Tricopter Weekend Update

When Josh and John were out riding, I was soldering up a storm. All three motors and ESC's are now in place. It turns out that's a lot of soldering. (at least for me)

I believe I know how I'll wire the power connections to allow the gyro's to arm before the ESC's. I'll post a schematic if it works. I'm planning on connecting a UBEC to the battery connection on the receiver, and put a switch on the power leads for both the UBEC and another switch on the three ESCs in parallel. Hopefully it'll work to first switch on the UBEC, let the gyros arm, switch on the ESC's, then once the ESC's arm turn off the UBEC.

I also have not pulled apart the HK401b gyros yet. The online guide on the Hobbyking website recommends checking the internal solder joints and then reinforcing the circuit board with epoxy and double stick tape. I might just try and fly it without doing this first. There doesn't seem to be any rattles internally in the gyros. I might rig up a separate platform for the gyros to further insulate them from vibration- everything I've read so far indicates they cannot tolerate much. I'm thinking a small plywood daughterboard mounted on rubber grommets would work well.

I'm hoping to be able to complete the linkage between the tail rotor servo and pivot tomorrow.

With any luck it'll be flying this week....