Wooden DIY quadrocopter gets no respect from Minnesota State Fair

By Tim Stevens posted Oct 4th 2010 10:25AM

The Parrot AR.Drone may be the hot quadrocopter of the moment, but not everyone has $299 add one to their scale-sized hangar. We're not sure if it was financial reasons or a simple desire to get creative that drove Greg "Grease" Lehman of St. Paul, Minnesota to built his own, but build it he did, and out of wood. Using plans for a kit called the Roswell Quadrocopter, Greg hewed this from ash, oak, walnut, and paduak via CNC and a Sherline Mini mill. Thanks to its MikroKopter electronics the thing can hover and automatically fly to coordinates via GPS, or you can switch to a first-person view and do ityour way. Most importantly you can build it your way using the instructions at the source link, and then enter it into your own local state fair. Greg entered his into the Minnesota State Fair's "airplane flying model, scratch built" class and came in second. Yes, second. Sadly the Fair's results sheet doesn't describe what came in first, but it damn well better have had lasers and some degree of sentience to have beaten this.