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I had some 'free' time yesterday afternoon after work and thought I'd try stick together a tiny octo with old parts lying around in the SteadiDrone workshop. I had the following:

Old DW 8 airframe
VERY old 30A cobtrollers, with covering removed and all wires missing
Apm2.5 (SteadiDrone stock I stole :) )
OLD mediatek gps unit
scrap cut off silicon wire pieces
8 x Tiger motors (new also stock, going to get in trouble)
some perspex sheeting
odds and ends
old 13" props

As most of our builds and RTF orders are pretty big octos, I wanted to make a small fun octo, so I took the DW airframe chopped the arms (much) shorter, resoldered the 30A controllers and tested them all (they all worked!) while I was solding and testing I stuck the APM2.5 on and loaded new fw 2.7.3. put the airframe together with motors, modified the very long 13" props to about 8 or 9" to fit the small frame, stuck all the ESC on the frame, did a quick PD loom, as we usually do (no PDB), after the apm was done loading stuch that ons some sponge, glues it all together, did a quick autocad design for top abd bottom ESC dome, stuck it in the cnc and cut the two domes, stuck that on the frame, ran the initial setup, all PID's default except the Rate P which I made 0.125 instead of 0.175 (8 motors not 4, so more power)

Then flew her!, ultra smooth and very fun! Here's some pics of the afternoon project, in total it took maybe 2 or 3 hours (no idea was having too much fun) But this shows what can be done with old parts, but MORE inportantly how quick and easy it is getting Arducopter/APM up and running, LOVE IT!