Potential race rig for me for the 2022 season - yeah, it's weird, but hear me out on this!

Took some time out from racing this year mainly due to Covid restrictions plus a lack of practice, didn't feel worth the effort to trek to events. As a result, I spent more time just flying for the pure fun of it. My weapon of choice for these sessions was a prototype aerial video quad, with HD cam below the FPV cam. Whilst I designed it for aerial video stuff, it turned out to be just great for everything, and once we started getting the gates out again in local meetups I was really surprised with how well it got around a track. As a result, I started thinking about a more race focussed version. I'm under no illusions about my skill level, and figured hey - may as well run a HD camera on race day for the footage, I'm really not gonna see the benefit of the saved grams of weight when it comes to my finishing position in most cases.

The result is this weird beasty. Keeping the HD camera down low seems to lower the inertia in rolls, most of the mass of the quad is centred around the axis of rotation, that's the theory anyway. It's got a decent amount of protection for the electronics, with TPU side skirts which should hopefully keep the worst of the muck out of the stack - they work nicely with a 20x20 stack. The quad can be built with a 30x30 stack, but it's extremely squished and probably not worth the hassle. Can't fit the side skirts either.

Hopefully once the weather here clears up I can get it in the air proper - cautiously optimistic that it could be a good setup for my racing next year if it flies like it should.