Kurgan (RD38) Becomes a universal Quad.

Published: Sun Oct 28 2012

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I Originally built the Kurgan to fly with a TMF AQ50D pro flight controller,

and it flew great with the TMF, however, I have built too many differnt quads with different components to rpovide any real comparitive analysis of one FC against another, at lease any that can stand up to scientific scruitiny, So I decided the best approach was to build a reference platform and make it so I can swap out the flight controllers so that all the FC could be evaluated on a level playing field. This adventure turned out to be fun and intesting and even rewarding. 

I started by stripping off the TMF as it was installed.

 

Next I had to find a way to make sure each flight controller would work on my quad, fortunatley I had custom drilled conventional 50mm mounting holes and installed some standoffs allowing any 50mm FC to mount, so all I had to do was adapt each and every flight controller to 50mm.

I began with the HK MukltiWii SE v2, and to do that, I had to custom drill holes on a trusty GLB PDB/FC adapter.

Next I added some standoffs to accomodate the new FC

Then mounted the FC

 

 

Next I mounted and configured it and tweaked it to fly.

Next up was an OpenPilot CopterControl board

 

 

And lastly it was the DIYDrones ArduPilotMega 2.

After all the futzing about, the result is that installing and getting it flying, the TMF rules them all for easy and simple.

Next was the OPCC, once I used the new settings erase fearture of the latest GCS, it was simple and easy to get it up and running on defaults, but it tooks some messing about, and had to rescue the board to reload firmware twice. 

The MultiWii was a pain in many ways becuase of the non standard size, and the horrendous java based multiwiiconf tool. But I got it flying eventually.

Last was the APM2, mostly becuase the GCS ket screwing up under Mono on Linux. They had some work to do to be cross platform, the MW java sucks but at least it works.

Thast it for this weekend.