A Different Kind Of Flying

When I first got into this Crapcopter business, the builds were big, clunky, inefficient and some were downright stupid. I've flown a V-Tail for years now and it was supposed to have superior handling characteristics to the standard X or H quad multirotors… but if it was better I never saw any inkling of it. Flapz flew one of the original early Tricopters and we all thought it was the cutting edge in multirotor foolishness. The tail rotor was a mechanical nightmare - the flight controller had to make dozens of corrections per second and that played hob with the servos and motor mounts.

A mechanical marvel five years ago - the Tricopter is an obsolete POS

today.

The countryside is probably littered with unrecovered wrecks of these things. Very few RC geeks will fly these today. I have always liked the look of weirdo flying machines and liked the looks of the TriCrapter… but the reliability issues with them scared me away.

Then I found something very similar; the so-called Y4. 4 motors, but 2 are mounted on the tail boom. The one I am going to build is a crispy mini, less than a third the size of the one above. Instead of a motor on an eleaborate moving mount, it just uses angular momentum - or torque - to turn and maneuver.

This little bugger is about 3" from rotor to rotor

I am really enjoying the midget copters because everyone seems to get a bang out of them. My big black V Tail would make creeps like Quartermain and Jack go for their 12 bores because the damned thing looked AND sounded sinister as hell. It was slow and easy prey for old buggers with anti-aircraft equipment, HAR HAR HAR! But these little ones are fast, quiet and they buck the wind just as good as the big ones. I have the frame coming in within the next week, and now I am crunching numbers to see what motors and props I should get. This little bugger is going to be the most challenging build yet because my fingers are fatter n' sausages, and soldering in the tight confines of a tiny airframe like this is going to be a real bear. My eyes are so damned bad now I have to take off my glasses and nearly put my nose in the puddles of solder to see them up close like that.

The retired stubfarts at the airfield hate these things with a passion, because any idiot (including Yours Truly) can fly them, where as the fixed wings take a fair degree of skill especially in wind. But what drives them absolutely bonkers is that these things can do stuff the fixed wings can't.

If you're up for it - strap in and get your barf bags out! You're gonna need 'em - as ace drone pilot Nurk and his fearless aviators dive a 1750 foot cell tower! The sissies, flimps and the old buggers from the Admontin RC club should probably give this one a miss.

OMFG! I'm gonna hurl!!!!

I am so going to do this once I am done cleaning up the mess!

Bblublugurglegubllllll…!!!!