• A History: A couple years back I built a quad that I called "Lil Devil" (Deezy for short) and it was built around the Usmile/ Eyas 112 frame. I flew the mess out of that lil quad and built a bunch of different versions of it over the years generally using the most current Runcam Split camera. I eventually designed a pod for the frame which I based off of this pod: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1783281 when I started learning CAD (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3417345), being that there weren't any pods for this style of frame that incorporated VTX antenna mounting that way that I did, I believe this is the pod that inspiried the current "toothpick" quad trend. I've since made my own verison of a toothpick quad and various pods to go along with it but that's all another story.
  The OG Lil Devil aka Deezy

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• The concept: After the toothpick trend grew like crazy and everyone hopped on board to make their own versions, people started making them bigger and bigger and TBS came out wit this "podracer" design. I've always been a fan of MattyStuntz style high cam tilt (60-65 degrees) and call my toothpick desgin the "Full Tilt" and it has a pod that allows for full on 90 degree cam angle. This TBS podracer is interesting in that the camera is positioned near the rear of the quad rather than the middle like most frames of this type. I was curious and liked the idea of the frame being open source so I picked one up.

• The Build: I decided that this build would be "The Ghost of Deezy" where i'd be bringing Deezy back from the dead once again but with current parts. The bulk of this build came from parts that I took from an Airblade Intrepid 4" that I ended up scrapping. For the sake of not being redundant, I wont repeat the build list as it's all down below but I do want to highlight a few things: First, the Jhemcu AIO FC/ ESC is great, I've only managed to blow up one so far and im pretty sure it's only because it put it under some pretty extreme strain. Second, the Airblade 1404 4850kv motors seem best suited for racing, they have tons of top end but are kinda "meh" in the low end, the 3800kv variant is far more efficient and is a more practical motor just generally speaking. For the feel that I was going for ,1404 felt underpowered and my bearings sounded a bit rough so I ordered some Brother Hobby 1504.5....shipping took like 10 days for some reason so during that time I took some old RotorGeeks 1407 3200kv motors that I thought I'd never use again and stuck them on the quad. I didn't have many 4" props that would fit other than the Gemfan Hurricane 4" that can be either 5mm or t-mount and with the Hobby King warehouse being nearby I ordered a bunch of old 5mm mount 4" and even some 3.5" props that were probably made before I even started flying. This experiment quickly made a turn for the old school...but there's reason for all of this......

• The Build (Part 2): Let's take a jump back about a month or so. A little over a month ago I got the inclination to start flying 3d...but I wanted to do it on a 3". After about 45 min in 3d mode in Liftoff simulator I converted all of my working quads to 3d mode, at the time it was a 3" toothpick style quad (my Full Tilt desgin), a 3" top mounted quad and my 5" FPV Cycle "Prototype 5". I actually got pretty comfortable for a bit there but realized that you can't really fly 3d and have the trastitons looks smooth unless you stabilize the footage so where it worked pretty well overall on my 3" with an Insta360 go, it didnt look as good on my 5" with Session 5 (I have the Hero 8 but don't like it for freestyle on that setup). I ended up crashing my quads enough to mess up my VTX on two of them which resulted in me troubleshooting "video issues" for about the last 2 weeks....my 5" still isn't back in working order..but I digress.

--Update: I broke it. I Mattyflipped it into a tree and snapped both plates but the arms were fine. Luckyily I know someone who cuts carbon locally so I had some more plates made and got it back in the air within a few days. I've also redesigned the pod to have less of that "rat rod" slammed back feel. In my experirence, having the camera at the back of the pod like that is only beneficial if you tilt the camera as high as it can go and are using the quad for racing. When it comes to freestlye the original pod feels pretty terrible, honestly, so I've just shifted the camera forward so that the front of the lens lines up with the center of thrust. The main benefit of flying a "tower-style" (see "toothpick" quads) is that the center of mass is lined up with the center of thrust and having the camera lined up with both of those makes for a less latent feeling, quick response quad. Note: the camera is still shifted back from where it would be on a most tower/ toothpick style quads, since I'm flying around 60-65 degrees I'm trying to figure out what physical positioning of the camera will provide the best moment of inertia for "blipping" the throttle and sending the quad sailing.
Update 6/17/21- I've remixed the pod twice now, the first revision postions the front of the camera lens right at the center of the frame (from front to back) and the second revison is more of a standard toothpick style pod that can be flown at high cam angle. After watching one of those recent Chris Rosser videos where he explains how the typical way that most people mount antennas (sticking out the back) can cause resonance that makes tuning more difficult, I'll probably revise the more standard style pod with better antenna mounting soon and put both styles on thingiverse.

• The Build (part 3): Let's go back in time again: early in my FPV beginnings I was attracted to "high cam tilt" in that it seemed to be the most innovative and different style at the time so by the time I started flying 5" ( I started with micros) I was already flying about 60 degree camera angle. Eventually I saw the limitations in flying at such a high cam angle (for my skill level at the time) and slowly worked my way down over the years. These days I fly around 15-25 degrees on 5" quads. The main reason for even learning to fly at lower cam angles was that I felt that flying 3d was the natural progression of FPV freestyle and generally 3d is done with a cam angle of 0-10ish degrees (correct me if im wrong). So 3d flying has been a thing for a while and there are a couple super dope 3d pilots out there but to my understanding they all fly using around 0-10degree cam tilt and I've heard on a couple occasions where people said "It'd be so cool if someone flew 3d at high cam angle". In walks a bunch of bi-blade props from 2016.. Somewhere in this story I mentioned buying a bunch of old props at HobbyKing because I didn't have many 4" props with a 5mm hub, the majority of said props are bullnose which I think lend certain flight characterstics..but that's antoher story. All of the props that I bought are also relatively symetrical which i've heard/ seen/ been told are good for 3d because when the motor switches diretion and you go inverted, you want a comparable feel to how it felt flying when right side up. After trying a few different props I ended up liking the KingKong 4" biblades for 3d on the Rotorgeeks 1407 motors. I remember watching a Zoe FPV video where she flies a micro in 3d mode and mentions how taller motors are better for 3d, I don't remember her reasoning but from my experience I'm gonna say it's because taller motors generally put the prop line closer to the the center of mass on a topmount style quad. On a bottom mount quad like this, I'd think things like camera location and weight distribution would negate how much the motor height matters in relation to 3d mode. For general high cam tilt flying, i've been flying the Gemfan Hurricane 4" (4023) prop.

Some flying. This edit is some high cam tilt flying at a park. I have some 3d footage that i'll be posting soonish. Stay Tuned