u/potatocat

While this looks like a very impractical build... it flies surprisingly well. Some recent footage is here: https://youtu.be/cVCqbOj_ATM I just wanted to show everyone my upgraded boner, flopping around in a public space.

It originally had 1303 5000KV motors and 3" biblade props. I have upgraded to 1404 3750KV and 3.5" for some more oomph. Battery as pictured are 1000mAH 4S Gaoneng LiHVs. This thing is 218g AUW and it gets great endurance. I have been just having fun cruising around with it and doing thing I never would have tried before, like cruising inside tree canopies and just getting really close to foliage in general.

Inspired by the custom cases I have been seeing on here, I decided to take a different tack and go retro with a tin that I found which happens to fit my custom "sub125g" X8 drone... and printed up a silly little label for it.

After the initial successful maiden flights of my original Sub125g X8 drone "Sukkuri" I built up another one, but with the DJI O4 camera onboard. I hope to take this on a maiden flight maybe as soon as tomorrow morning before work.

Why Sub125g? Just for the hell of it, because I wanted to see how small I could shrink an X8 drone. There is a picture of Sukkuri sitting next to a 5" propeller to show how tiny it is. Sukkuri clocks in at 65g in dry weight without battery, and this DJI drone also features larger 20x20mm ESCs compared with the 16x16mm ones in Sukkuri, so its unloaded dry weight is 75g.

Why another 125g drone? I am testing a different formulation of carbon fiber and wanted to highlight how this frame can accept both 16x16mm or 20x20mm stacks.

It features the same setup as Sukkuri, with eight 0703 16000KV motors, 850-1100mAH 2S LiHV packs, and 40mm biblade propellers. An older video of Sukkuri's maiden flight can be seen here https://youtu.be/fw_dy3eYHOM - Thanks for reading!

I think its time for me to join in on the bone drone fun. I have no idea what to optimize against or whatnot so I'm just going to jump in blind. The intent is to try out these 1303 5000KV motors first and see if they hold up with 3-3.5" biblades and 4S. The frame is something I slapped together quickly in CNC and cut from some scrap of 3mm carbon fiber plate that was left on my spoilboard. Anyone who has tuned/setup a bone drone, please chime in if you can... Here goes!

WORK IN PROGRESS and well... something small is going on here. I'm not going to argue with the bees with their latest project. Bees have been around about 120 million years or so and they seem to know a thing or two about flight. To put size and weight in perspective, the second larger drone is Smuklik, a sub250g X8 that is fully functional and flying as can be seen here https://youtu.be/3Pi6BCx1u5k

I got rained out this morning, and had a bunch of things to do today so no time to fly unfortunately. But this little sub250 gram drone is ready to fly...

Pictured are two configurations - mode "a" with a 1000mAH 4S pack and no action cam, clocking in at 239g, and mode "b" with the smaller 850mAH 4S pack and a RunCam Thumb Pro at just a bit over 226g.

Eight 1103 8500KV motors are setup, and while I would have preferred 5000KV motors I will use these for now with power output limiting so Betaflight treats them as "fake" 5100KV motors. We will see how it flies. The intent is to get reasonable, no-compromise performance out of this drone and not have it be a novelty build.

The current props installed are 2.5" triblades, and I am going to try both these and 2.0" triblades along with some biblades just for the heck of it.

For some reason I have noticed some people think X8s can only get like 2 minutes of flight on them. I get on average 9-11 minutes of cruise time and 5-6 minutes of freestyle power on the other recent X8s that I have built. I am trying to get the same kind of flight time on this using the 1000mAH LiHV pack. Hopefully if I get some time this week I can get some proper flight time up and see how it goes.

This is Smuklik... a Sub250 gram drone, and yes while there are a lot of those- I have not seen too many Sub250 gram X8 (octomotor) drones. This is a work in progress and everything on the scale including prop screws and other fasteners for the top plate (which I have not machined yet) are there. Its not clearly visible, but a sheet of carbon fiber plate scrap that is more than double the thickness of what I plan on machining out is also on the scale to act as dummy weight.

Pictured are two battery options- a "heavy" pack which I plan on running all the time, a Gaoneng 1000mAH 4S but also allows me to comfortably make weight, and a smaller lightweight 850mAH 4S that lets me go way under the 249 gram point even more. So by flying the 1000mAH pack, the point is to have a fully functional drone and not one that barely makes weight and needs to fly on a "vanity" pack just to prove it can make weight.

I am not too sure I can maiden fly this weekend or not as I have a pretty busy week. But we will see. A lot of people I know said that this build simply could not have been done.

Some specs:

• Motors - eight 1103 8500KV motors. I would have preferred 5000kV but I will give these a try with throttle limiting. They have served well in 2" quads on 4S so with these there is more headroom and I have the flexibility to try other props that will make them run better.
• Battery - The two options, previously mentioned of 850mAH 4S and 1000mAH 4S Gaoneng packs.
• ESC - Dual JHEMCU EM40-A 20x20
• FC - Sequre H743 V2 20x20
• VTX - Walksnail Avatar Lite
• Props - Pictured are 3" biblades but I will be trying a variety of other props like 2.5" biblade, and 2.5" triblade, but even the 2" triblades that I had been running with these motors previously.

Thanks for reading!

The Sub250 gram X8 drone project requires custom routed carbon fiber plate and this is the final piece of tooling in their workshop that was missing, granting them the ability to manufacture their own designs into natively strong material. They told me there will be a few more test passes along with bed alignment runs, and with a ball-point pen tip. Pending final verification and acceptance they will then begin machining carbon fiber plate prototype parts.

Then they will need my help to move it into the garage where there is proper ventilation, dust collection, and some more open space for them to work. They have opted for a simple dry pickup via spindle shoe, combined with compressed air vortex pushing/cooling, instead of a more complex wet bed setup. This router is a bit too small for a wet bed anyhow.

Yes, I built another one of these small X8s. Last week I completed "PC LOAD LETTER" linked here (https://www.reddit.com/r/fpv/comments/1vbqn7f/35\_x8\_pc\_load\_letter\_completed/) - Video of it flying can be seen here (https://youtu.be/fF7FqDmLERc)

First off, the hardware specs:

• Motors- eight 1404 3800KV LANNRC generics - and they work well
• Props - Gemfan 3020 3" triblades
• Battery - Ovonic 1550mAH 4S and similar packs - also flies well with 1300mAH 6S
• FC - RadioLink F722, Dual JHEMCU EM40-A 20mm ESCs
• VTX - DJI O4 Pro
• The RunCam Thumb2 was used mainly to capture sound
• Flight times: 8-12 minutes of cruising, 6 minutes of hard running

I started off with a HGLRC Rekon 5 Lite frame and chopped it down to give me a 151mm wheelbase, drilling out key holes for it. I then machined out a set of eight acetal discs for the motor mounts, and mounted up eight 1404 3800KV motors, which then had the discs mount to each other, similar to what I did with "PC LOAD LETTER". Anyhow thanks for viewing and I hope you get a kick out of this. I am taking a stab at a Sub250g X8 next...

This is "PC LOAD LETTER" and its a 3.5" prop X8 using eight 1606 2750KV motors. Its setup to cruise and do light freestyle. Its just a whole lot of fun to fly and about the smallest I would build an X8 without suffering some sort of operational compromises. This is some video of it in flight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjRCOJlTjko

I blame u/ImaginaryEffective63 for giving me this idea in https://www.reddit.com/r/fpv/comments/1ut8eyn/something_stupid_6s_3inch_x8/

What you are seeing here is the first of three arms setup with 1606 2750KV motors on a 5" racing frame to allow me to run 4S or 6S. I will likely run 6S most of the time. The props I have fitted are 3.5" and work great on another drone of the same frame with the same motors on 4S.

While I do fly X8s, they are usually 5" and 8" and I love them for how loud they are and their generally fun disposition. I guess they are like the equivalent of Harleys in the FPV world. I can't wait to hear how loud this little bugger will get...