It's now been five months of development, seven prototype revisions, 10 prototypes in all, and at long last, the Badger is ready for prime time! Pre-order is up now!
Here's the Promo video made with 2nd prototype, a new Promo will be shot with the production frame, as soon as the weather cooperates, lol.
The Honey Badger is a lasercut Delrin quad designed as a FPV "fighter jet" quad. The idea for this quad was to have a small, lightweight, "bash 'em up" quad that you could use to refine your flying skills without risking a $200 to $400 Gopro. Sure, I love filming great videos with the Gopro, but it would never of happened if I didn't have a little quad like this to refine my skills... flying around buildings, trees, into tight spaces or small openings... practicing flips, rolls, and other aerobatic craziness. I also like using this to test out new antennas and push my range. Instead of risking $1000 worth of aircraft, I have maybe $300 worth of gear on this quad.
Why Delrin? Because its very durable! I've crashed my prototypes over and over and they just keep going! On the 2nd prototype I did have an arm plate break. While one arm plate broke, the other flexed like gumby, then straightened back out. I've gotten to the point where if I'm in a hurry I don't even bother with a soft landing, I just come in and bash it into the ground. Honey badger don't care! The trick is to keep the mass low... if the aircraft is lightweight then there's less inertia to cause carnage in a crash. A quad designed to carry a gopro will need to account for the 3.7 ounces (with LayerLens) which means more powerful motors which will need a bigger heavier battery and a heavier frame... at that point you've got 3 to 4 pounds and crashes WILL cause carnage. Remove the gopro from the equation and you only have 2 to 3 ounces worth of fpv gear (camera, vtx, voltage osd) and you end up with a lightweight fighter jet that will have a better chance at surviving crashes.
The arms tab into the hub plates so tightly that you can hold up the frame by a single hub plate and the arms won't fall off. Also, one of my beta testers managed to get several flights out of his WITHOUT any screws in the hub plates, lol. He said that when it came apart it just tumbled down, nothing was broken and he had it back in the air (WITH screws) about 20 minutes later!
Other innovations include the vibration isolated fpv camera mount. By keeping the vibes out your CCD or CMOS camera sensor will also maintain a sharper focus, its also designed to keep vibrations out of your Video Transmitter which extends the life of the vTx and can prevent video interference issues due to vibration affecting the RF circuitry. The camera by itself isn't heavy enough, doesn't have enough mass to make the system work, so the mass of your vTx is added, which includes the weight of your antenna, plus a simple voltage OSD or TBS Core adds a bit more mass to it. In my experience, you need almost 3 ounces of weight on the mount to really get the most out of it, but if you intend to use a lightweight mini camera, and lightweight vtx, you may just want to skip the upper plate and Isolators, and simply hard mount everything.
Pricing as follows...
Complete Kit - $120
- Quad frame (4 arms)
- 2 extra arm plates and the standoffs screws to complete it (one whole arm)
- Standoffs
- 4-40 frame screws
- 5 rubber "landing gear" (one spare)
- Bamboo vibration isolation FPV mount
- L Allen wrench for frame screws
- 20 x M3 motor screws, button head black oxide
Replacement Parts
- Arm plates $6 per plate ($12 for an arm)
- Hub plates $15 each (upper or lower, same price - $30 for a set)
- Bamboo Camera Mount $15
Shipping
- Inside of the United States I know I can do USPS Priority with tracking for $7. As for getting it quicker, via UPS or Fedex or shipping International... I won't know until I try, so please work with me until I get a firm grasp of how expensive shipping is. So far I've been shipping in boxes, but considering that the kit is mostly flat pieces I think it could all go into a padded envelope just fine, and probably be a lot cheaper to ship.
How to buy? Head over to fpvmonkey.com or just click this http://www.fpvmonkey.com/the-honey-badger-quad-frame-kit/
Here's a link to the Development thread over at Fpvlab...
Thanks for your interest!
~Flying Monkey
