Noob question about tricopters

[Firstflight]

Hello, I would like to build my first tricopter after David's design (From RCexplorer.se) and I may have a stupid question. Would there be any major advantage's of putting on 3 bladed props over the normal 2 blades? Any help in this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

 

[zev]

not really. in fact, 3 bladed props are most always less efficient then a 2 bladed ones, because a the blades on a three bladed prop are slicing through more disturbed air. the only real advantage being that you can have a smaller prop with the same lift characteristics.

if you save space for them, 2 bladed are the way to go.

 

[Firstflight]

Zev, thanks for the tip, I thought they might of given more lift but I understand the mistake after reading your explanation. Thanks again.

 

[CrashRecovery]

From what I've read three blades only work well when they are scaled up. Our size props are too small to really work efficiently. Like Zev said that disturbed air really kills the performance you would get out of a three blade.

 

[FlyingMonkey]

Also, if you're making the folding version, the two bladed ones are more compact.

 

[broadhead789]

I,v noticed that David from RCexplorer uses three props of the same rotation All the discriptions I,v read requires the use of one prop of the oposite rotation. Can any body throw any light on this issue

 

[zev]

nope, opposite rotations are not necessary on tricopters, because they spin around by turning the tail. not like quadcopters which spin by varying amounts of thrust going to different motors spinning different directions to rotate around.


this is how a quad does it:

 

[RoyBro]

Here's another Noob Question

Everything I've read suggests initial learning on a sim or a cheap (relatively) quad-copter. The helicopter simulators are priced at a little less than $200. I can get a lady bird with a Devo4 transmitter for around $60.

Would I be able to use the Devo4 with other copters as a starter transmitter? I intend to build David's design tricopter with the KK2.0 controller. Are they at all compatible?

Thanks,

RB