Vibration

Vibration negation
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/vibration-damper-for-gasnitro I had read about issues or concerns with vibrations and gas/nitro powered planes so I come up with a vibration damper assembly made up of 2 fiberglass plates separated by 4 foam ear plugs that I cut the tips off and glued to each piece. On the lower board I also mounted my receiver and the airspeed sensor.

I flew this in a 66” Decathlon power by an O.S. .70 four stroke and had no issues at all with vibration – at least as far as the APM is concerned. I tested the unit in stabilize mode and RTL both worked flawlessly! Late into my second flight while in manual mode I was doing a few touch and goes after the third one I was on the downwind leg and everything quit working the plane ended up rolling onto its back and nosed straight into the ground. The plane is a total loss however after stripping all of the parts and performing a few checks on the APM all of the really cool stuff is still working perfectly. The vibration mount had to help some but it does show the boards are fairly durable

The best way I have seen sofar to get rid of vibrations in a Nitro or fuel palnes is to susspend the APM on the CG in the air.! so for example use the '''ArduPilotMega lazer cut box and dril a hole on each side of the mounting plant then span a rubber band from each side of the box to the closest serface in the plane then if you tied it very tight and the APM board it level in the plane take tissue paper and support the APM box all around it in the airframe. it looks weird but it works very well''' - http://diydrones.com/profile/JohannVanNiekerk

Reduce engine vibration via mount
Use the http://uavfactory.com/ Aerosonde type frame which allows the motor to be mounted at the back onto a vibration absorbing material.

http://www.diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/gel-as-imu-vibration-dampene this linke was removed by diydrones for some reason.

http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/arducopter-2024b?id=705844%3ATopic%3A437538&page=5#comments

Silicon foam
For me Silicone Foam works the best for eliminating any vibrations. I have my APM mounted inside of a semi enclosed servo box, the kind higher end digital servos come in, with a 0.25" thick piece of silicone rubber foam between it and the frame. I am using double sided foam tape to adhere the foam to the frame, and the APM box to the foam. Vibrations almost completely eliminated. AC2.025 is working great though. Yaw now resembles the yaw we had in RC2. Alt. hold is working excellently, 1-1.5 meter drift up and down. Loiter still overshooting a little. I have made some PID changes and will be flying again today. Great work!

On the front page there is a jpg link to a commercial quad drone that attaches the four arms of the quad to the drone enclosure with a rubber block.

Vibration absorbing blocks
http://www.barnardmicrosystems.com/L4E_inview_gallery.htm mounts two engines on vibration absorbing blocks that are attached to each wing.

The blocks can be internally mounted on vibration shock absorbers.

PID issues
Diydrones user PID settings, vibration http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/arducopter-dev-team-test?id=705844%3ABlogPost%3A427991&page=2#comments

Steal rod in rubber
See http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/rubber-suspended-mounting-of-the-apm-board-not-a-good-idea?xg_source=activity

Wire rope isolator
http://forums.openpilot.org/topic/6888-flexacopter-the-making-of/ Mount the Gimbal camera on a small square plate which in turn is mounted in wire-rope. Stick silicon tape on the platform

Links
Gimbal