Quadra-Copters

I had been working on the Shrike Aero Commander for 8 months, and needed a break, so I built a Quadra-Copter.

I built it out of plywood, shower rods from Home Depot, and a ZipTop food storage bowl:

I used two small plywood sheets for the base: The wood helps dampen vibration.

Sandwiched the towel racks, power lines and filter caps in between the two plywood base sheets:

I used landing gear parts from a T-600 Helicopter:

The first controller was just an Arduino, 3-axis Gyro, 3-axis Accel. and 2.4ghz radio receiver.

The controller sits on top of the Radio Battery container. The foam helps to dampen vibrations.

A 7.4v Lipo sits within the foam that isolates the controller from the main frame and motors:

I think it's rather cute. The plastic storage bowl fit perfect:

 

After a lot of bad flights trying to trim the PID circuits, I switched to a Mega-ArduPilot board:

 

Now it flys great.