So I’m Building a Quadcopter

A what?  A quadcopter.  Don’t make me say it again.  A quadcopter.  Okay, now you’ve gone too far.  I supposed you want me to explain it to you now, huh?  Fine.

A quadcopter is a helicopter with 4 propellers on it, all spinning parallel to the ground (if it flies correctly, that is).  I’m of course, speaking of the  remote controlled variety–what did you think I was crazy?  I’m acquiring the pieces and parts to make one on my own, rather than buying a kit, which I seriously considered doing before impatience and curiosity got the better of me.  You see, I started saving for a RTF (Ready To Fly) kit, but saving wasn’t going as fast as I wanted it to, so I took what I had saved so far and went to home depot and got some frame fixins.  That night I build this:

That was the situation a week ago.  Since then as I’m ordering parts, I’ve changed the plan to a quadcopter since the off-the-shelf FY-90Q controller (The one I’m buying so I don’t have to become a circuit board solder maniac) only works with 4-rotor aircraft, so I’ve pruned two arms.

Nice CD Spindle, huh?

So that’s where I sit right now on the build.  I have a parts list going that changes a lot, but once it gets closer to stable I’ll post it here.  The total cost of this endeavor is going to be around $430.  The only thing I have that I didn’t have to buy is a LiPo battery charger that I used for my RC cars.  I’ve read a lot on RCgroups.com and found it to be a really helpful resource for this kinda thing, and even recruited two friends to dive into the RC Quadcopter world too.  Ironically, they’ll probably be up in the air before I will!

One of the goals of this little project (aside from seeing if I can get the thing to fly and having some fun while learning a few things) is to experiment with a little aerial photography.

I’ll update you all on my progress.  Wish me luck!

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