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Big Baby

 I used to think X8’s were kinda dumb, pointless, and complex, but then I made the Thicc and now I love them. Now I think they’re compact and powerful, and my CatDog motor mount design simplifies things and opens up a world of possibilities. I get the shakes if I haven’t designed a new frame in a few days so I sat down and started on a 3” X8, just because.

I couldn’t conceive of an actual raison d’etre for such a thing, so I just started it as a fun fly basher from the Island of Misfit Toys. An underslung battery would double as the landing gear, and a Hero would sit up top, centered between the motors. I showed some sketches to Gab, and of course he asked if it could be a cine rig. At first he wanted something using Ichy Jr.’s cam mount so he could have positive and negative tilt with unobstructed video, but that would force the props far apart, making the frame much bigger. If this thing’s almost the same size as Ichy Jr. then it really has no reason to exist.

So I suggested a Squirt-like configuration with the Hero and battery up top. This would make this thing palm-sized and differentiate it enough from a 5” cine rig. Time to start drawing.

The CatDog motor mount uses recesses in the arms to hide the screw heads, so that the arms can be a simple two piece design. On Thicc’s 8mm arms, there’s plenty of room for 4mm recesses to hide two screw heads. I wanted a 4mm baseplate here, so there wasn’t enough depth to hide two stacked screw heads.

I got around this by rotating the motors a little so the screw heads would nestle in the arms side by side. This provided the extra benefit of moving the motor wires slightly off center, allowing access to the screw holding on the motor mount.

One motor twists one way, the other motor the other way. Screw heads sit in there side by side.

The twist in the motor diverts the wires around that screw holding on the lower motor plate. Fahncy, yes?

Ideally I’d use 20x20 boards to make things really small, but after my adventures with Thicc I didn’t trust any FC with an octo but the Lumenier Lux7, which only has 8 motor ports in the 30x30 size. So I made the main body 36mm wide, which is the same spacing as Squirt, compatible with all of the million Squirt cam mount permutations. After that it was pretty straightforward.

Add landing gear and it’s almost done. Those GoPro tabs look HUGE on this little thing.

My carbon supplier was deep in a Coronavirus backlog so I contacted Mike ‘doingthedoings’ Hornfeck for some carbon. I ordered the carbon on Amazon and had it delivered to him, and I had the parts in hand 2 days later. Holy instant gratification.

I orderd Brotherhobby 1407 2800kv’s, Bardwell esc’s, and the aforementioned Lux7. The Bardwell esc’s were super wide and got too close to the props, so I put them in Thicc and used Thicc’s NewBee esc’s here. After that it was just lots and lots of soldering.

Given the tiny frame, a Caddx Vista would’ve been great but it was not in stock anywhere (damn you again virus). A regular Air Unit juuuust fits so I drew up cam and antenna mounts that double as wedges to hold the Air Unit. The cam’s really exposed, but I punted that problem down the line because I wanted to fly right away.

Kinda hard to see but those parts have cutouts that nestle the Air Unit.

If you’re wondering how to build an X8, start by wiring the first 4-in-1 normally. On the second esc, connect just the signal wires to the fc. I made a parallel battery harness for Thicc, but for here I just ran the battery leads to both 4-in-1’s.

Don’t judge my terrible soldering. It was super hard to get these big blobs heated through.

And that’s that! With a 1050 6s it’s 670 grams of concentrated fury, easily the densest rig I’ve ever seen.

Randy Slavin enjoys the wide angle lens on his iPhone 11. Looka that palm-sized baby!

I haven’t flown a racer in a while so I was pretty squirrelly on the corners. Other than my bad flying it felt a lot like a 5”, just super natural and fun.

I showed it to Nurk and he asked the perfect question. ‘Cool, but what’s it for?’ And then I remembered that he had a shoot a while back, where he had to fly through a tiny hole to the inside of an offshore oil rig, where he had to fly through tight spaces, right up to some human actors. The oil rig was an open structure, and it was incredibly windy inside. Squirt was just right for this application except for the windy part. So maybe this is Baby’s niche? That’s awfully…narrow. Whatever, we’ll persist with more testing.

8 props or GTFO.

Hey look, Nurk built one!