Shrediquette - the award-winning multirotors by William Thielicke

Yesterday the motors arrived from hobbyking (Turnigy C1822-2100KV). As usual with small motors, the shafts were all way too short to attach a propeller. Three-bladed props do not really work nicely with the provided prop-saver... Hence the original shafts had to be removed. It was pretty hard to exchange all motor shafts, as they have a very tight fit with the bell, and they are additionally glued with cyano. Some "nail polisher remover" and some heat helped a lot to remove them. The quality of the motors is really good. I did some tests and compared them with the Robby Roxxy 1815-25 that I use in a similar copter (the BOLT). Both motors have the same size and the same weight, Surprisingly, the turnigy motors have the exact same performance as the much more expensive Roxxy motors. The increased KV number leads to an increase in the peak RPM and thrust. The endurance with these motors will be around 8 minutes (the aerodynamic efficiency of the GEMiNi will be hi...

Still waiting for the motors and ESCs, I was playing around with the canopy design: Shrediquette GEMïNï from W. Thielicke on Vimeo .

Holidays are copter days... I spent some time during holidays to design a new FPV hexacopter. It will be equipped with the AirAce props that I used in the BOLT and some cheaper hobbyking motors (2200 RPM/V, ca. 15 grs.) + turnigy Plush 6A ESCs + a 1000 mAh 3S lipo. I also designed a canopy for the copter which I will print in 3D, thermoform from 0.5mm plastic sheet, and eventually laminate with carbon fibre. The propellers are tilted 10° forward in order to decrease the angle of attack of the copters body in forward flight, which will hopefully decrease the net aerodynamic drag in fast translational flight. I am hoping that this copter will be able to fly even faster than the BOLT. The GEMiNi is slightly larger, the max. dimension is 315 mm from propeller tip to propeller tip (diagonally). I will use the CCD-Killer camera, and an Airwave module for video transmission. The CCD-Killer is still my favorite camera in terms of image quality and exposure control vs. weight and size. ...

RC Flight Control 3/2012 title page In the latest issue of the "RC Flight Control", there is an article about my BOLT Y6 hexacopter. The article is about how and why I designed the copter and there are some details about my previous copters. Paul again shot some nice photos, one of them is on the title page. A preview of the magazine is available here: RC Flight Control PDF Preview 3/2012 At least in Germany you should be able to get a copy of this magazine in every larger newspaper store.

As some might have noticed, I didn't post news in this blog for some months. But now I  can announce my new xMega based control board and some news from the IMAV 2012 competition. IMAV2012 in Braunschweig, Germany We (team Akaflieg Bremen = Tumba & me) were participating in the IMAV2012 competition. In principle, the contests were similar to last year(s), see IMAV2011 post . It was great fun again, all our copters worked very good and reliable. Also the video link was very stable, even at longer distances (we always use 5.8GHz 25 mW AV transmitters and a diversity receiver with directional antennas). The indoor autonomy competition was pretty challenging (see video below). These are the results for our team: Outdoor Autonomy: 3rd place Outdoor Flight Dynamics: 2nd place Indoor Autonomy: 1st place Indoor Flight dynamics: 1st place I am not 100% sure about the results of the other teams, if you have information on this, please tell me, I'll add it to this post. ...