MicroFD = Micro Flying Disc
I'm a fan of flying discs, as demonstrated by my ETFD2 and MiniFD. After getting a Turnigy Micro-X Quad-Copter, the first thing I thought of was to attach a foam disc, and so was born the MicroFD.
The disc is 7.1 inches in diameter and made from 3mm depron foam.
The openings are 65mm in diameter; the motors are about 102mm
apart diagonally and 72.25mm apart sideways. I took the design for the MiniFD disc and scaled it down -- see here for the PDF file, which can be printed and attached to the foam with double-sided tape. (When printing, set "Page Scaling" to "None".) Then simply cut
along the lines to create the frame. (The outermost circles on
the openings are the ones to
cut along.)
The 3mm depron is very light stuff. It will tend to crack if you crash it hard, but can be repaired with foam-safe CA. You should also use accelerator. One source for the foam is rcfoam.com, here. Some hobby shops may also stock it.
The Turnigy Micro-X Quad-Copter
comes as a kit that is built by soldering on the motor wires and
mounting the motors in their holders (they are held in by
friction). It comes with a bit of carbon-fiber rod that is used
to secure the tabs on the top of the landing gear. See here for the discussion thread on rcgroups.com;
it has a lot of information. Apparently the motor wiring shown on
the HobbyKing site is incorrect; the picture below from the rcgroups
thread shows the correct wiring:
The board has a MultiWii (doc)
controller and an integrated DSM2 receiver. Rcgroups user Goebish
has posted a customized firmware that works really well with this
quad: Multiwii 2.3 tweaked for the Hobbyking Micro X
Using a Spektrum DX6i transmitter, I reversed the rudder channel and
increased the travel adjust on throttle and rudder to 125%. With
the Goebish firmware the default seems to be to have the props always
spinning when the quad is armed. To disable this you need to
change the MINTHROTTLE setting on the MultiWii Conf GUI from 1050 to
1000.
For replacement props, the Walkera QR Ladybird Z-01 Props are slightly
shorter than the originals (55.7mm vs. 59mm) but I've found that they
fly great; lots of lift. They can found on Amazon, eBay and elsewhere.
The quad has very stable flight with little drift once the auto-level is trimmed. See here and here and directions on auto-level trimming. The flight modes "angle" and "horizon" work quite well.
I attached the foam disc using small pieces of 4mm peel-n-stick foam and small pieces of blenderm tape. The blue fins on the back help with orientation (colored via magic marker).
I hold the battery on with a couple of rubber bands:
Weight without battery is 23g (0.8oz).
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