Well I finally got sick of the Mantis not fitting in the trunk of my Cadillac even though it fits in my wife's Scion xA. Also I've been jealous of the coaxial world for awhile now.
So I decided to turn our bird into an X8. We are using all four of the Mantis arms and discarding the straight ones. Which is great for filming. Our 14" props barely clear the Mantis arms on bottom.
Some friendly advice I learned the hard way:
- apparently it's important that all props spin the proper direction - who knew?
- also pretty important is that when I took the motors and turned them upside down, I also needed to flip those props over so that the leading edge was the flat edge.
Had several flights on a shoot today and she flew like a dream. Chewed up the wind without complaint and flight times were pretty close to what we had been getting. Maybe a minute off. Motors seem a bit hotter, but not bad. Overall a marked improvement over our hybrid flat octo which didn't seem to love wind gusts.
And best of all, she fits in my Caddy!