The UAV Lab(RD26) RD26 - Spear - Build begins
Published: Sat Apr 14 2012
This build begins with the unpackaging of the frame kit and extras. The Hoverthings products are seriously well built and packaged very nicely. First is the main frame:
Then there is the Camera mount plate, this little baby gives us an easy way to mount both a GoPro and an FPV camera (if you dont use live gopro out) and lastly, this frees up the stock plate to act as a head end protection plate.
Next , Unpacking all the parts lay out all the parts for clarity, This time around I found that the edges of the G10 were pretty rough, and can use a bit of sanding and grinding to smooth them out so they are not so hard on your bare hands if you are hand launching or catching, or just plain carrying the quad. This is not typical of Tom and His frames, but I know that he has been pressured for months to get theis recent bacthc out so that maight account for the rough edges, regardless, it would only be a few spots to sand, no points lost to this.
We now build the bottom plate. Typically I will put the first set of screws in good and tight, and leave the next set loose.
We add the main plate to the bottom plate, this time I only add a few screws and I only put them in 1 or 2 turns, this allows us to snap the arm side peices into the main plates very easily.
Now as we add the arms, I screw in the main screw into the plate for each arm so it wont fall out while I am building.
Support braces for the arms go in, these aluminium parts work very well and the screws stay in very nicely without glue, however, I will be instructing the client to remove and glue (Blue locktite) each and every screw.
Now 4 legs are built
Installing the first two legs
All the legs are on
4 motors are built
4 motors installed (Notice that the motor mounts are backwards, this is intentional as I have found that doing this, decreases the overall ability of the props to cut things, and according to aerodynamic dogma, having the arm extend out past the motors smooths the turbulence in the rotorwash making take off and landing smoother.
4 ESCs are in
Test fitting the fight controller
