Monday, May 4, 2020

Re: dux


This taken on Saturday May 2nd, and so effectively April has seen the prototype redesigned and rebuilt from the ground up, and single-handedly. Considering this is less than two months since the previous iteration appeared at the event in California ~ and during a national lockdown that saw the UK population effectively curfew throughout most of the period ~ then I can be justifiably proud.

All the elements are now in place. I had built an identical frame to that of the drones purely to support the undercarriage (by placing it under the lower), but this weighed an extra six pounds and seemed like an unnecessary indulgence. In the event therefore I lengthened the cantilevers by six inches to support each castor. I had wanted them fixed directly beneath the lower set of motors, but this only complicated the assembly and disassembly of each of these components and I prefer to err on the side of simplicity. It doesn't look to bad, and in fact adds that much more protection to the lower set of propellers.

Plan is these will be arrested and lined up with the lower frame during take off and landing anyway, so as not to leave them exposed. We totalled a pair of these at said event, at a cost of the best part of three hundred pounds as I recall.