While at the park yesterday with my family I ran into a guy flying a Team Black Sheep quad. He had a crazy FPV setup and range extenders, saying he could get 7000 feet!
The TBS quad is basically the arms of a DJI Flamewheel 450, and a rectangular body. Interestingly, the frame plates contain much of the copter's wiring. See photo below:
I was EXTREMELY impressed with this quad and how stable it was. The winds at the park that day were high enough that I didn't even bring my Phantom. It would be vibrating and bouncing all over the place. His quad was absolutely solid, stable, smooth. The design is so different, and the gimbal not just "hanging" from the frame. The wide landing gear too pretty much assures no tipping over at landing and damaging props.
This made me think that my Phantom setup sucks and needs major tweaking, or that I should gut my phantom and use the Naza and other electronics to build a quad like this one. All I'd have to do to get started is by $24 F450 arms and $79 plates to get started.
The drawback I can see with this frame is that it would appear only a 2-axis gimbal is a possibility. Then again, the thing was so stable, I'm not sure the 3rd axis would even be necessary.
The TBS quad is basically the arms of a DJI Flamewheel 450, and a rectangular body. Interestingly, the frame plates contain much of the copter's wiring. See photo below:

I was EXTREMELY impressed with this quad and how stable it was. The winds at the park that day were high enough that I didn't even bring my Phantom. It would be vibrating and bouncing all over the place. His quad was absolutely solid, stable, smooth. The design is so different, and the gimbal not just "hanging" from the frame. The wide landing gear too pretty much assures no tipping over at landing and damaging props.
This made me think that my Phantom setup sucks and needs major tweaking, or that I should gut my phantom and use the Naza and other electronics to build a quad like this one. All I'd have to do to get started is by $24 F450 arms and $79 plates to get started.
The drawback I can see with this frame is that it would appear only a 2-axis gimbal is a possibility. Then again, the thing was so stable, I'm not sure the 3rd axis would even be necessary.