Monat: Juli 2015

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…