This one was quite unexpected.

A friend dumped a bag of broken Lizard95 parts at me saying that he has bought the quad time ago and it flew twice and then it broke (which I find hard to believe based on how it looked - but then he also said he got mad and threw it at a wall). Anyway, I took it and decided to resurrect it. I always somehow liked the awkward look of the Lizard95 frame. Another reason I took it is that I knew I have a spare 16x16 FC+ESC+VTX stack from iFlight on the way that I have no use for (I order the 16x16 stack for my toothpick build, but few days after that they released their whoop FC, so I ordered that one too).

So here I am, with a bunch of Lizard95 parts.


Because the original Eachine Minicube stack is 20x20 moutning, I had to figure out a way to mount the new 16x16 stack. Luckily I had this weird adaptor thingy that came with my Caddx Turtle, so I could use that. All the screws and that adaptor is a lot of extra weight, but then I will save on the stack itself, so I figured it's fine.


Soldered a new XT30 pigtail and the motors. I had to replace the motor without the bell - I had two spares from my pizza box wing attempt, so I used one of those.


The whole stack is just clip on using those tiny connectors, so no wires or soldering between the ESC and FC. Just soldered the receiver (XM+) and LED strip. Camera (I replaced the original AIO camera+VTX with a Caddx EOS2, VTX is part of the stack) is connected using a tiny connector, which I don't quite like - I would prefer soldering directly. But since there are no video in pads on the FC, I had to use the connector. Luckily the cable that came with the FC fits in the stock Caddx EOS2 camera connector, so that was just plug and play. The only downside is that now the camera wire is very long and has two connectors - extra weight.


Now the VTX is sitting on top, receiver is wrapped in some tape and attached using a zip tie between the FC standoffs. I might change this as I'm not sure if I'm transferring some vibration to the FC this way.


And here's the finished product! Since I didn't need the original VTX antenna protection, I attached the carbon pieces the other way so now it looks like some cute little animal Maybe it will also protect the camera in some crashes.


It's certainly not the lightest. It comes in at 70g without battery and 118g with the stock 550mAh battery. I also have two 450mAh batteries that are about 10g lighter, so around 108g AUW with those.

Now how does it fly: unfortunately like a cra...
I loaded it with Betaflight 4.0.3, set up my rates and went to test it. At first it was flying quite good. Plenty of power in that thing. I was flying with those pentablades, but eventually my plan was to swtich to the Gemfan 2035 quadblades. First thing I noticed was a terrible video noise - but that was expected since I don't have a cap on the battery lead. There also were some vibrations at first, some propwash, but a slight PID adjustments helped a bit.
Then I switched to the 4-blades and the hell broke loosee. As soon as I gave it a bit of throttle, it just went full steam up until I disarmed. So I reverted to stock PIDs, didn't help. Switched back to the 5-blades - that helped at first. But once the blades got a bit bent, the thing would do the same - just fly away. Quite scary behaviour. So I packed my things and went home rather unhappy.

I think that one reason is that the motors are very noisy. They are old and each motor has quite different smoothness (notchiness?) when spining by hand. So what am I gonna do next:
1. Revert back to Betaflight 3.5.7 as 4.0.X seems to be more prone to flyways/generally filters settings
2. Measure the motor nosie (using Bardwell's technique shown in this video)
3. Replace the noisiest motor with the one spare I have
4. Add more filtering in Betaflight
5. Pray
6. Post the results here

Nice story, hope you figure out the problem. I have been resurrecting a few quads. Most are successful except for one. It would fly fine for a little bit and then just fall out of the sky. I think one of the ESC might be bad or motor desyncing. I haven't had the time to troubleshoot.

What a cool project! Cannot wait for your results!

Looks like a stag beetle now!

Hoping you get the problems sorted. Looks like a fun little micro.

Thanks!

Yeah I'll start by adding a cap, forgot to mention that. That won't probably do much with the flyway issue, but will help with the video at least.
I'm also thinking that if the motors turn out to be just bad, I'll order a set of these: https://www.banggood.com/2PCS-3B-R-1105-...29346.html - seems like a good value to me. The size is a bit bigger (1104 vs 1105) but the weight is pretty much the same so I guess it could work.

Some progress...
I disassembled the whole thing, made sure everything is tight (there were some screws loose actually). Measured the motors noise as I described before which resulted in charning one motor. Here's a picture showing the noise before and after. Quite a difference.


Also added a capactior - the video is now nice and clean - and downgraded to Betaflight 3.5.7.

Today I went for a test flight - and yay it flies. It flies actually pretty good. BUT of course there is more issues. For one thing it sounds weird. Like a prop was bent, but visually the props look good.

And also there is a lot of small twitches (mostly on yaw axis). I'm not really sure how to address those - any ideas? You can see it in the video below from today's flight. Especially in the end of the video and right before landing.
WARNING: there's probably VTX static noise. I tried to replace it with the YouTube music, but it doesn't seem to work. Careful with headphones!


Thanks for any advices!

Great to hear. Of you want to m9 e to 4.0.3, the BF 4.0 tuning has suggestions for moving to 4.0 from 3.5

What a cool flying spot!!!! I love trees and green things

It actually look really smooth.

Yeah the park is very nice, a lot of trees and some really small gaps to try and fly through

It looks smoother from the DVR than from what I felt (and heard) the quad doing. I think that the YouTube horrendous compression also covers some of it as the whole video is just bleh. But you can clearly see some of the twitches at 4:59-5:01, as I'm slowly lining up for landing, it twitches probably on the roll axis first to the left and then to the right.
It actually doesn't really seem to be affecting the flight too much, quad is still keeping the line and all, but it's very distracting in the goggles at least.

Interesting observation today. The quad flies absolutely fine and smooth first few minutes when it's cold. Once the I fly it for a while and the thing gets warm (well motors actually get quite hot, but still touchable/pinchable), the twitching starts happening again. I guess I'll try to play with PIDs and filters to reduce the heating of the motors and see if that helps.