I built my first quad from scratch. It's based on the ArduCopter. I used aluminium towel rods for the arms and some sixteenth inch aluminium plate for the support and sixteenth by half inch strips for landing gear. The motors are A2217-9 950Kv, APC 10 x 4.7 props, Hobby Wing 18A ESCs, Hyperion 4000mAh 3s lipo, and an APM 2.0. The total weight is at 1449 grams.
Above is a picture of the quad before I hooked everything up. The ESCs are wire-tied to each arm and the battery is strapped to the bottom of the platform. I also have a plastic food storage tub that I strap over the APM for protection when I fly.
I've flown fixed wing and mini helicopters but I've never flown a quad before so I was a little nervous. My flying location is 7200 feet above sea level so I wasn't sure what to expect with respect to power and response but there were no problems at all. I followed the "first flights" documentation and flew many short, low altitude flights to get a feel for flying. I had to pitch backwards a little to hold in place so I need to do some tuning. The pitch wasn't so bad I wanted to stop flying to tune so I kept going. I hit the throttle a little to much and the quad zoomed skyward to 80 or 90 feet. It then drifted between the sun and my eyes. The next thing I did was panic and cut the throttle. That resulted in the quad dropping out of the sun and sky at an alarming rate. About 20 feet from the ground I added throttle. I was successful in slowing the decent to the point where I thought I could land successfully. I was still a little nervous from the prior happenings and when I landed, the quad was moving sideways faster than I thought and the left two landing gear touched the ground and the quad flipped over and one of the props busted. I didn't follow all of the advice in the documentation and did not purchase extra props so I'm grounded for a few days. Even with the bad landing and busted prop, it was a very good experience for my first flights. The APM 2.0 performed flawlessly. The hardware and software are amazing.
