So I made my First tricopter months back, and focused on making it fly good AND look good. Gave it a sweet coat of black paint.
Looks stealthy, techy, and just cool!
In the time I've flown this tricopter, I've gone down twice while flying FPV, and it took me about a minute to locate it in a flat short grass field. Harder than you'd think. In the past few months on rcgroups, there have also been some cases of people loosing their multicopters in grass/brush. Some were found, some weren't.
Recently I decided to build another smaller tricopter based on a new camera mount design that works great. However, instead of going with the flat stealthy looking, I decided I would make my $400+ investment easy as possible to find. I went to the store and got some florescent orange paint, disassembled my tricopter, and went to work.
Looks like a black box from an airplane! Not as nice looking in my opinion as the black, but does the bright paint do what I want it to?
Mock scenario
You had and inflight failure (because nobody crashes, right?) and your tricopter has gone down. Sunset is in 1/2 hour, your at the park, and dont want to leave your baby lost in the park overnight!
Can you spot the orange tricopter? (click image to enlarge)
(between the two pines on the right)
And now, what if you painted your tricopter black? Well, you wont find it. I cant even find it and I took the picture and know where it is. It's actually closer to the camera than the orange tricopter was
(it's infront of (touching) the barn on the left. Ya......it's practically invisible.
Sooo........in closing, get yourself some florescent paint! Orange stands out against most nature (unless you prefer pink!) With my new bright orange tricopter, a discovery beeper alarm set to failsafe, and my contact info on my tricopter, I have faith it will be found if the worst happens.
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