tricopter and have it with me for my holidays).

Feel free to comment :)
 
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vk2dxn

Senior Member
That is really neat mate.
I would not have thought to mount my ar8000 vertical, I mounted mine between the top and bottom plate in place of the front spacer. The way you have designed the carry case is great, it gives me food for thought.
Btw thanks for getting back to me with your boom dimensions as its always good to compare notes.

Cheers
 

engywook

Junior Member
Today, some small flights, some FPV, some small crashes and a bigger one. I have the video of all of the crashes.

The GoPro survived, 2 landing legs were detached (broken zip ties), the servo moved forward and the battery tray crushed the battery (punctured). It seems that I lost the video signal (too much noise) when the wind blew the tricopter on top of me (30-40m higher). I pushed the tricopter to a hill and I pulled down the throttle a bit too soon.

Nothing bad, easy fix and some lessons learned, a good RC day :)
 

engywook

Junior Member
Hello,

Sorry for the delay, the return from holiday wasn't stress free and I forgot to put the tricopter on the scale as promised.
It's done and it's 879g without the battery but with the video transmitter and the GoPro Hero 1.

Have a good day.
 
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vk2dxn

Senior Member
Hey thanks mate, yours is slightly lighter than mine (1150g with battery) but I still don't have my AVTX or cam on it yet.
Thanks for the update

Cheers
 

baddox

Senior Member
Nice foam box. I have ordered a bunch of foam, including some pick'n'pluck, and I hope to rig up some sort of nice carry case for my tricopter. I'm surprised how few posts I've seen on the methods of carrying gear. I don't exactly know what I'm going to do, but I think I want something that's very compact and form-fit around the folded tri, and ideally it will be totable in a backpack (because I'm sick of walking awkwardly with shoulder strap duffel bags). I also hope to keep the props on when carrying it, just to make setup/teardown extremely easy.
 

engywook

Junior Member
yours is slightly lighter than mine (1150g with battery) but I still don't have my AVTX or cam on it yet.

After I read your comment, I checked the picture I made when the tricopter was on the scale and I forgot the battery, which weights 190g, so, count on 1069g for everything.