Quadcopter proves to be a challenging project

Luke Stacey, who recently moved to the midwest with his family, is a senior homeschool student who frequently took advantage of programs and opportunities offered at Wahkiakum High School. He approached Jeff Rooklidge, the science and engineering/robotics teacher for a final project, proposing to research and build a quadcopter.

"This was an extremely challenging project for a high school student," Rooklidge said. "Luke has a strong curiosity which enables him to excel in all areas of his academics. He loves to challenge himself to solve difficult, complex problems and he has a great ability to ask the right questions and think outside the box in science and math."

A quadcopter, according to Rooklidge, is a multi-rotor copter with four arms. Each arm has a motor and propellor at their ends. Though similar to helicopters, their lift and thrust comes from four propellers instead of one. Unlike helicopters, they do not have a tail rotor to stabilize the craft. Two propellers spin clockwise while the other two spin counter clockwise, which allows the machine to hover steadily.

Quadcopter kits are readily available, but Stacey opted to build his from scratch, assembling the electrical circuits, building the framework and writing all the computer language in order to code the rotors and control flight.

With the pressure of his family's move to Minnesota in front of him and all the hard work building the quadcopter behind him, all that was left was flight.

"This was no small moment for me," wrote Stacey in his narrative, "a year of coding, assembling, and learning culminated in these few precious moments, unrepeatable due to the upcoming move. When I finally got all the motors turning – an annoyingly difficult process – I turned up the power on the remote, and watched as a pound of metal, two micro-controllers, four motors capable of 10,000 RPMs, and a battery the size of a pack of butter, lifted off the ground and took to the air! Oh, what a glorious moment that was! Oh, that time would have frozen there! Oh... but it didn't.

"For whatever reason, the auto-leveling algorithm proved insufficient, and the quadcopter came off the ground running sideways – nearly taking out my dad before it crashed into the ground."

Stacey is the son Matt and Lori Stacey. He is a National Merit Scholar and he recently received a full ride to Liberty University in Lynchburg,Virginia where he will study Electrical Engineering.