Endurance Quad

I have been talking with Jonathan Dandois (of Ecosynth and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute) about the work each of us has been doing lately, and he told me about a new aircraft they had. They have put together a long endurance quad using a modified MK Okto frame, MK motors, and 15" props and they got 53 minutes of flight time out of it. Hearing about that sort of impressive flight time pushed me over the edge, as I have wanted to put together an endurance quad for a while. It was made even sweeter by the fact that I had all the necessary parts in the hangar to make it a reality. So, 4 hours later, this is what we have:

Here she is, all ready to fly and only lacking props. I used the short arms from the Okto frame and added some strengthening to the frame where the other arms had been removed (they seemed to be structurally important to me).

In the interest of absolute minimum weight and maximum simplicity, I have simply attached a Canon SX260HS to the bottom of the battery cage.

The stack. I'm currently running a FrSky receiver but will probably switch to a Dragonlink after testing. An RFD900 sits on the back and HK F-20A ESCs drive the motors.

In the interest of minimizing weight I have used as few Deans and bullet connectors as possible, hard soldering most things in place. The motors have bullets but if things go well in testing I will probably go back and solder them.

As of right now it is ready for a test flight. I have configured the APM, gotten the transmitter set up, and have all the motors spinning the right way. Now all that is left is to get it airborne. Hopefully that will happen tomorrow. More soon.