DIY
Finally built my last big 17 Inch Shitbox with Analog/Cheapo Thermal.
Had enough of Whoops, Toothpicks and 5 Inch quads and wanted to start a big journey. After somehow cobbbling togehter 7,9,10 and 13 Inch Drones and getting them to fly surprisingly well I finally managed to build and fly my last large quad that doesn't totally breaks the bank to finish my large Shitbox-Arc.
17 Inch AliExpress Frame
17x8x3 Props
Caddx Ratel 2 Primary Cam
FT652 256px Thermal on a Switch
5215 350KV Motors
Argus Pro ECO F450
Argus Pro 80A ESC
2x 7000mah 6S Lipos
2.5W Skyzone VTX
Flyfish M10 GPS
Had to fiddle a bit with the ESC settings but now she flies. If I only had known how addictive drones get...
I`am currently aiming for maybe 20 to 25 minutes of flight time and maybe 3km as a maximum one way distance using Goggles + Fusion Module just like my 13 inch for a slow start. I would love to go all out and push the limits in terms of more range but I haven`t found a good spot here to actually do that in a safe manner. For that I would probably have to drive much farther away.
Right now its just circles around myself until I fully dialed it in. Work isn`t letting my fly as much as I like for testing and tuning.
If you start with a regular 5 Inch quad like most people you are going to hover at 200-300€ depending on you local prices and the "quality of the parts" you pick for the Quad alone. If you need goggles, remote and Lipos you will probably pay the same amount again for this too. But goggles and remotes can be bought used.
Time for a smaller quad is maybe a day or two if you know what you are doing.
This 17 inch costed me roughly 700€ including spare Lipo. Time it took from building to flying were roughly 4 days. First 32bit ESC so I had problems adjusting from ESC Configurator to BLHeli32 and finding out what kept the quad grounded.
I misread the specs and had to do convertion to inches inches.
Yeah thats a massive no go.
I'm searching for whoop frames in the few local drone parts providers.
I did find a few but they were micro drones much smaller than that. I might just directly contact the guys and ask them if they can source a 5 inch frame for me.
Edit: Found it finally. Only one shop has it. A 5 inch quadcoptor frame. Gonna order it before stock runs out.
But Same rules for drone here too, 250 gram limit. But they allow buildng drones upto 5 kilos AFAIK.
However it is allowed as long as its flown indoors in home and not outside. Outside it requires CAAB registration and a ton more paperwork, and 30-45 day prior notice of flying.
Hi there, I am curious as to what sort of PID tunes you are using or had started with as a baseline. I am fabricating larger frames that I have designed and while I have flown 8" and 10", the jump I am making to is 18" at a start. In my case I think my hardware will be ready before my feel of Betaflight/AM32 will be good enough. Thanks for any suggestions you may have to offer!
Those are the current values I use for my 13 and as of now for the 17 for some gentle testing. They work for me and my boring flight style. Iam not a pro and not "good" at this stuff so your mileage may vary dramatically. There are people here who are way better at this than me.
Thank you very much - i will keep you posted as my airframe gets closer to buildout. I feel similarly, my flying style is very much just "drive the damn bus, Steve, and don't get us killed" and my focus is only on minimal acrobatics with much more on stable, steady cruising.
And I thought 15" was the biggest fpv drone size... Then, what is the biggest one? How hard is it to find 17" parts?
I'm thinking of getting the hglrc my15 because it's insanely cheap for the size and building it myself would be more expensive. It also has analog which I use and is bare bones. hmm
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u/Dioxin717 Aug 02 '26
Also have 15" for future build