If you’re not aware of DroneCo Productions, it’s a guy in the States called Chris Teal that produces the ‘Slammed’ version of the Shendrones Squirt. Essentially he designs pretty nice looking carbon frames, mainly cinewhoops in a variety of sizes, and also some fancy looking TPU ducts/guards to go with them. https://www.dronecoproductions.com/
I was looking at the Slammed Squirt but can’t really justify buying/building yet another drone at the moment. I have a 2.5" BetaFPV Beta 95X V3 which is kinda fun but I’ve never really been 100% happy with it. Mounting my Runcam 5 on it is really tricky - it has a (very) soft mount camera attachment system that wobbles everywhere and no doubt causes the flight controller no end of stability problems. The frame is mostly plastic and getting to the innards is a pain in the arse, nasty little self-tapping screws into soft plastic everywhere. The battery mounting area is pretty dumb and severely limits the size and shape of batteries that can be fitted. It’s also noisy as hell, especially once you put the 50g Runcam 5 on it which requires a lot of throttle to get off the ground - I know all drones can be a bit noisy but this thing is deafening and I really have to think carefully about where and when to fly it.
I spotted the Snapshot frame, joined the FB owners group for that model and saw lots of people that had successfully migrated everything from the 95X (and also the GepRC Cinelog 25) over to the Snapshot. For $30 it seemed worth a go, delivery from the States only took a couple of weeks.
It’s a simple little frame and can be built as a pusher or traditional tractor. I went for the pusher setup. Neat little frame and very easy to work on. I opted to 3D print my own parts rather than pay an extra $20-30 to have them supplied. They came out pretty well.
The camera mount up front is my own 15-degree ‘couch’ design. A bit clunky at the moment as it’s only a proof of concept, I’ll slim it out a little and make a few minor changes and print another soon.
The ‘build’ was a piece of cake as everything just moved straight over from frame to frame.
More TK…
I’d heard the frame was a bit more efficient, but that’s quite a difference! Anyway, changed my throttle expo midpoint via the OSD to 20 and suddenly it was super smooth and easy to maintain a steady height at low altitude.
