Tarot FY 680 and a bit Hexacopter

[Coyote]

Hi guys

Well the builds begun :)Here is a quick run down :

Tarot FY-680
Extra damping set
Inverted battery rack

Flight Equipment

DJI Naza
Naza GPS
RC Timer 4215 650KV Pancake motors
RC Timer 30A SimonK ESC`S
12x4.5 Carbon Props
KK Power Board

FPV Gear

WDR650 Camera
Immersion 5.8ghz Vtx
Flytron video switch

Camera gimbal servo`s

Spektrum S821 for roll
Unknown for pitch but a 9 gram digital

J10 Anti-vibration jelly

I don`t see much point or a screw by screw thread, so Ill skip the first 1 1/2 hours of the build and show the basic frame built ( no threadlock )



I`m really impressed with the quality of the carbon plates. They are very strong, nicely cut, couldn`t be happier ...................

The landing gear however ......................



That may look like 4 points of contact, but its only three, under the center screw it is not attached to the skid. This means that all the weight is going to be put on just 10mm or carbon  :o I predict they break almost instantly.

Here`s a close up of the frame though and the fixings, really nice :)





There is a plate that screws on the bottom plate. I have plans for that rear opening and with the top plate being identical I mounted the bottom plate on the top so the Naza was on the COG instead of a useless big hole.

This left the opening below :

       

As you can see I installed spacers, this is so I could mount the KK power board, but have the board lower so my cables could easily be routed under it as well.

I had a chap called Paul ( madoldgit ) on RCGroups make some stickers to go with my RCTimer motors. The motors have turned up so both went on :



I hope these motors work out, the pancake style in my opinion look really cool :)



UHF Rx and GPS went on as well as the Naza :



ESC`s turned up !!!!!!! Finally !!!!!!!!!

So I could finally wire the motors up, finally get the directions right, finally solder the power board up and finally start the motors up for the first time :)

ESC`s in, I tried to get them as neat and subtle as I could.

The front :



Underneath you can see for its size there is still not a lot of room to play with. Then fixing everything down needs a fair bit of thinking to avoid the moving parts so it is still foldable.



A quick system check to make sure everything was running the right way and then I could get the props on



Flying weight with 4S 5000mah lipo is 2.4kg

Still the battery tray missing :(But apart from that, its ready to rock n roll :)

[Coyote]

I don`t see much point or a screw by screw thread, so Ill skip the first 1 1/2 hours of the build and show the basic frame built ( no threadlock )



I`m really impressed with the quality of the carbon plates. They are very strong, nicely cut, couldn`t be happier ...................

The landing gear however ......................



That may look like 4 points of contact, but its only three, under the center screw it is not attached to the skid. This means that all the weight is going to be put on just 10mm or carbon  :o I predict they break almost instantly.

Here`s a close up of the frame though and the fixings, really nice :)





There is a plate that screws on the bottom plate. I have plans for that rear opening and with the top plate being identical I mounted the bottom plate on the top so the Naza was on the COG instead of a useless big hole.

This left the opening below :

       

As you can see I installed spacers, this is so I could mount the KK power board, but have the board lower so my cables could easily be routed under it as well.

I had a chap called Paul ( madoldgit ) on RCGroups make some stickers to go with my RCTimer motors. The motors have turned up so both went on :



I hope these motors work out, the pancake style in my opinion look really cool :)



UHF Rx and GPS went on as well as the Naza :

[Coyote]

The gimbal was next, it turned up with no instructions at all. Luckily I found a very long ( 10min ) still video of a complete one and was able to make it in relatively quick time :



I hope in the future to buy a GoPro3 to go on it. So far it works fine, but I wonder how it will cope with vibrations in flight.

And that is as far as I`ve got with it, I need the ESC`s to turn up, the Tarot extras, then I can continue on :)

I forgot a collapsed shot, here is it in my version of compact ( because Ill leave the gimbal on



And as it is now :

[Pr][nCe]

Put some coin into that already ian, nice build

[Coyote]

Thanks :)

To be honest Darren, I havent put a penny into it yet.

I sold my Turnigy 9Xr, FY31AP and Hornet OSD to buy it. Did some online work for the Naza and GPS, the rest I had spares so so far, total actually spent £0 

[g.collins]

That is a beast bud, looks great, let me know how good the motors are, did they need balancing.
;) G

[Dizzy]

pretty impressive plateform coyote nice looking build  :)

dizzy

[Coyote]

Thanks Aitch, yeah plenty of carbon so should be challenging getting solid video, but that`s half the fun for me :)

I will let you know how the motors go. On ecalc the motors calculations show a fraction over its rated amps at full throttle. But the motors only state maximum continuous current, not max current for 20 seconds so I don`t know how much this will matter.

Previously ecalc has always for me been out with the amps, I always pull less on my planes than what ecalc says. In this case I`m hoping for the same, although I doubt I will be ever going full throttle ever you never know.

[bignose13]

Looks really nice Ian cant wait for the maiden
Stef uses those motors on his Tri, he loves them with carbon props
Try and keep away from water though, etc etc etc  :-*

[Coyote]

Lol thanks for the tip Simon  :-*

I`m putting cheap props on at first to keep damage / cost down, once its setup nice then Ill swap over to full sexy carbons :)

[g.collins]

watch the cheep props Ian, I had one fly apart whilst I was hovering, lucky It was on sand and only about 5ft hi.
I just ordered some of that jell stuff you put a link to, worth a go I think, bit costly for some rubber, but if it gets the jello sorted, it will be worth it.
:) G

[Coyote]

Its great at getting rid of vibes G, curious stuff, like frog spawn :)

[Coyote]

Ok so postie came, and delivered nothing :(

But last night I decided to crack on with a few bits.

I drilled the 10mm carbon tubes at the rear, this was to take two carbon rods, the rods were to hold my Vtx on. Here it is mounted, the rods have not been glued in or sanded yet until the battery tray arrives, but you get the idea.



Obviously not going to use the stock whip, Ill make us a Skew soon for it

What I wanted at first was tilt on my FPV camera to match my future GoPros tilt, so I could line up shots. Then after a rethink it was much easier to use the live out from the GoPro and switch between the flight camera and the GoPro to line up shots instead.

So I fitted the Flytron video switcher :



A nifty little unit that also monitors glitching from the Rx and reacts, if the glitching is bad it will lock onto the camera plugged into the high priority input and stay there. LED indication of which input its using is also a good feature.

[Coyote]

Antenna wise I wanted to use a Skew-Planar. The problem being that with carbon frames you really want to be above or below the frame. The obvious choice is to go above, but once up at any height the frames going to play with the transmission, couple with that using carbon props its just not practical at all.

So I decided down it was :) The problem with down is the Skew-Planar is exposed to damage, being fairly delicate I would have to address this.

I took a right angles SMA connector, made a rg316 end off with it then put it inside a carbon fibre tube ( to match the Hex :) ) Then drilled a hole through a Kinder Surprise Egg and slid that down the carbon tube.

Made the Skew-Planar antenna, slid the kinder egg up to the base of the carbon tube and glues it in for strength



Once all was set I could put it on the Hexa

                           

Happy with the clearance and the clearance underneath I`ll now rough up the egg, primer and paint it black so it does not look like a kinder egg on a stick :)

[bignose13]

Good mod mate, gonna do that to my next antennas I make, ......................well shik makes :)