I started flying miniquads 5 years ago when ZMR250s were all the rage with 1806 motors and 5030 biblades controlled by the mighty F1 CC3D and SimonK ESCs. I quickly abandoned 5inchers and began to deep dive into whoops and micros in general. This summer I decided to get back the the 'standard' size so I started to plan a build. My main takeaway from micros and thus the concept of this build was to get as light as possible since it makes a bigger impact on performance than sheer power. I've built it, it's 196g dry. It's shit.

While it corners really good, the concept failed on many things, I think mainly on disc area and motor volume ratio. Never did the math but it feels like light 3 inchers have relatively large motors for the props, so it can spin it decently. These 2204s have no control over even the lightest props I could find (Gemfan 5125). This makes it a PITA to tune it on anything from BF 3.5.7 to 4.2.2 or Emuflight.

The Mamba 2204 2450kv motors are in themself seemed decent. 20.5g each with enough cable length for 4in1 ESCs. Has some nice features even more expensive motors are lacking: winding covers on the bottom, steel shaft inserts, dustcovers for the bottom bearing and comes with friggin' M3x7mm screws which is unimagably great. Somewhere they must have cut corners to achieve this low price, and I suspect the bearings. They came loose after 20ish flights and one motor had to be replaced after I received it, because it was rattling very noticeably. Top end speed is decent though, so keeping it in the higher RPM ranges is beneficial. When I first built it, I used the Sunnysky R2204 2300kv motors. Those felt much more in control, but the weight is 6,5g more the the Mambas - these two things led me to believe that those are bigger motors than advertised.

The frame I really like. Decent design. It is branded as T-Motor Yema which is interesting on 2 levels. First the Yema you can find it on places like GetFPV has the same canopy but it is a true-X design with 4 separate arms but mine is a hybrid-X with 2 banana arms. The other thing is this is awfully similar to the AstroX SL5. Even the fiddly camera mounting sideplates are the same looking.

The Foxeer camera while looks nice in this fluorescent color, it does not match the Caddx Ratel in image quality. Not a fan of the Micro Lollipop antenna either, earlier generation non-micro models work miles better.

After this build I wasn't sure whether the 5 inch category is lackluster (compared to what I imagined) or I am to blame. So I built 550g AUW 6S freestyle machine. That is how I imagined modern 5" performance.

EDIT 06/10: Seems like Mamba motors are disappearingfrom Diatone official sites and stuff.