Many recent news stories detail people who are shooting down drones which are flying over their property.  My very limited understanding is that shooting the drones down is in general not legal, and some are facing charges for discharging a firearm inside city areas.

Most of these people don’t understand that the drone can’t “see everything.”  Unless the aerial vehicle is a few feet away, it probably can’t see their wife sunbathing in the backyard.  A camera with a long lens or a covertly placed camera phone can gather much more juicy imagery than a noisy flying weedwhacker.  But that’s not the point of this article.

How To Take Down A Drone

If your neighbor is flying a drone and you want to bring it down there’s no need for a gun.  No need to call the police.  No need to freak out.

The best anti-drone weapon on the planet can be found at many common stores and only costs a few cents…

All you need to bring a drone down is a loose ball of yarn.  Toss it up in the air and watch the drone come down for an unintentional crash landing.  Then you can have a “discussion” with the drone “pilot” about flying over your property, and the “finder’s fee” you’d like to collect to return the pilot’s drone to him/her.

If you wish to buy a drone defense system, I have them for sale at $99.99 each with free shipping!

This weekend’s project has been to change my 680mm Alien quadcopter frame to a different one in hopes the different frame is better engineered.  I wasn’t very happy with the design of the old frame and the quad flew very poorly in my opinion because of the way the weight was distributed more toward the front and rear of the UAV.  The concept of the old one was cool, to get the camera more front, but the mass of the battery had to be put way in the back.  This made flying it in anything other than dead calm a teeter totter ride.

New Alien Quadcopter 680 Frame Flies!

The process required ripping the old Alien quad apart and moving all the components/wiring/electronics to the new frame.  That took a couple of partial days to do.  Much of the wiring was custom cut and soldered, so that had to be undone.

The new version is lighter so far.  I’ve decided that though it is cool, I’m not going to put the old retractable landing gear on the new frame.  The new frame came with some very cheap, but super light gear.  That gear also has some finger nuts which allow it to be take off and put back on very easily.  That’s part of the point of this bird, to be able to compact it down to something easy to transport in a backpack or on an airplane etc.  I will be weighing both sets of gear to make a note of the difference in grams.

Today’s maiden flight was a success! IT FLIES. Too windy to do much else other than launch it a few feet.  It was very squirrely due to being lighter and the wind conditions.  The gains are set for a heavier load.

Quadcopter test hover…

Next Steps

Now that I know it flies, I’ll be taking it into the shop again to install the camera gear.  I’ll be putting the old FPV (first person view) camera setup on it, along with a 3-Axis brushless GoPro gimbal.  Hopefully by the time I get that stuff installed the wind will have calmed and I can do more test flying later today.

H4 Alien 680 Quadcopter during initial build…

I’m getting so discouraged on this rebuild that I took a break from it. The Alien H4 680 quadcopter is built and flying, but the vibrations are so bad I can’t get any decent video. I’ve spent DAYS, not kidding, balancing motors and props. Motor #3 vibrates so bad that it almost tickles your hand when close enough. I can see the landing leg under motor #3 shaking badly.

I’m now thinking that this motor is damaged. Perhaps the post is bent, or the bearings are compromised, or both. Now I’m faced with whether to pull it apart and try to replace the parts, or just buy another motor and see how that works.

I’m also not totally in love with this frame. The “K” shape of the bird makes great sense in getting the camera forward and the props out of the field of vision, but it doesn’t handle as well as I want it to. Maybe I’m too used to flying my bigger hexacopter, or perhaps the MiniX flight controller just isn’t as good as the SuperX.

Next steps?

I will either pull apart the motor and try to see if there’s obvious damage, and or buy a new motor. The problem is this stuff comes on the slow boat from China, so it will be another month before I can get to testing if I can’t find a USA dealer.