My Favorite Martian. Not that I've had more than one, but that I've rebuilt this frame countless times. I finally settled on a design worth sharing. Awhile back when I got into the hobby, I wanted to build a rig for aerial photography. Unfortunately, I never succeeded in building a stable big rig. My Alien F450 frame wasn't stiff enough. And I discovered DJI was much better at aerial photography, so I picked up a Spark.

Although I still fly the F450 on occassion, it is more of a big, slow, shaky, freestyle bird. I used parts from the original F450 plan, such as the legs and gimbal, and found better success on my Martian II frame.

My first attempt had the gimbal upside down, on top. That lasted about 2 flights until a hard crash fried the gimbal board.

I rebuilt it with the gimbal below, with the legs from my F450 zip tied to the Martian arms.

The motors were the cheapest set of 4 I could find on eBay. They are surprisingly good value. The shafts are a little snug, so I had to drill out my props with a 13/64" bit. The triblade Racerstar props were what I had on hand. I am going to try some 6" bullnose to see if I get longer flight times.

The original Xiaomi Yi Action Camera was another eBay pickup. It fits the gimbal well because I can secure it with a tripod screw instead of a velcro strap. I installed the waffle script for Day mode, Superview (SuPoorView), Standard Colors, 35 Mbs.

Of course, posting this build would be pointless without flight video, so here you go. Enjoy!