Category: Blog

We love hearing from you, but being stuck in a build or waiting for stuff or answers is never fun. For that reason we introduced the Support ticket system recently. The system makes sure that questions are filtered so they can be answered the fastest way possible – sometimes the answers can even be found within the FAQ it self to provide an instant answer that lets you continue your build or not having to wait for an answer, or your questions can be added to the FAQ for others to benefit from.

We have implemented this system as David’s inbox was overflowing and e-mails were being overlooked. Having Davids inbox as a single point of contract has turned out to be somewhat of a bottleneck resulting in unnecessary delays, you not getting any response, and claims regarding faulty/broken products, missing items etc to be made void. The support ticket system makes it easier for me to share the load of answering certain questions with David (so that he can focus on his areas of expertise), and to get a better overview of what has been done/said in each issue. This is especially important now that David is away. Please use the support ticket system, we want happy pilots 🙂

Regards,
Johanna

With David all the way across the big pond meeting some of you at FliteTest, this announcement has fallen on my shoulders, and will therefore be shorter and less descriptive than usual. Here goes:

A new beast has hatched. Measuring 170mm motor to motor and weighing only 280 grams with electronics and FPV gear, the BabyTricopter is in size and weight really just a baby compared to its older brothers. But don’t be fooled, this baby packs a punch! Be sure that you know what you’re doing before flying this beast…

You can choose between the Baby with it’s custom F3FC racing and power distribution board included for just $99, or  just the Baby Tricopter (without flightcontroller and PDB), for as little as $69.

The F3FC Racing and new PDB can of course
also be bought separately (although you get a nice discount if you buy them with the kit), and you’ll find more info on those product pages.

Shipping will start on Monday/Tuesday so order now!

The Baby of course will need some power, and we’re also releasing an electronics kit, with the same EMAX motors as used by the MiniTricopter, but with Aikon 30A ESC’s and three-bladed orange propellers from HQ. This kit is however currently on Pre-Order, ar we are awaiting the arrival of our chosen Aikon 30A ESC’s. You can still order the kit, but it won’t be shipped until the ESC’s have arrived.

Have some patience with the product descriptions and info, this is, after all, a Pre-Release! More info will be added, and spare parts will become visible in the store as we’ve had time to somewhat fix their respective product pages.

I’ll be jumping on a plane headed for Flite Fest tomorrow morning. During my stay I’m going to have limited internet access and time to answer emails and such. Johanna will be holding down the fort while I’m gone, answering support tickets and shipping out orders just as usual.I know I’ll be seeing some of you at Flite Fest. It’s going to be an awesome time! Just hope the Ohio weather cooperates.

After Flite Fest I’ll be joining the RotorRiot crew in Pripyat, Ukraine to do some flying. This means that if you send me an email, you shouldn’t expect a reply until August.

Some of you might remember my everlasting battle with manufacturing of the carbon fiber arms. There is a reason why most companies I’ve approached have declined to even try making them. 10x10mm woven square tubes are really difficult to make. Extruded tubes this size is no problem, but they really suck. The arms we sell now are fantastic when it comes to strength, weigh, stiffness and have no warp.

The problem is that the surface finish is almost impossible to get perfect. So far we’ve discarded large parts of batches due to these imperfections and it’s really not sustainable. We at least need to break even on the arms. That would mean either almost doubling the price or lowering the standards, or stop selling them altogether.

Right now the most reasonable thing seems to be lowering the cosmetic standards in our quality checks. To be clear; only the surface finish is effected. The structural integrity and function is unaffected and the arms will be just as strong as before. The difference is that you might get arms that are scratched, have small dimples, have a visible edge of the carbon or other cosmetic impurities. Again, this will not effect the function or performance of the arms.

Since you will now receive a lower quality product we feel that to be fair we should lower our prices. The 325mm arms are lowered by 1USD and the 162.5mm by 0.5USD.

How do you feel about this?

We’ve been testing out a new support system for a while and it’s now time to start using in for real. You will now be able to open a ticket by either going to your account page, or by clicking the FAQ/Support meny tab in the top navigation bar. This system will allow us to help you more efficiently and with less risk of your email getting lost in the river of messages that is my inbox.

The FAQ portion of the page is filled with the most common questions we get. Please at least skim it before opening a ticket.

If you want to contact me directly with stuff that isn’t related to orders or support stuff you can still use the contact from on the “about us” page. But please understand that I might not always answer as I get quite a few. You do not need to have an account registered in order to open a ticket.
Just make sure that you spell your email address correctly, or we won’t be able to answer you. If you have an account you can easily see all your tickets and open new ones from your account page.

We hope this system will let us help you in a more efficient way.

A teaser

It’s finally here. 33 minutes of build video showing the whole build process of the Tricopter V4 with electronics kit. Enjoy!

In this video I show a bit more how to connect things on the F3FC Tricopter board. A complete build video for the Tricopter v4 is coming soon, in which more of the F3FC build is going to be shown. Sit tight, the video should be up next week.

I’ll be on live on my friend Jack Nash’s podcast “Let’s drone out” tomorrow at 8pm UK time (Sorry wrote the wrong time at first). We’ll be talking about the Triflight code, the new F3 board and RCExplorer in general. Jump on over to the Let’s drone out website tomorrow and post your questions and generally join the fun in the commenting section.

Here is a link to the episode

You asked for it, so we got it. A replacement gear set for the BMS-210DMH servo is now available.

To take the servo apart you need a tiny T5 torx screwdriver. So we got some of those as well.

Lastly a 430mm 4 Lead servo extension for extending the servo cable on the Tricopter V4 in a very clean and professional looking manner.