NZ frame Karearea (predatory bird from NZ) Talon SVX220.

I made another frame that was designed to be light and aerodynamically slippery which was great in a straight line but was an unruly mess in the corners as it wanted to drift constantly making it hard to fly with any consistency. At first I thought it might be the underslung battery design, but my WarpHelix frame didn't exhibit this behaviour, it felt far more neutral and I came to wondering if the fairings were aiding it the corners preventing it drifting outwards as that also is an underslung battery design; so when this popped up I figured I would give a vertical armed frame a test run to test the theory some more.

I haven't had much flight time with this yet unfortunately as the past few weeks mates and I have been flying acrobatics through trees (this really isn't the frame for that sort of flying) rather than setting up a track; what I have flown however have shown that this frame feels very 'direct'. You point it in the direction you want to go, and it goes. I believe having some verticality to the arms seems to produce some latitudinal drag, rather than drift outward it seems to bite into the air. It takes some adjusting to get used to as you usually fly expecting to counter some drift but this frame seems to really dig in through corners like it's on rails.

Not the lightest of frames compared to the some of the more anaemic frames out there right now, but building a frame with vertical arms requires very fine tolerances and some inventive ways to get the arms to mounts to the body so an ultralight weight vertical armed frame seems a tall order. However, this came in at 306g using not insignificant sized motors (2207) with heavy props (Dal Cyclone 5050) and full size camera. A change in props and a Micro camera will easily get under 300g which is hardly a heavy quad.

Kudos goes to Karearea for this design; excellent tolerances, strong materials and a really nice feeling quad over all. For track work, I don't think I would go back to something without some verticality in the arms. The Talon is razer sharp in corners while my WarpHelix build is less direct but very neutral; both feel great around a track but I feel like the Talon in the right hands would be a real weapon.