How To Lighten Your Phantom Immediate Results...

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You need to contact member here ElGuano - he's lighten his up so much you can nearly see through it.
 
You could always swiss cheese the shell- I'd like to see that- I had considered doing it, but didn't feel like figuring out where all the stress free zones were.
 
What are the results of this lightening? With the weight reduction you have managed have you had any measurable improvement in battery life or range or anything?
 
What are the results of this lightening? With the weight reduction you have managed have you had any measurable improvement in battery life or range or anything?
 
I think I may have one of the lighter Phantom's out there. It's by no means The Lightest, since one of the things I don't want to do is to weaken the structural integrity or be flying a block of swiss cheese around. But I've tried most of the tricks in the book and have attempted to come up with a few of my own.

My bare Phantom without battery or accessories is <590g. Fully loaded, with a 5200mah battery, gimbal, gopro, 600mw fpv, iOSD, and 9" props, it's under 1190g. I get flight times of max 20 minutes at 1290g using a 5400mah battery.The main benefit, by far, is increase in flight time. Figure you lose 1 second of flight for every gram you add to the airframe. That puts a 30g component in sharp relief.

A few of the mods I've done:
- Carbon fiber landing gear (-20g)
- Soldered my own dual-batteries (-20g)
- Carved the shell for the larger homemade battery (-7g)
- Shaved the Tarot gimbal armature and carbon fiber plate (-17g)
- Shaved the Phantom motherboard (-9g)
- USB cable delete (-8g)
- Replaced all wiring with 32awg thin-gauge wiring (-10g)
- Carbon fiber props (-12g)
- Low profile prop nuts (-4g)
- Naked PMU-V2 (-20g)
- Naked iOSD mini (-12g)
- Thinner gauge FPV cabling (-4g)
- Spin Phantom shell 180 degrees to help with COG (-0g)

I've gotten a max of 31 minutes airtime, running 5400mah and 8800mah (a bit of ridiculous testing). With 4400mah, I get 15-16 minutes, and with 5400mah I get 19-20 min. I'm waiting for some lightweight 5200mah batteries to come in so I can hopefully break 22 minutes.

It's nice to see others going the weight watchers plan as well, especially those doing it a different way than I went. I'm not a fan of removing screws or hard mounting points, because a lot of the torsional rigidity of the frame depends on the component mounting (mainboard, ESCs, etc.), nor do I prefer to cut tons of holes in parts (a lot of effort, little gain, looks ugly and freaks out trypophobes). I do like removing components from housings, eliminating heavy shielded wiring when possible, hard-mounting to the frame, and making more direct soldering or custom crimped connections. My goal is to have a long-flight Phantom that's as loaded as the next guy's, yet is stealth in appearance by staying as stock-looking as possible.
 
That is some seriously committed effort- all very shrewdly chosen. I have a small quad (xtreme eye one) I just finished doing an aftermarket frame swap on- I am now in the process of doing some of the assessment on how to save weight- I was impressed at how much using a naked Rx saved and moving things around to pay with cog- it carries the gopro like a champ and it looks like it shouldn't even lift it. I have so much fun flying it, I am seriously considering spending some money next winter on some special tiger motors which are much more powerful- I will have to move the flight controller to another frame as it mounts totally different, but the arm design makes it so I can get fpv footage with no props and no landing gear- and the camera doesn't hit the ground.
 
You've earned another 10 seconds of flight. If you're trying to save weight, get rid of that CAN bus connector and the cable to the OSD. That's at least another 15 seconds of flight!

osd-spare-wire.jpg
 
Why do you think DJI put those nuts and bolts there in the first place ? I have never heard anything so daft in all my life. Ok so you get a little bit more flight time. Have you crashed it yet ? I just wonder how your going to find all the pieces if it hits a tree. Your going to need several plastic bags to take it home so put them in your flight box.

I cannot argue with your absolute right to experiment with things like this but I just hope new pilots don't think this is a normal thing to do in this hobby.
 
Shrimpfarmer said:
I cannot argue with your absolute right to experiment with things like this but I just hope new pilots don't think this is a normal thing to do in this hobby.

I haven't met anyone I would classify as "normal" since I started this hobby! :lol: :lol: :lol:
 
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BigBadFun said:
Shrimpfarmer said:
I cannot argue with your absolute right to experiment with things like this but I just hope new pilots don't think this is a normal thing to do in this hobby.

I haven't met anyone I would classify as "normal" since I started this hobby! :lol: :lol: :lol:

Thats very true :lol:
 
Just use a single prop!
 
LiLPhantom said:
I use my machine every day, saving any weight I can is important, here is another 20 grams I deleted, no need for these landing gear cross members either...

Take the legs off all together and launch/land by hand.
Dont know where you would mount the compass though...........
 
rtqblk.jpg


You could remove the three strips of plastic on each side of the vents. You could also remove the four plastic light covers.
 
Shrimpfarmer said:
Have you crashed it yet ? I just wonder how your going to find all the pieces if it hits a tree. Your going to need several plastic bags to take it home so put them in your flight box.

This is what happens if you crash into a tree (at high speed), and several instances of the ground with only 4 screws (the deep ones next to landing gear) holding the Phantom's body together.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6qGJ_NBFC0[/youtube]

Absolutely nothing :shock: They are very robust and resilient machines ;)

Edit: Also, i'm not trying to save weight, especially not with just removing screws, but I am very lazy and have been only using those 4 screws for a while as I was opening the Phantom up a lot recently.
 
Captain, hull integrity is down by 85%, reroute forward phaser banks to shield.
 
It's always far easier and more profitable to reduce aircraft weight than adding Horsepower. I have often thought of drilling out my top and lower body to reduce weight. To be sure, for the ****, there are some remarkable weight loss opportunities.
 
Take the legs off all together and launch/land by hand.
Dont know where you would mount the compass though...........
done it, although i just land in the grass. You can buy an aftermarket bracket for the compass

IMG_4266_zpsh161gwpw.jpg
 
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