Like Hevi, this one started when two people simultaneously got in touch and asked for a 2” X8. I was initially reticent but Jack O’Hara told me he was able to successfully remap a 20x20 Kakute for X8, and Charles Rinfret was able to do the same with a 16x16 Tiny Talon F7. Sub 250 naked hero X8 here we come.

With a 2 or 2.5mm base plate there isn’t enough thickness to mill the plate halfway to hide the screw heads, so there’ll have to be motor mount plates above and below. On Big Baby I rotated the motors slightly off center so they could be mounted with all four screws nestled side by side.

With this smaller frame I thought we could get away with using just two screws per motor, simplifying the motor mount/arm layout.

With that sorted it was pretty simple. I added lots of 20x20 and 16x16 mounting points just to be safe.

The final eureka moment came when I realized that the frame wouldn’t need landing gear. 12xx motors are so vertically challenged that if we build it upside down the 25mm stack would be tall enough keep the props off the ground. Then we can put the cam and battery up top, closer to the prop line and balanced by the electronics below. This is going to be cool!

Charles got his cut locally while Jack and I waited for carbon from China. Charles was first to get in the air on 3s, but he smoked his electronics plugging in on 4s. I opted for 20x20 electronics and 4s. I kinda wanted to put a Caddx Vista in mine but it was just too big. I hadn’t built or flown analog in a while so it took a bit of relearning. Jack helped me with the CLI commands to remap the board.

resource LED_STRIP 1 NONE
resource I2C_SDA 1 NONE
resource MOTOR 7 D12
resource MOTOR 8 B07
timer B07 AF2
dma pin B07 0
save

Now that I’m an X8 fanatic (this is my fourth X8 build!) the rest of the wiring was pretty simple. The power leads are stripped in a way to tie the two 4in1’s together.

The first esc is plugged into the fc normally, while the second esc is connected only with its signal wires. I built it up normally, with the baseplate down on the bench, only to realize that the motors were switched side to side once the drone was flipped over. A quick remapping (swapping 1 and 3, 2 and 4, etc.) and that was sorted. As you can see I was super cavalier with the rest of the build, leaving the vtx antenna dangling.

Now, this little guy was originally designed for decased Heros, but Charles was able to fly a full Hero on 3s, so I took the lazy way out and put my 8 on it as is. And it flies just fine!

I had a failsafe at about 100 yards just before this (note cavalier rx antenna mounting above), so I kept it pretty close and tame, but you get the idea. It needed some extra pitch I to keep it from nosing up, and it still needs a tune, but Reelsteady Go saves everything.

Meanwhile, Jack got started on his build, and he managed to squeeze the Caddx in there, but only after some deep thought (his photo):

He filed down two standoffs and the fc, and fitted the fc between the two esc plugs.

I have so many prototypes going right now I’m a bit too distracted to figure out every last detail on this little guy, but if you have the slightest ingenuity and willingness to improvise you can work with this frame as is. So I’m releasing a small batch to get more feedback. Go here if you wanna give it a try.

Here’s Charles with a decased Hero. It’s the realization of his original request, a sub 250 rig that he can truly rip.