Want the means of mounting the cat on the rear of the car to be 'just-so', which it isn't as yet so I'm looking for a fast means of swapping the tire from the tail-gate with the craft itself. To do so I find my inner Banksy and produce a stencil; I knew that dipping all of those half-potatoes in paint and transferring them to paper at the nursery would come in useful one day.
With that done I cut out the shape of the outermost bracket that is used to mount the spare, and transfer it to the hard-point on the underside of the centre-section.
And afterward I cut out the outline of the bracket using the jig-saw. The plan is to contrive a plug-and-play system where, with the spare off the car, the craft can be plugged into the tail-gate in this way and simply secured with bungee cord.
Having done this however and setting it up on the back end of the car, the problem is the width of the skis means that they conflict with the outline of the rear bumper.
I am loathe to add anything to this fairly elegant means of toting a maritime drone, so instead of using a spacer for instance to set the craft further aft, the alternative is to mount the centre-section the other way around with its topside plugged into the spare-wheel bracket.
This does appear to accommodate the outside dimensions of the booms, but now in order that the rear lift-motors do not clash with the rear-side of the vehicle the boat has to be lowered: reducing the ground-clearance.
Nonetheless it's looking like the preferred option and it turns out the bracket can be set to coincide with the centre of said centre-section. The only problem with this is that is the preferred location of the flight-control computer. It can though be fitted to the underside instead, which is something I've done in the past with other quads.
Of course there is an argument for simply allowing the lift-motors to raise the craft into the air, with the cruise motors at the year providing for manoeuvre. This tho' is not nearly so precise, which means that demo'ing the vehicle for the purpose of PR would be altogether more complicated, requiring a larger field or expanse of water.
Nothing in prototyping is ever straightforward however, as is plain from these posts.
