Timber H Quad

[JT]

 I wanted a decent video platform and after seeing so many nice gimbal stabilised videos on youtube that have flailing quad arms all over the video I decided that an H quad was the best way forward. I was going to buy one and had a bit of a look on the internet but soon decided to build one myself as the design is so simple.  As to what to use to build with, wood has proven to me to be so good at taking up vibration and is so fast and cheap to fix that it seemed the obvious choice

I didn';t do any drawings or anything as it';s all so simple and just set to work. The thin 3mm ply for the top and bottom plates came from the packaging of a mirror!


The pieces for the sides(and arms{and skids}) is all 12mm square dowel that costs me £2.65 for 8 feet ::) and I had some 6mm aluminium bar and decided to fashion the legs of the landing gear from that.


A quick glue up of the sides and the aluminium legs all bent ready.


Put it all together with more 12mm square timber for the skids


and voila!


Then I put the heavy bits on and suspended it from its centre point to work out where to position the battery. The small wooden platform to hold the battery will be glued and screwed on underneath, its just sat on the top to work out where it needs to go.


It was all going so well and I was very happy when my brushless gimbal control board arrived,I fitted it to the gimbal, flashed it with brugi software and then discovered it has a dodgy motor....

Faulty Motor On Ebay Gimbal

Hopefully this will only be a minor setback, a replacement motor is on its way.The total weight with 4000mah, gimbal, gopro and fpv bits will be 1750g, so it will be interesting to see what sort of flight times I get.

[nub]

nice build.

[Hands0n]

Scratch builds are awesome   Nice one there - looking forward to seeing it fly and resulting stabilised videos too 

[guest325]

Very nice, really like the simplicity of it and also the low cost of the airframe - if it flies as good as it looks you should be well pleased (I know I would!).

[JT]

Thanks, I am pretty gutted about the bad motor on the gimbal,the replacement is coming second class as thats the fastest the seller does..... Apart from that it';s ready to fly. I will need to make a cover for the FC and  I think I can lose a bit more weight by drilling a few more holes in the frame but thats for later. I may give it a bit of a hover today just to try it out, will be really @rse end heavy without the gimbal on but the FC should deal with that lol!

[Flyinegypt]

Why not stick on a bit of ballast to compensate for the gimbal? It needs to be representative of the actual flight weight and balance to give any meaningful results.

I have to say I really do like the simplicity and flexibility of the H design in wood. My BumbleBee is all Carbon fibre and I dread having to repair that effectively. I have had to splice a landing skid but a boom tube or chassis plate is a whole different game. Wood is so much easier.

[JT]

Why not stick on a bit of ballast to compensate for the gimbal? It needs to be representative of the actual flight weight and balance to give any meaningful results.

I have been doing that this afternoon A 3s 2200mah is pretty close to the gimbal weight, there will be a maiden video to follow.....

[JT]

 Maiden test flight......

Scratch Built H-Quad Test Flights

[guest325]

Looks really good to me!

[Hands0n]

Definitely happier with those 11" props than the 10".  It flew really well, looked very stable and agile.

[nub]

n1, looks like it flies pretty decent

[Flyinegypt]

Looking good!
It would be interesting to see it in loiter mode to test it';s stability as a camera platform. Best to wait until the camera gimbal is working and then compare locked and active gimbal control.

Please do keep the thread updated as you go. 

[JT]

 I';ve come to the conclusion that Cyanoacrylate sucks after a heavy landing some of it came away, it is strong but doesn';t have any give in it. I would never had got the old frame apart so just made a new one, the v2!!
 

It';s more or less the same, the few differences are, it is slightly smaller with the motor centres arranged around a 17" square as opposed to 18", the top plate is solid for more strength and there are more holes in the bottom plate for weight reduction/airflow to the ESCs, the battery tray has also gone in favour of a couple of slots in the bottom plate for a strap and the new glue of choice is good old fashioned PVA(strong and flexible). The new AUW is 1600g, so 100g lighter than the v1.

The next fun bit was the gimbal, as shown above it came with a dodgy motor, I ordered a replacement and when it came started to tinker. I had the board flashed with brugi but thought I';d try to get alexmos on it, I managed to find a nulled hex file that would upload to the cheap ebay board and it worked, it was an old version so I thought I would just have a little try to get a more up to date version on it. As I tried to upload it my wife managed to dislodge the USB mid upload with a low flying Peppa Pig beany toy, she was ';tidying up';  by throwing it towards the stairs to take up with her on her next trip........ she';s not a very good shot......
That killed it, it lights up but won';t accept any programming(I';ll see if I can sort it later) so I swiftly ordered another from ebay that had first class postage. It arrived the next morning, I plugged it all in to make sure it worked, it did, next I went to mount it on the H-quad, I left the USB in and whilst fitting it I must have applied  a bit of pressure to the wire and the USB socket fell off it fell off much too easily(chinese quality!) Now I know that these things are arduinos wearing ';hats'; so I grabbed my bluetooth module and soldered some headers into the appropriate holes, crossed my fingers and it connected . The rest was straight forward, I just played with the PIDs and off it went!

It was windy here as usual so I took it off to the woods to try it out. ::)...
First play with ebay brushless gimbal

[guest325]

Have you tried Gorilla cyano? It';s nothing like the normal stuff,  it has rubber particles in suspension so has a degree of flexibility.
You know something, watching the video footage you would have no idea that the camera was mounted on a couple of quids worth of airframe!!!

[JT]

Thanks Darrell It flies really nicely too, amazing what you can do with a couple of bits of wood!

[Hands0n]

Scratch builds really rock ::)  Love the video, the gimbal works really well.

[JT]

 I';m often tempted to buy frames but there is just so much pleasure in building them and then watching them fly, not to mention you get the layout you actually need. Wood is just so well suited to multirotors, being light, strong, good at soaking up vibrations, incredibly easy to work and cheap!

[flybywire]

Great stable platform there JT.  Nothing new in bead-stead frames, to be sure!  We all know what that prototype lead to.  ::)

BTW, I';m amazed they let you mention nulled code on here tho!   

[guest325]

I';m often tempted to buy frames but there is just so much pleasure in building them and then watching them fly, not to mention you get the layout you actually need. Wood is just so well suited to multirotors, being light, strong, good at soaking up vibrations, incredibly easy to work and cheap!

I know if I forked out some serious bucks on a super dooper airframe flying it would become stressful, one of the reasons for my change in direction in what I';m trying to design - wood';s exactly what you have said plus 100% with you in the pleasure you get from a project like this     

[nub]

yup one of the reasons i got rid of the qav400 the thought of crashing it kind of held my flying back a little.

[JT]

yup one of the reasons i got rid of the qav400 the thought of crashing it kind of held my flying back a little.

It';s not only the cost but also the wait for any parts that need replacing to be delivered.

[dockman]

Good looking h-quad you got there, clean and simple.