I wanted to put together a nighttime-friendly rig for Rampage, so I decided to dig out the Apex Evo frame that’s been collecting dust on my bench for a year. I knew I wanted to run a Caddx Polar Starlight, and so I ordered up some parts:
1: Apex Evo frame (on hand)
2: Caddx Vista w/Polar Starlight
3: VCI 2306 1850 motors (on hand)
4: Fettec G4 1.7 FC (on hand)
5: Fettec 45 amp ESC (on hand)
7: Flyhigh LEDs (on hand)
8: Woodchuck DJI Action 2 camera mount (on hand)
9: Tracer antenna verticle mount (on hand from Brain 3d)
10: Fettec spike absorber & capacitor (on hand)
I put the quad together, nothing special. I used the Apex plastic skids on the bottom, used two steel screws opposite one another per motor to save weight. All up, I came in at 634.5g… which was a shock
The LEDs were stickied on & I added zip ties to cinch them down to prevent movement from crashes
The new Evo camera plates are very interesting because they give a lot more freedom to mount the camera as you see fit. But since the actual plates are 3d printed, they have give to them, and it is easy to push stuff around in there — so this is not going to be a good basher. In fact, the more I studied it, the less I like them because they put accessibility to the masses (different cameras of different sizes) in front of durability. I don’t yet have enough time to test my theory on that, but I learned a hard lesson using the camera that I did because no matter how I mounted it, it was always sticking out beyond the slanted standoffs!]
And I paid the price…. diving a section of crane at Rampage, and going head first into the cross bar… video
If I were to do this all again I would’ve just gone with the O3 air unit, because looking at DoomRider’s rig…. the O3 fits in there perfectly, and it’s protected behind the standoffs.
Safe to say the frame is baller, but you need to choose your video system wisely.