F.T.'s Tough Tilt Tricopter Swivel Mount Review

A short introduction if I may. I'm Brian Liem, Liemavick on the forum and this is my first article.

Ive been building my own multirotors for several years. I've built tri's, quads, V-tails and hex's, all the while learning as I went. I started out building a tricopter as my first multirotor, having never flown a multirotor before this probably wasn't the wisest choice. Plenty of crashes and rebuilding soured me on the design. One of the biggest issues I was having aside from broken booms was the swivel mount and servos stripping gears. I gave up on the design and vowed never to build another.

It's amazing the growth and advances in technology in the multirotor world in such a short time. One such advancement is Flite Test's new Tough Tilt rudder swivel mount for Tricopters. I was lucky enough to get my hands on one to review, so coming full circle I set off to build a Tricopter (vows were ment to be broken) and give the new F.T. swivel tilt a run for its money.

One of the first things I noticed was the quality in craftsmanship that went into the design. It was well thought out yet kept simplistic. The injection molding produced a sturdy yet light weight product. The swivel itself glides effortlessly and precise.

The swivel rides along a single hex head threaded pin that is easily removed to make instalation easier. Simply unscrew the pin and the two parts slide apart exposing the mounting holes for both the base and motor mount.

As I mentioned before the design was well thought out. You have two options for mounting the swivel mount. You can through bolt it using the designed holes, or use zip ties since they provided three groves to allow the zips to pass through not interfering with the swivel.

One of the limitations I found is your motor selection. The molded motor mount screw holes are designed to work with your standard bolt pattern, they line up perfectly. Unfotunately this limits you to a direct mount style motor. Bell style motor base hole patterns don't line up with the mounting holes. I'm sure with some precision drilling they could work, but I'd just order motors that could be directly mounted. Another small snag is some motors come with 5mm mounting screws, they are a tad short passing through and grabbing the motor threads. 6mm mounting screws are the perfect length and give you a snug mount.

Here's where we get to have a little fun. Due to the servo manufacturers using different size gear and thread patterns on them, there is no way to have a one size fits all servo gear receiver molded into the swivel mount. In order to connect the servo to the swivel you have to modify one of the servo horns and secure it with a screw. On the servo itself you will need to remove one of the mounting tabs as well.

The servo they chose to work with the mount is a metal gear Emax ES3154. I'm sure other models may work, but why make it hard on yourself?

Since the star of this article is Flite Test's new Tough Tilt swivel mount I built a basic tricopter as the test crash dummy, no frills or pretty paint to distract from the beauty of the tough Tilt's design.

Over all I'm very pleased with its solid respose and tight design. The flights up to this point have been as expected and Im very pleased. My flying skills have gotten better since my first tricopter build so I haven't broken anything yet. I don't know when they will be available in the FT store, but if your building a Tricopter I'd recommend picking one up. Thanks for your time, and keep it under 400 feet ;)

 Brian