Kategorie: Project: The Tick

Yesterday I did some testflights with the tick. Before I changed 2 motor mounts to get fixed with platic rivets to let the motors turn without vibrations under heavy load. While flying I realized after a few minutes bad behaviours of the UAV. I tried to go for a landing but it was too late. The aircraft started to make a flipover and crashed bottoms up in the grass. The gimbal was smashed out of the  connectors, one propeller was missing additionally the nut too. This morning I checked again the crash area. I recovered some parts which I did not saw yesterday night when it was getting dark outside. In Germany the sunset at this time is at 9:30pm around. So the flashlight gave me no honor to get all the parts yesterday. This morning 3 of the gimbal bumpers, a smashed propeller and the prop nut appeared suddenly. Today I will check if more parts and wires are destroyed.

The reason for this is the gimbal. I don´t know why but different forums say that other pilots had same experience with this gimbal. The control board getting really hot while flying. Maybe there is some need of cooling for it to work correctly.

I still want to  order different batteries to test around but the german Post employees are in labour strike for the last few weeks. Packages are stuck in their office and it is hard to get them at these days.

So the new carbon fibre props arrived a few days ago. It took some time because the german post is in labour strike at the moment. Every package is arriving late or only possible to pick up at their office.

I had to check the Deutsche Post Office last week to get them. When I opened the package there are a good bunch of propellers I thought. At the first testflight they did some behavours to the TICK I was wondering first. The motors shook and killed some of my motor bumpers. After this flight I checked everything and especially the edges of these props and realized that the props have much burrs on the wings. So the next step was to clean the props to perfect shape. It tooks about 2 hours with a file and sandpaper. After getting this done I started to balance every prop. For this I used a prop balancer from Hobbyking I ordered long time ago. It gave me a good result and the following testflights wroked great until saw againg worn out bumpers on the motor mounts. When the motors are under heavy load the bumpers getting killed. I have some ideas for a solution right now but sticking for the construction of the frame so i will go for a direct mount of the motors first not to waste too much time right now.

I´m facing some problems the last few test flights with my newly introduced motor mounts. The construction is really good and gives many benefits for the most low-vibration frame on the market. The only problem I have is that the bumpers are not strong enough to bridle the power of the motors. It happens after some test flights that the rubber bumpers are worn out and start to get the motors shaking. Although with new bumpers it is a hard indicator that a motor or propeller is not balanced they will shake. I had this when i used the new full carbon props last week. More on this in a new post.

So the rubber has to be more stiff or I have to realize the dampening in a different way. To continue with the construction I am thinking forward to stop the work with the anti vibration of the motors and fix them directly on the frame but I have some more ideas how to decouple the motors. Tests go on…

I ordered a new bunch of propellers out of carbon fibre. The gemfan´s I use right now give good results but the efficiency can be improved with much stiffer props. I´m waiting for the shipping the next few days but so far I am sure the 5030 are not the destination where I´m happy with. The weight with the aluminium frame is still at around 930gr with a huge 5800mAh battery. The carbon fibre frame will be milled the coming days. I´m more exited for the motormounts which are revised yesterday. I wasn´t happy with the wirings of the motors and the space was really less to get more advances. The main frame will have to get the same changes with the milling like the motor mounts to fit correctly in space.

Today I saved some time to do testflights with the TICK. It’s really snappy even with the heavy gopro and gimbal is mounted on it. The cam is superb stable even if I compare it to my 650 quad. More stable vids out of a gopro are not possible because it is a setup which is built from ground up to handle everythin like a carm. At the moment there is a video going to youtube to check you for approval. Stay tuned because its made with wide angle 1080p and 60fps. It will take time to upload 2.5gb to youtube.

Yesterday I picked up the final frame from the company Hydrocut in Neustadt bei Coburg. They did really nice work on it with waterjet cutting so the groundplate is only done at the outer lines. I will go on with further improvements like sink the wires into the plate. Further there will be some changes to shrink the weight down to a minimum to get the best results of flight time, sturdiness and response characteristics to commands. With the heavy aluminium prototype I did a flight test 30 minutes ago and get a result of 12 minutes stopping the motors at 10.9V with 1130gr lift off weight. I have to change the settings in the imu for the voltage checking soon because these settings will stop everything too early. I am looking forward to 15 mins of flight time with this tiny heavy lift hexa. I am sure this will be a gamechanger in the market if it will go for final production. Thanks for everyone who is interested in this project so far. I plan to make a funding project for this soon but I’m not sure right now.

Today the first testflight is done on the frame with the final sillouhette. The motors are decoupled right now and to my amazement this tiny hexa is one of the most noiseless setups I ever heard. First the motor mounts were constructed like this only to get less vibrations to the camera. That´s one of the advantages right now. On the other hand it drops down the noise of the motors to a minimum. It´s quiet fun to fly this thing. Really stable, really aggressive but really silent too. The flight controller does not have any problems with this. The motors fit good in their positions but they still are dampended enough to give a really good result. The construction confirms the research and tests which had been done before by me.

Further I found out that the flight controller voltage check is not set at a correct value so the Tick should fly much more longer than expected. the 5800Ah lipo will let it stay in the sky for more than 16:30 minutes. But with the correct settings it can stay more longer. At the moment the settings say that it has to land when 11.0V or less is reached. A 3S lipo can go down to 10.0V without getting damaged. I will test around with it to get the best out of flight time and battery life – I´m sure nobody wants to kill lipos with it.