Proposed project:
Dragonfly will be another homemade tricopter and will be based on Tricopter #1.
Tricopter #1
After trimming the tricopter and making a few more flights I decided to modify the tail tilt mechanism. I'd seen a number of videos on youtube that showed a tilt mechanism where a square block of wood was attached to the rear spar with a piece of fibreglass rod. I rejigged the tail to use this mechanism.
Initial tests proved successful but after a while the pivot rod worked loose resulting in a crash from about 4 metres.
The crash caused a bit of damage. The damage would have been repairable at the field except that one of the CW props broke and I didn't have a spare.
The next stage is to repair the 'copter and have some more fun!
Some photos of my first attempt at building a tricopter are in the gallery.
The tricopter is made from 15mm square wood struts with 2.5mm plywood top and bottom plates. Motors, flight controller etc. are from Hobbyking.
The tricopter is based on pawanvs99's article on instructables.com with a few modifications.
I was surprised at how well it flew for the first time as I hadn't set any trims etc. The first couple of landings were a bit hard but the only "damage" was that one of the ziptags holding a landing leg moved and the landing leg took a small notch out of one of the props (not even enough to affect subsequent flights).