Lettin the Bat Fly: Bat Bone V-Tail Quad Cut Loose

After some rough landings with my Bat Bone Tricopter, I decided to convert it to a V-Tail Quad while waiting for parts to reconstruct the tail pivot. Following the Flite Test Bat Bone Build Video made the conversion very fat and easy. Since building the V-Tail I had only been able to do some hover tests in my tiny living room, and some simple manuevers and PI Gains and Mixer adjustments in a friends backyard. The had the craft feeling pretty solid, and the urge to get to a wide open space and let her rip was growing quickly.

Finally, after patiently waiting, the time to let the bat fly had arrived. After crashing my scratch built FT Bloody Wonder while trying to fly it in a small parking lot, I had scouted around and found a wide open, quiet and secluded grassy field to fly in. Based on my experiences with the Bloody Wonder and the Tricopter, I expected my flights to be short-lived, and ending in a crash, so I didn't prepare to capture much video. However, I was pleasantly surprised by how well the V-Tail Quad flew, and how much of a difference having a little more space made in my ability to pilot this craft. Here's a quick clip of the first flight of the day. I took it slow at to start and gradually got more daring.

Once I got a feel for the sticks, and became comfortable with the slight cross wind, I dug out the EPLAYCAM Micro DV Camera I had recently purchased.

I hadn't planned on using it until I had clocked some more flight time, but figured "what the hell?" so I quickly strapped it to the Lipo pack. This produced some pretty bad jello, but the footage will give you some idea of how well the quad performed. Here's the FPV from the EPLAYCAM camera.

Although the above landing only resulted in some broken props, I decided to call it quites while I was ahead, which seemed fortunate, because as I was walking out to retrieve the quad, a huge hawk flew out of the tree line, and seemed very intrigued by the Multi-Rotor.

All in all, it was a great day of flying. The Bat Bone performed like a champ. It was fast and responsive, and a blast to let loose in a big open area. There seemed to be a little oscilation, which seems odd considering I had the self leveling switched off, but I'm sure I'll be able to sort that out moving forward. The EPLAYCAM worked terrifically, and I was super impressed with the quality of the footage, and the reliability of this tiny, affordable, hobby camera.