Turnigy Talon V2: Part 5, More Landing Gear Experiments

It seems like putting together a simple, functional and light landing gear for a quad copter / multi-copter would be an easy thing. It is, if you want to spend some big dollars and buy a pre-made carbon gear. Personally I'd rather build than buy. Cheaper and more fun.

The first go using some old helicopter skids worked OK, but there wasn't any room for adding a camera for FPV or aerial photography.

First, I tried piecing something together with some 1/2" PVC. It turned out a lot heavier than I had guessed, but seemed to be very durable and the slippery nature of the bottom seemed to make landings easier.

 While the PVC flew well, it was just too heavy. If I'd add a camera and FPV camera the Quad could be carrying an extra 1000 grams around.

Next try, aluminum. Home Depot and Lowe's has a great selection of aluminum. One interesting product was a aluminum tile border product- basically an I-beam with cut outs. Seemed to be perfect for some landing gear.

Some plastic golf practice balls made perfect feet.

The aluminum gear turned out to be much lighter than PVC. The aluminum gear plus a Go-Pro and FPV gear should still be lighter than the PVC gear.

Original Helicopter Skids: 79 grams
PVC Landing Gear: 415 grams
Aluminum Gear: 244 grams

The new weight of the Turnigy Talon V2 quadcopter plus the aluminum gear and potato salad lid is now 1141 grams. (w/o battery)