I am new to this hobby. I have a few BNFs but this is my first build...the gold accents on the motors and the red TPU parts reminded my of Iron Man...hence - Mark I. I wanted to build something for long range. I was inspired by Scott Tomlinson's BlackOpalUL6. Originally I was going to use his frame parts as a point of departure for my custom design. However, I stumbled across the TBS Source One v4 and it was so cheap I decided to start with it. I cut the top and bottom plates down. The picture of the CAD model is close to what I ended up with. I ended up having to leave a little more material on the aft end of the bottom plate to have a feature to secure the battery strap. I had to lengthen the motor mounting slots on each arms because these motors are on a 12mm diameter hole pattern. I installed M2 brass threaded inserts into the arms to receive the screws that secure the FC/ESC stack. The motor wires were too short for this 7" frame so I had to use the race wires - probably not a bad idea since this is my first build and I am likely to have a few hard landings (read, "crashes") as I work out the tuning :-) I mounted the Caddx Vista to the underside of the top plate by replacing the factory 1.6mm screws with longer ones. I will probably tweak the designs for the top and rear TPU parts and reprint. Things got a little crowded in the rear because I didn't really have a good plan for how I was going to route the battery cable, position the capacitor, and manage the rat's nest of wiring. I worked all this out in a stream of consciousness. Also, the iFlight beacon/buzzer has to be disarmed by pressing a button each time the battery is disconnected. If I don't end up swapping this for a different option I will add a little access hole/guide to press the button with an allen wrench without having to remove the 'hood'. Also, the hood idea is just what resulted from trying to design something to hold the GPS/compass, the beacon/buzzer, the Vista antenna, and the GoPro. I was also trying to elevate the GPS/compass to hopefully get more satellites and minimize magnetic interference. I am running iNav 5.1. I might upgrade to 6.0 soon for a couple reasons. I want to map a Tx pin to a User mode to start/stop GoPro recording. I am also disappointed at the OSD. I'm running the FPV.WTF root hack but I don't like that I can't move the OSD elements to the edges of the screen. From what I have read, I think both of the issues are addressed in iNav 6.0. I have not flown it yet so fingers crossed that the stock tune is forgiving.

Just had my maiden flight. I had a couple rough take-off attempts. It felt very different than my other quads. My thrid attempt yielded success! I flew for over 33 minutes. Nothing too taxing....kept it low to the ground and stayed around the neighborhood. I flew very smooth and quiet. The pack shown in the pictures is a Full Send 4000mah 6s Li-ion. When the mah gauge got to just under 2700 I noticed it took more throttle to hover. And about as quick as I noticed it - it seemed like it just floated to the ground. I was watching the voltage for most of the flight and it was holding around 3.5V/cell forever. I thought it was going to fly for a while longer but it dropped off very quickly. I never noticed any warnings (low battery or otherwise) in my OSD. I will need to look into that. I have some new batteries ordered and I will update this post once I have some data to share.

5/15/23 Update: I've made some significant changes to this bird. I swapped in the DJI O3 system and removed the option to mount a GoPro. I'm going to see if the O3 4K recording is a suitable replacement for a GoPro. I also designed in a servo tilt to dynamically dial in the angle for the speeds I'm flying. I switched away from iNav to Betaflight 4.4 since it claims to have decent RTH function. The OSD for the O3 looked terrible in iNav. I like the HD look of the WTFOS with custom fonts. Hoping to fly this weekend to do some tuning and see how the footage turns out.