Alot of good info there AKcopter, thanks. I have been flying my Tricopter with 11" props, on both 3s & 4s batteries for the last week or so. I often check my motors after every battery change, and they are never too hot to touch. I would imagine for the heat to effect the epoxy, we are talking about 'smoking hot' temperatures.

One other thing I have noticed, is I NEVER hit 100% throttle. I hover at around 50% and if I am getting risky I find myself near 70%.

I setup a custom throttle curve for 4S batteries that helps me keep the tricopter in control:


So its impossible to get to 100% throttle.

Oh and I was bored enough to put together a new video last night. This is some onboard video from the other day. I have since tuned the KK2 a little more to help with the tricopters always wanting to yaw.

First Person HellaCopter View (3 min 23 sec)

To solve the yaw problem to the tricopter...as it always wants to yaw...i went through my own share of dilemma's and confusions..where i blamed the mechanical limitations of my custom yaw mechanism for the inadvertent yaw of the tricopter even when no input is applied but I was wrong and...so i tried trimming the craft but... trim worsened the problem.. coz' if you give any trim to stabilize the tri on the yaw axis at any particular throttle position then this trim will have an adverse effect at other other throttle positions..for example my craft is yawing to the right at 45% throttle when I am hovering so I give left trim to stabilize it...then when I increase my throttle beyond 45% ...again the craft wants to yaw right due to the increase in torque due to increased motor speeds..and at lower throttle ranges i.e below 45%..the craft yaws left due to the trim...to solve this problem increasing the gains seems like a solution...but increasing gains will cause the servo to jitter so I applied some servo filter for smooth servo movement...but more gains may cause excessive compensation...say for [x] yaw deviation..the gyros compensate for [ -x-y](some extra value) deviation causing the tail to overshoot..so at last the best solution was to decrease the gains till the time the tail does not overshoot...and then go to mixer editor..and change the servo offset value..according to your undesired yaw direction...and now my tricopetr does not yaw at any throttle as long as I don't give any input...i will elaborate more on this...in the future...as to how to toy around with the servo offset value in the mixer editor...till then..
fly safe...

I understand. My issue was not like yours. My issue was my Servo horn was able to slip on the splines of the servo. A hard landing, or even extreme Yaw movement would allow the servo horn to slip, and alter the centering.

Last night I replaced the Yaw servo with another servo I had laying around. The servo horn fits very tightly and there is no chance of it moving. Now the Tricopter has no problem holding its heading, and appears to be very stable in flight.

I took it to a new park yesterday and burnt through 4 batteries... didn't break a single thing! Was trying to get alittle "Crazy" with the flight. Probably the most fun i have had with this tricopter since it was built

Of course there is video

The HellaCopter - Gets Funky at the Park. (4 min 38 sec)

servo slipping over the horn...Woah!!..that is dangerous..especially with the camera on!!!

I replaced that slipping servo with a spare servo i had on the bench. It flew real good, and never had a problem with Yaw... until I lost orientation and crashed on my tail, destroying the new servo. Oh well... I guess the tricopter will sit on the bench until I get some more motors and convert it into a V-tail.

Here's one last video I made, its a collection of all the video from the past and will most likely be the last video of this as a tricopter.

HellaCopter (4 min 32 sec)

OH man..The great hella-copter tragedy......looking forward for more on your experience...right now I am concentrating more on my MPNG project and just ordered the new multiwii Pro controller with MTK gps module from hobby king....I have some experience with the multiwii and aeroquad platforms so now the next most logical step is to get into the Ardupilot MAV project....

I have that same combo on order from hobby king. I am getting tired of watching my fingernails grow while waiting for it. I was half tempted to cancel the order, and just get a Crius or that same MultiWii without the GPS. But right now I am having enough fun with my KK boards, I can hold off before I need to start hashing code. Hopefully I will see the hobbyking GPS combo before xmas, but I am not holding my breath.

Besides, I have the hellacopter tore down and in pieces. There are some new parts on the work bench that will be going into it, and it will return better and more bitchin'!

out with the old:


in with the new:


Before:


After:


When its all reassembled it will no longer be classified as a tricopter

i didnt notice the four motors

Originally Posted by sirbow2

i didnt notice the four motors

And those ESC's are flashed with SimonK so this should be fun....

Made a new piece. Just have to find a decent way of attaching it.

hey..wow.. If you have four motors then why dont you go for the y-4 copter..the firmware is alreadly loaded on the kk2 ...and also you wont have to worry about the yaw mechanism...the y-4 is much less cumbersome and everybit as stable as the tri..or you can also go for a quad..but that seems just too common these days... I love the way a tricopter looks and behaves in the air...goodluck and keep the pics comming I love this way of sharing a new build....

they have crappy yaw ability. a vtail would be better by far than a y4

Yeah Y4 is a very bad design. Plus V-tails look awesome.

yeah the yaw is a problem....but anyway v tail would be good ....