Ok got it cut out of 2mm carbon and she comes in at 4 grams. Unfortunately my scale doesn't read in decimals so its roughly 4 grams lol.

Feels pretty durable! Now I wait for the parts I ordered to complete this little guy.

Looks awesome. Does the frame have much flex?
(Are those jitterbugs I see in the background? )

(01-Apr-2023, 09:43 PM)Lemonyleprosy Wrote: Looks awesome. Does the frame have much flex?
(Are those jitterbugs I see in the background? )

Yeah it has a little flex. If I orient it differently on the carbon sheet I think I can make it pretty rigid even with the 2mm. To get the most strength out of the carbon you need to make sure the weave is at 45 degree angle to the arms. I didn't do that on the prototype so she's got some give on the arms. Center section seems very rigid.

Yep they were jitterbugs!

uuuhh, vibration killer you wont get the best benefits of carbon thatway

maybe skip that version?


i had a 5inch skinny arm frame from a buddy, cutted in the wrong orientation, betaflight couldnt deal with it, it wobbled and even flew away. the second one cutted well, like magic, flew just perfect.
it might not change the world as much as on 5inch, but it wont provide that low noise it could

i fly a carbon baseplate with some ducts from a hm 75mm v2, its pretty much the same weight but flies so much better on carbon stiffness.

Well I was too bored today so I found a random aio in the parts bin and got it wired up to at least test fly it while I wait for my actual components to show up.

It's a bit lighter than it will be when I get a vtx/cam on it but dang it flies good! Hard to believe it was a 1s drone. Super quiet and lots of punch. Was doing some flips and rolls in the driveway and then some high speed passes in the street. Almost lost it a couple times as I was flying LOS so it was tough to see orientation lol. Even with the flexy arms it seemed to fly really nice and sounded clean.

Nice. What’s the spacing on those motor mount holes?

(02-Apr-2023, 12:44 AM)Lemonyleprosy Wrote: Nice. What’s the spacing on those motor mount holes?

It's the traditional 3 hole spacing seen on most 08xx-11xx motors. (6.6mm)

Create some cutout ends in the CF frame to anchor rubber bands on.  Frames in this class suffer from not thinking through the battery holder.  In the cutout area between the 25.5mm and 16mm holes would be a good place?  Should cover the widths of most batteries for this use case.

What I would LOVE to see man is a bus style micro for these 45mm props. I'm trying my Odonata (armattan) out now to see if it would fit. The bugger with this frame is that it is not suitable to the chunky WS nano camera and I needed to use my own standoffs that were a few millimeters taller. Also the betafpv 3" HX frame doesn't work well with the WS nano camera, same reason.

So I feel there is a real market for a bus style sub-micro frame (40 - 45mm prop) that fits the chunkier digital nano cams.

Few updates!

Got my order in from RDQ. 

Added the Happymodel Cross F4 FC and the hdzero whoop lite vtx/cam combo. Went with a simple, but boring happy model canopy as it fits the hdzero camera perfectly and is very lightweight.

Couple weights on the scale: 35 grams without battery and 47 grams with battery. Using 450mah 1s betafpv lipo packs.

Also haven't considered the lipo mounting solution yet so I'm going to do velcro for some test flights for now. I think I will take Ph2t's advice and maybe come up with some tabs for a rubber band solution as it's simple and lightweight.


I need to redesign the holes in the frame for the motor plugs. This setup happens to fit perfectly but the other Happymodel fc I used didn't work and I had to shim the FC above the frame which wasn't ideal. Charging up some packs now and I'm going to test fly it quick. Kinda windy here today so it might be tricky.

(06-Apr-2023, 04:09 AM)ph2t Wrote: What I would LOVE to see man is a bus style micro for these 45mm props.  I'm trying my Odonata (armattan) out now to see if it would fit.  The bugger with this frame is that it is not suitable to the chunky WS nano camera and I needed to use my own standoffs that were a few millimeters taller.   Also the betafpv 3" HX frame doesn't work well with the WS nano camera, same reason.

So I feel there is a real market for a bus style sub-micro frame (40 - 45mm prop) that fits the chunkier digital nano cams.

Yeah I could totally do that. I'd probably do a full redesign for that style frame though. I'd be happy to work with you on a design. Message me if you have any ideas of what you want it to look like!

Well I thought it was the cold weather to cause my drone to fall out of the sky randomly but I tried it again today with several settings changed and it keeps doing the same crap. Just randomly loses power and plows into the ground. Never really had this issue on a whoop. 

It's weird too because it seems so random. I can be doing full punch outs and flips and then I'll be doing some normal forward flight and then it'll just give out. 

Using the Happymodel Cross F4 FC and Betafpv 1102/18000kv motors on 1s 450mah. 

I'm going to open it up tonight and reflow the battery connections to see if I can find anything wrong.

Can anybody check this black box log and see if there's something wrong? Gyro data looks pretty clean to me.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QwzCbpQ...sp=sharing

It looks like you are maxing out motor 4 a lot even when it doesn't look called for by the setpoint. Maybe prop is loose on that shaft, or motor is rubbing, or ESC issue, but seems you are not getting full thrust out of that corner? Maybe also sagging out the lipo as a result of this?

(07-Apr-2023, 11:28 PM)mstc Wrote: It looks like you are maxing out motor 4 a lot even when it doesn't look called for by the setpoint. Maybe prop is loose on that shaft, or motor is rubbing, or ESC issue, but seems  you are not getting full thrust out of that corner? Maybe also sagging out the lipo as a result of this?

Ok that makes sense. I notice that motor stutters a bit on startup, but I didn't think much of it. Might be the motor plug on that one. Maybe I'll ditch all the motor plugs and solder direct to the esc. These motors have been heavily used so anything is possible.

Keeping the plugs makes it easier to swap out motors/FCs. If they are old motors, maybe more likely a motor issue than a plug issue (before you solder, you can plug in a different one and see if it makes any difference). Sometimes if you spin up the motors one by one on the bench (with prop if you are comfortable) you get lucky and spot the issue.