[marhar] was pretty confident in his quadcopter building skills when he made a bet to build and fly a quadcopter in just one hour! This is a big task but he saved valuable time by using some unlikely parts that were hanging around his parts bin. And to make the task a little more difficult, this build wasn’t done in a nice shop, either. It was built outside on a patio floor with the only power tools available being a hand drill, miter saw and small drill press!
The frame is made from cheap, sturdy and available scrap wood. The center plates are 1/4″ plywood and the arms are 3/4″ square fir strips. Notice the landing gear, yes, those are mini wiffle balls zip-tied to the wooden arms. Although an unlikely candidate for landing gear, they are surprisingly effective.
The flight controller board is an Ardupilot. [marhar] did use a flight controller that he previously had in another quadcopter. He used it as-is, and it worked, but no programming or configuration time is included in the 1-hour limit. Even so, it doesn’t take away from the impressiveness of the build time. The motors, ESC’s and battery are just standard types used for most multirotors.
[marhar] doesn’t say what he won for completing the ‘copter but we hope it was something good, he deserves it. If you’d like to make something similar, [marhar] gives very detailed instructions and provides templates for the wood parts on his Instructables page. Check out the time-lapse build video after the break…
Good job
The only power tools he had?
What other power tools do you need to cut a wood frame.
Most people would be really happy to have a drill press and a miter saw.
So speed=hack now?
Indeed. They got half a woodshop in there.
Quadcopters fly basically because they have four powerful motors pushing down enough air. There’s nothing to design, just stick four propellers onto anything. They could have duck-taped two bamboo sticks together and stuck the motors and electronics on with hot glue, and it would have worked.
i used to make custom minis with carbon rod, ca glues amd thread for the frame, could probably build one in 10min,
Does anyone else hear the king of the hill theme song when they watch videos like this?
Thanks! You just made watching this vid a lot more enjoyable!
He had to put the esc wires in to the snap connectors and plug stuff in come on, give him a little credit….
Saves a lot of time when you have a wired, ready to go set of motors, escs, and fc….
[marhar], here, with some minor clarifications:
– the genius behind the build is long-time flying buddy and EastBay RC co-conspirator Andreas Oesterer.
– He won a bet with Trappy, who sent along a TBS Discovery frame.
– I will FOREVER DENY that the original blog post referred to the airframe as “Andreas’ Big Woody.”