Done so many super tight race quad builds lately, then the nightmarish Silence project, so I figured I'd take it easy and rebuild one of my old freestyle quads - and of course decided to design a new frame for it, which then escalated into something daft, naturally.

Frame design started sensible, for at least 10 minutes of the CAD process, and then I decided to keep the stack height to 10mm, because of course I did.

Aside from that added challenge, I did make things a bit more sensible than the old Kittilyt design - instead of the deadcat layout I went for a wide X, meaning I can run 6" props without worrying about batteries meeting props, and sized the top plate to fit a 2200mAh pack. Given the very low stack height, I added holes for a second board in the back, whether that be a 30.5x 30.5, 20x20 m2, or 20x20 m3. Since I've been using more micro cameras than anything, I designed the camera cage to fit those, with reinforcement taking the cage up to 5mm of carbon each side at the front, enough to deal with most frontal impacts. I had issues on my old builds where the rx T antenna would slide up and down the arm, so designed tabs into the arm that the cable ties slip between, preventing movement.

As per usual for me, everything is a little overkill, making it a fairly weighty frame at 156g, but for a freestyle quad I can accept a little extra weight if it means it won't break in a massive crash.

Onto the build, and it was a bit of a squeeze! The Matek F405 CTR was fouling on the centre press nuts, so I needed to flip it over to give me room, which in turn meant I cut the wires to length in situ, then soldered it all out of the quad unlike my usual approach of cutting and soldering with the ESCs and FC already in place.

There did turn out to just be enough room for the battery straps over the FC and the VTX in the tail, fortunately - the FC is even still soft mounted! 3D printed mounts for my pair of GoPros complete the quad, and now it's ready to go introduce it to some concrete at a local bando!