Vort-X FPV Racer

thingiverse

I recently had the opportunity to breathe new life into my old Immersion Vortex drone, which had taken quite a beating lately. The flight controller was being temperamental, refusing to save settings at all, while the video transmitter struggled to stay on channel. This made it virtually useless for FPV flights, forcing me to sideline it and focus on other quads in my fleet. As much as I loved the motor and ESCs from this particular Vortex drone, its FC and VTX woes left a bad taste. It wasn't until inspiration struck that things started looking up again. Why not take advantage of those same motors and ESCs to build an entirely new type of quadcopter? By repurposing my existing arms, I decided to design and 3D print a small center frame specifically for them. This baby would be dubbed the Vort-X. With some simple measurements, I whittled down each arm by about 15mm - right after the original joint hole - giving me 190mm lengths that perfectly matched up with 5" props. Given my limited 3D modeling skills, the design was a bit rough around the edges. But somehow it all seemed to work out okay! After printing in black ABS using a moderate 50% infill and supports, I carefully threaded 8 M3X25mm socket head screws through lock nuts to keep everything snug. The cover itself got some extra hold via 4 shorter M3X5mm button head screws. Since my primary VTX required visible access for changing channels and peeking at its status LEDs, I made sure to leave out back sections with tiny drill-and-cut-out holes on top. Fatshark's own 700tvl camera was a good fit within those boundaries - you may find room to cram others into place depending on the layout of your preferred FPV setup.