After some test flights with my V-Tail Quad yesterday, I was thinking that the front rotors could use a little more juice, and decided to try an experiment.
So I added a second set of rotors to my Quad, making it into a new kind of Hexacopter: a T-copter with a V-tail! A TV6!
When I first powered it up, it seemed to just jump into the air--and it immediately just flew better! She has much stronger control authority in all dimensions now, and will be able to carry more weight.
I hooked up the bottom rotors in counter-rotation with the top rotors, like the standard Y6 configuration. I installed two additional DT750s, using the same 1045 props. They mounted neatly with only zipties.
As far as software adjustments are concerned, I left the V-Tail configuration "as is" on the KK2 board and just split the ESC signal connections for rotors number 1 and 2, using two Y connectors.
I'm surprised that I didn't even have to make any adjustments to the flight controller. I suspected it would just work, but you never know just what will happen until you try it out. This time I was pleasantly surprised. It seems like the craft is very steady now. I think there's a natural gyroscopic effect in counter-rotating bells on each nacelle, and I suspect it helps to balance things out.
During this short flight, the prop nut on the bottom front left rotor came loose and the prop came right off. The TV6 just kept flying, like it didn't even notice!
I tried flying this new configuration on an 1800mAh 3s and on a 2200mAh 4s. In both cases, the batteries started to puff up after no more than 3-4 minutes. I did notice that it flew much better on 3s power. Both of the flight packs I mentioned are getting old, though I'm sure the additional amp draw just sucks the juice right out of a battery.
I'll have to do some bench testing to see if the setup is drawing too much power, or else maybe I'll have to get more high-performance batteries?
Update 2013.08.16:
Here's some recent test flight footage:
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