In this post I’ll share the details of the design of my custom H4 Quadcopter Frame. It’s a very sturdy yet light aluminum frame designed to use 10″ propellers and 700Kv to 1000Kv motors. I fly 10x4.5 propellers with 800Kv motors on 2.65A 4S LiPo batteries with excellent results. This is perhaps my favorite DIY custom drone frame.
As I've said before in this post about NTM motors, I use them in a few of my mid-size drones. I think that in the 400mm to 500mm range, these motors perform well enough to fly recreationally and as long as you stay out of dust and land with the right side up, they won’t disappoint.
Turnigy produces a line of motors called “NTM”. Those are low cost brushless motors that are suitable for medium sized multicopters. At the time of this writing, these motors sell for around $15 each on HobbyKing. Since I’ve seen quite contradictory comments at various fora, I’ve decided to add this post to the confusion.
PVC pipes used for plumbing are a good choice for building resilient drone frames. I’ve used it in an H4 configuration and it works. In terms of effort, cost and results, I would definitely recommend you to give it a try, specially if you’re starting to build your own models.
There’s a certain pride in being able to turn common, every day materials into something that is able to fly. At least that is the impression I get when random people approaches and asks me whether I made my quad myself. While my results are usually far from pretty, there’s a lot to learn from building your own frames.
Vibration can affect your multirotor drone in many ways, some of them non-obvious. In this post I’ll try to explain some of them along with strategies to minimize its effects.
The Turnigy Multistar 4822 690Kv is part of a line of pancake motors designed to drive large propellers at slower speed. This is precisely what you need when building mid to large size quadcopters such as my 650mm quad.