Tricopter Inches Closer to Completion...

After work tonight I was able to finish up the drive mechanism to tilt the "tail" rotor of the tricopter. I must say, the du-bro ball links are sweet. I re-used one from last summer's ill-fated "speedwing." The parts are all machined out of scrap delrin. The servo is taped to the bottom of the swiveling motor mount with some 3M VHB tape.

The entire motor / motor mount / servo assembly rotates about the aluminum spar. The black delrin piece at the end of the spar is fixed rigidly to the spar. So, when the servo actuates, the entire assembly rotates and the tail rotor will slew from side to side- hopefully providing a nice yaw rotation of the Tricopter.

Once this was working properly, I started mounting the gyros. This Tricopter will use 4 Hobbyking 401b gyros, one to control every axis of rotation. Everything I've read online says these gyros are very sensitive and negatively affected by vibration. I decided I'd mount the gyros on plywood daughter board, isolated from the main chassis through some rubber grommits. I'll also mount the gyros to the daughter board using double-stick tape. Hopefully both of these steps will help. If these steps are not enough I'll tear apart the gyros and tweak them as shown many places online.

Daughter board mounted

Gyros and Receiver Mounted

Lots 'o' wires

Next steps:

• Build wiring harness for gyro gain control
• Build wiring harness for initial gyro spin-up and ESC arm, then final flight power