My quest to build a better toothpick... Turned out to be one of the longest builds with a lot of failures! Quite a bit of suffering! And I am too old for such tiny parts! Show me some love, guys! :-)

In general, toothpicks are fun! Toothpicks are also pain in the butt! Thank you, KababFPV! :-)

I simply wanted one with the same range as my other drones. Normal range. I want to fly my drones around my house. For toothpicks, that would be very long range. Hence the very long toothpick build!

I also wanted to keep this on 1S. I am not afraid to fly a 50g 1S drone around people. Not actually around people but in places where a drone could bother people. Anything bigger is dangerous and threatening. I can fly a 1S drone into myself without fear. That's a good test. What's a point of having a 2-3S toothpick? If I can't fly it around people I may as well fly my 3" drones instead. That's my opinion, of course.

The original plan was to build on a Lil Duece frame but it just doesn't have holes to mount different things. In that regard, nothing beats FlexRC stuff! ;-)

It was not a question of what receiver to use. Anything I build these days has an R9 in it. The question was what to do with long antennas. I have printed integrated antenna tubes attached around the motors. The first version might have been too wide and had too much air resistance counteracting the prop thrust. It didn't fly well. I had to slim it down.

I planned to use an AKK Nano vtx to match the radio range but couldn't make the Smart Audio work (softserial on the led pad, in case you need it). I have switched to the tiny TBS Unify Pro32 Nano and I am glad I did because that thing is amazing! 400 mW and fits a tiny whoop build! SA 2.1 seems to work with the latest BF 4.0 without any issues.

I started with 10,000kV motors and it could only just hover above the ground on 1S... Another failure! Ordered 13500kV and IT FLIES!

The reason I have used a 16x16mm stack is that I have had my share of broken whoop-style FCs. I also wanted to check out the Teenyf4 stack which replaced often-troubled Super_S F4.

Also, I have gained a lot of respect for people who can design canopies! Both the canopy and the antenna tubes are printed in PolyMax PLA.

45g dry weight... not bad! Range test flight at 100mW power for both tx and vtx. I am getting 3:30+ min flight times on average
Range test flight 1
Range test flight 2
Overall, not an acro but a nice smooth cruiser! Very happy with the range and video quality (looks much better than from DVR)!