=== Let's Drone Out — Episode 522 ===
Title: LDO 522 - with Chris Rosser
Recorded: 2025-08-28
Hosts: Stephen "Belrik" Howell, Jack "Brightontillifly" Nash, Andrew "Frank" Hyams, Koel "Koala" Anderson
Guest(s): Chris Rosser
Total audience: 2,131
Platforms: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb7-eCinHyk); SoundCloud (http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/2162087088-letsdroneout-ldo-522-with-chris-rosser.mp3)
=====================================

Check Out Chris Rosser Online:
https://youtube.com/@chrisrosser?si=BmdrTiUZ2pol5D03
https://www.patreon.com/c/chris_rosser/home
https://www.aos-rc.com/

[0.24] Jack: Welcome. You're listening to Let's Drone Out. We are live. We are somehow still alive. And
[42.16] Jack: we are edited because of Stephen. Thank you, Stephen.
[47.24] Stephen: Thank you, audience. It wouldn't be worth anything if it were watching it. And thank
[51.16] Stephen: you to our extra special guest this week, Chris Rosser. Thanks for joining us, Chris.
[56.96] Jack: And the Lord and Master Andrew Frank, who has been sailing this ship for a very long
[66.44] Stephen: time. So we spend a long time on this show kind of discussing trends and the history of FPV and
[74.68] Stephen: flying. But I think amongst recent developments in FPV, and I say recent, meaning the last five
[81.08] Stephen: years, I think Chris has had an outsized impact as the designer of frames that don't just look
[87.08] Stephen: pretty or have cool names, but are actually designed by an engineer who cares how they fly,
[92.04] Stephen: which I think is fantastic and a long overdue array for Chris. So yeah, welcome to the show,
[98.12] Chris Rosser: Chris. And thanks for your work. Thanks, Stephen. Yeah, I don't know about named, named cool. I
[104.36] Chris Rosser: think I think I don't do so good on the naming front, but the frames fly good. So that's something
[109.08] Stephen: you can't tell what it's named when it's flying. So you can't tell if it's wobbling to pieces or
[113.32] Stephen: not. So yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah, I think previous to that, we had kind of a slew of
[121.93] Stephen: frames that basically tried to do what the apex did, but better. And they tried to do it by
[127.29] Stephen: changing things more or less at random. And some people like kebab FPV freely admit to just trying
[134.09] Stephen: stuff and seeing what happens. Whereas I think you seem to have driven, like finite element analysis
[140.41] Stephen: and structural analysis of frames and choice of materials due to their engineering properties
[145.77] Stephen: and things like that, into the hobby much more than anyone else. Where did you, where did you
[150.97] Stephen: start? And what were you flying when you got into this and thought, Oh, this won't do. Oh, what was
[155.85] Chris Rosser: I flying when I started? Oh, so I got into hobby flying like super cheap, just like from Ali Express,
[166.65] Chris Rosser: like ready to fly drones that would like fall to pieces immediately, often, often before you
[175.45] Chris Rosser: even take off and then like massive, massive rebuild and like retrofit to get them flying.
[182.09] Chris Rosser: My first like proper drone frame that I started to standardize on was actually the
[186.41] Chris Rosser: get past the Mark 5, which I think you can still buy. No, it was the Mark 4. It was the Mark 4
[194.17] Chris Rosser: that I started on, which, yeah, so I flew that for a while. And that was when I started to notice
[200.17] Chris Rosser: like vibration issues with some of the drones. Really noticeable with the seven inch arm version
[207.93] Stephen: of that frame. Right. For the five inches especially were quite lauded. They were,
[213.53] Stephen: it was meant to be quite a good frame at the time, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah. For the five inch,
[217.77] Chris Rosser: it was okay. But then they did a seven inch like arm for it. And that was just a disaster. Right.
[223.77] Stephen: Yeah. Because the trend back then was if you want a seven inch, just stick longer arms on it.
[228.25] Stephen: Obviously, it's just the arms that count. So just a long ride.
[231.93] Chris Rosser: Yeah, just stick longer arms on and like don't make them thicker or anything,
[235.53] Chris Rosser: because no, that would be bonkers.
[240.33] Stephen: Yes, crucially and possible. Mine requires some further engineering of the rest of the frame.
[245.69] Chris Rosser: God forbid that. I mean, yeah, absolutely. So yeah, this was like a get past the Mark
[253.37] Chris Rosser: for seven inch with five millimeter thick arms and it did not fly at all well. So that kind of
[260.73] Chris Rosser: got me into the vibration thing. And I did a few things trying to like fix that frame,
[264.89] Chris Rosser: trying to make it better. Didn't really get anywhere with just my random experimentation.
[272.09] Chris Rosser: And then my background is I'm actually like an analytical engineer, simulation engineer by
[277.69] Chris Rosser: training. So I was like, well, I should just, you know, make a model of this and do a finite
[284.73] Stephen: element analysis. And you say just make a model of this into a finite element analysis. This
[292.25] Stephen: apparently was something that you said as a throwaway comment, but people hadn't really
[298.01] Chris Rosser: done so far, even though they're in FPV, not FPV. No, but that was the sort of thing that I
[304.17] Chris Rosser: was doing for my day job for other types of products, looking at vibration and resonance in
[311.53] Chris Rosser: enclosures, motors, fans, that sort of thing. So for me, it was only just doing what I had
[322.33] Chris Rosser: always sort of been doing for work for the last few years before at least. So that was kind of
[329.21] Chris Rosser: how I got into it, starting to do these simulations and realizing what the problems were,
[335.77] Chris Rosser: why what I was trying wasn't fixing them. And then starting to think about, you know,
[342.81] Chris Rosser: well, these frames need to be better designed. And so being completely naive, I emailed a bunch
[348.01] Chris Rosser: of manufacturers saying your frames don't have good preparation. If you made these changes,
[353.85] Chris Rosser: they'd be much better. And surprisingly, no one replied. I didn't get any responses. And so I
[364.73] Chris Rosser: made like a couple of YouTube videos about doing these finite element analyses of the frames and
[370.17] Chris Rosser: showing the mode shapes and everything. And I got one of those comments, those constructive comments
[379.13] Chris Rosser: that you sometimes get on YouTube videos. You suck. Yeah, yeah. It's like, what if you think you
[386.01] Chris Rosser: know what you're doing? Why don't you design a frame? And I was like, challenge accepted, I guess.
[393.37] Chris Rosser: So that was the that was when I started to design the AOS 5V1 back in, I don't know,
[402.41] Chris Rosser: 2020 or something. So long time ago. And perfect for getting out flying during COVID.
[411.13] Chris Rosser: Yeah, yeah, it was yeah, flying flying during COVID was was tough. I flew quite a lot of tiny
[417.93] Chris Rosser: whoops during COVID around the flat. But yeah, so so that was the V1 frame. And that had, you know,
[428.09] Chris Rosser: really good vibration and resonance performance. But there was kind of that kind of just started
[436.33] Chris Rosser: me down the road of trying to do this for more frames and different frames and bigger frames and
[440.73] Chris Rosser: trying to improve the simulations and testing other people's frames. I did that for a while,
[446.41] Chris Rosser: kind of trying to understand the vibration and performance of that. And, and probably a couple
[452.01] Chris Rosser: of years ago now, I kind of really got all of the simulations and models dialed in. So that now I
[457.93] Chris Rosser: can pretty much predict the vibration performance of a frame design just by simulating it. I get
[467.29] Chris Rosser: within about one to 2% typically. It's got to be your point where you can almost just look at a
[472.81] Stephen: frame and be like, Oh, yes, we know what's going to go wrong with that. Or do you still get tripped
[477.61] Chris Rosser: up or there's still surprises thrown your way? So often you can just look at a frame and go,
[482.01] Chris Rosser: yeah, this is clearly going to be a problem because of something that the designer has
[488.01] Chris Rosser: not done or done wrong or whatever. So yeah, for a lot of frame designs, it's pretty easy to see
[493.13] Chris Rosser: what the problem is going to be. The nice thing about doing the simulations is that it's relatively
[500.17] Chris Rosser: quick and easy to simulate the vibration performance of a new frame design if you've got a CAD model
[504.73] Chris Rosser: of it. And so it's been really nice for quite a while now. I've just not really been tripped up
[513.93] Chris Rosser: when it comes to actually prototype testing of frames. So the frames when I fly them, I fly them
[521.05] Chris Rosser: and I take the black box log and I can sort of just match the resonance peaks in the log up
[528.17] Chris Rosser: against the simulation. And then as I say, within one or 2% and you just go, yeah, that behaves
[533.37] Chris Rosser: exactly as it should do. But obviously it took a year or two to get there. And mainly it's all
[542.41] Chris Rosser: about how you model the carbon fiber because it's a bit of a composite material. Yeah, it's just
[550.17] Chris Rosser: complicated. It's anisotropic. So you have to get that material model right and then
[558.33] Chris Rosser: make sure that in the simulation you have all of the fiber alignment as it's going to be in the
[563.53] Chris Rosser: final piece and then it works. But that just takes a bit of time to get there. And you have to be dead
[569.37] Stephen: confident that when they make the frame it's going to come out the same as you expect it, right?
[574.17] Stephen: Which isn't always the case. Notably there have been some weird cutting in the past, not with your
[578.89] Stephen: frames necessarily, but we've all seen some frames and wondered, why did they cut it like that?
[584.57] Chris Rosser: Yeah, so there can always be weird things with cutting. That I think has become less of a
[592.09] Chris Rosser: problem over time. I think as more and more drone companies have become much more confident with
[599.77] Chris Rosser: how you cut a frame. Before I would have to be really specific about, no, you have to cut the
[605.37] Chris Rosser: arm along this orientation, otherwise it will not work. But now it's like everyone's figured out
[612.49] Chris Rosser: that there's only one way you cut an arm. So when you send someone an arm, they know which way to
[616.97] Chris Rosser: cut it just by the look of it. How long do you reckon that's taken? Where would you say that
[623.05] Stephen: the peaks and the troughs have been in the industry? It feels like we're all kind of like
[627.45] Stephen: elder nerds in FPV at this point, but it hasn't always been that way, right?
[632.41] Chris Rosser: No, peaks and troughs. I think that we've been really spoiled with digital systems
[644.49] Chris Rosser: and how good the image quality is that you can get from a digital system. Occasionally I go back
[649.53] Chris Rosser: and I fly analog systems for testing or whatever. And yeah, you kind of get spoiled by the ease of
[656.65] Chris Rosser: use of walks now on DJI. So I would say that's been the transformative technology that I can
[664.57] Chris Rosser: always think of when I'm thinking of what's materially changed in FPV over the last,
[672.09] Stephen: what is it, six or seven years? Yeah, it stands out. We were just saying on the pre-show how
[678.17] Stephen: excited Chris is every time DJI releases a new product, which inevitably means a new camera form
[684.09] Chris Rosser: factor. That's it. Yeah, it's like DJI love to innovate. And the thing they love to innovate
[693.61] Chris Rosser: most on is how to mount a freaking camera in a drone. So yeah, that is every time, every time
[702.81] Chris Rosser: it's always a 20 millimeter camera for 19 millimeter frames, of course. Yeah, that was it.
[710.89] Chris Rosser: So everyone was using 19 millimeter. 19 millimeter was the standard and DJI released a 20 millimeter
[716.17] Chris Rosser: camera that would not fit in any 19 millimeter hard mounting, which is what everyone used.
[723.45] Chris Rosser: Everyone was hard mounting their cameras because that worked best for analog to hard mount it.
[729.29] Chris Rosser: Because you've got Jello if you soft mounted analog camera typically. Then after everyone
[735.77] Chris Rosser: had managed with the 20 millimeter, they then went obviously to 03 with a different mounting,
[742.41] Chris Rosser: the double screw and much lens array much further forward. And then, oh, this is the great thing
[747.85] Chris Rosser: about 03, they knew but neglected to tell anyone that it absolutely must be soft mounted.
[757.29] Chris Rosser: They knew this, the engineering team knew this, but when they released the camera, they were like,
[763.13] Chris Rosser: no, you just mount it in the same way that you mount the V1 camera, which was a hard mount,
[768.49] Chris Rosser: and it doesn't work. So that was fun to realize that, yeah, you can't hard mount that camera.
[779.29] Stephen: What comes down to the hard mounting with that camera then, because it's kind of the
[783.69] Stephen: opposite to what you were talking about with rolling shutter and Jello on
[788.65] Stephen: traditional FPV cameras, why does it need a hard mount?
[793.53] Chris Rosser: Well, so the older cameras did fine with a hard mount. And I think it was because of just the way
[800.01] Chris Rosser: they were constructed inside. Basically, you rigidly mounted the like sensor was rigidly
[805.53] Chris Rosser: mounted inside the body, which was rigidly mounted to the drone, which, you know, the vibrations from
[812.73] Chris Rosser: the motors are a high enough frequency that it wasn't going to cause Jello in the footage.
[816.09] Chris Rosser: And I think what changed with 03 was that the actual sensor board wasn't as rigidly fixed in
[825.05] Chris Rosser: the camera. And that meant that like the sensor board could vibrate within the like camera body.
[833.45] Chris Rosser: And if you hard mounted the camera into the frame, you would basically transmit the vibrations from
[839.21] Chris Rosser: the motors really effectively into the camera. And then the sensor board would wobble around
[843.85] Chris Rosser: inside the camera, and then it would look horrible and get Jello.
[847.45] Stephen: So was it OIS or EIS? I thought it was like technically supposed to be a kind of fixed
[854.17] Stephen: lens array and fixed sensor, but maybe it's not as fixed.
[857.13] Chris Rosser: Yeah, I don't know if it's a good question, whether it was like the electrical image
[861.61] Chris Rosser: stabilization that was doing it, but you would get the Jello even with the EIS off.
[869.59] Chris Rosser: But then you would get it, it would not always be on every camera.
[872.95] Chris Rosser: Some cameras were really badly affected, like some individual units were really badly affected,
[877.91] Chris Rosser: and others were less so, which made me think it was like a mechanical thing somehow.
[884.39] Chris Rosser: And definitely the camera board inside the 03 camera is not mounted in quite as rigid a way
[889.43] Chris Rosser: as like what we were typically seeing like an FPV camera. So like an analog FPV camera.
[894.55] Chris Rosser: So I don't know. Anyway, that caused all sorts of fun because then I had to and lots of other
[901.27] Chris Rosser: people had to redesign their camera mounts to include like TPU soft mounting to make the 03 work.
[909.67] Chris Rosser: And then 04 obviously is totally different again, so we just we keep going. But yeah,
[914.63] Chris Rosser: 05 I'm sure will be different.
[916.47] Stephen: So going forward, you like the front end, just modular, just, you know,
[921.03] Stephen: DJI are going to try and trip us up completely modular front end, fit whatever camera you want.
[926.23] Chris Rosser: Yeah, so that's what I've kind of tried to do with the V5 frames. They will fit an 04, an 03,
[932.79] Chris Rosser: a DJI V1, a 19 millimeter analog camera, everything from Cadex and walks now,
[941.35] Chris Rosser: HD0. So I've gone kind of I've gone pretty far with the with the kind of universality of that
[947.19] Stephen: camera cage. But then you've got to account for what DJI are going to do next time. And
[954.23] Stephen: can you say with any degree of certainty, they won't just be like, hmm, why do you have to be
[960.23] Stephen: rectangular?
[962.71] Chris Rosser: I guarantee the next camera will be wider than 20 millimeters. Yeah, I think. Because I think
[968.23] Chris Rosser: they'll try and cram a bigger sensor in it. And they cannot cram a bigger sensor into a 20
[973.11] Chris Rosser: millimeter wide form factor like on 04. They've pushed as far as they possibly can. Right. So
[978.39] Chris Rosser: yeah, I think I think they'll go they might go back to like the standard mini size cameras,
[981.99] Chris Rosser: which are like 22, weren't they? Yeah, that was the next size up 22. So they may do a 22.
[987.11] Jack: But it's pretty quick. Oh, my parabolic sensor. Yeah.
[993.75] Stephen: Rapid. I think I didn't know that people were pleasantly surprised it was square because
[999.91] Stephen: they were expecting some kind of oblate spheroid. At least the VTX mounting is sane, I suppose.
[1008.95] Chris Rosser: Yeah, actually, the 04 VTX mounting is a lot more sane than the 03.
[1015.51] Chris Rosser: But I mean, I guess I always just taped my 03 in. I never screwed it in. I just got, you know,
[1021.11] Chris Rosser: double sided VHB and just slapped it on the frame and it never came loose. So
[1026.95] Frank: one of the benefits of having frames that are predominantly cut out from plate carbon fiber,
[1034.63] Frank: I assume, is that you have, I imagine, toolpath setup costs, but you don't have
[1040.95] Frank: cooling costs in the same way you might have for like some kind of other mass production
[1045.91] Frank: technique of injection molding or something like that. You're not having to get whole
[1050.95] Chris Rosser: tooling blocks made up. Well, that's it. I mean, the thing about FPV and why it's kind of an
[1056.07] Chris Rosser: interesting market to serve is that it's like there's not huge volume on any of the sort of
[1063.11] Chris Rosser: FPV frames. So you've not got the volume that makes it worthwhile doing like a lot of tooling,
[1073.11] Chris Rosser: like custom tooling. And carbon fiber plate is relatively inexpensive and really high performance
[1081.99] Chris Rosser: for what we want to do. It's very light, it's very stiff and strong. It's very hard to do better
[1086.23] Chris Rosser: than it. I see more and more Chinese companies coming out, particularly on the smaller frames
[1091.19] Chris Rosser: with like machined aluminium plate, which is an interesting choice. It's heavier,
[1099.82] Chris Rosser: it's going to bend, but I guess not snap. So maybe that's kind of, I see people playing around with
[1106.3] Chris Rosser: different materials on the smaller sizes. Once you get up to like your five inch or seven inch size,
[1110.22] Chris Rosser: it's all carbon fiber plate. And I think it makes sense. There was a bit of a trend in the X-class,
[1118.22] Frank: the giant drone racing to have some aluminium tubes and things like that, just because when
[1123.42] Frank: you get to frames at 800, 900 mill across, you start feeling the pinch of the cost of the carbon fiber
[1131.74] Frank: extrusions. Particularly at the time, I don't know if it's got any cheaper for that sort of stuff
[1136.94] Frank: with the sort of wider drone market, maybe sort of expanding that. But definitely at the time,
[1144.62] Frank: aluminium tube was a big thing. Have you ever been tempted to look at some of the sort of size of
[1151.66] Chris Rosser: giant drone racing frame? Yeah. So lots of people have asked me for a 13 inch frame. It's on the
[1156.62] Chris Rosser: list of things I have to design at some point. So I don't know about, I guess I'm moving up towards
[1164.14] Chris Rosser: that kind of X-class size, but no one's asked me for like an X, like a beast class or an X-class
[1171.34] Chris Rosser: style frame yet. You have an ultra like 10, right? That's the largest one. Yeah, the UL10
[1181.02] Chris Rosser: and the UL10 Cine are the largest frames I've done. I mean, I've always been focused on the
[1191.5] Chris Rosser: hobby to like just getting into the kind of professional end of the market. And the whole
[1198.14] Chris Rosser: point of the UL10 and the UL10 Cine was like you can grab a, I mean, like a Sony CBE10, not two,
[1205.02] Chris Rosser: which will shoot 4k raw and slap that on a 10 inch drone and have something that will
[1211.26] Chris Rosser: embarrass a lot of cinelifters for a fraction of the cost. And that was sort of a whole point platform.
[1217.1] Chris Rosser: Semi-pro. Yeah, semi-pro. Or like, you know, can you get something that's like professional quality,
[1222.54] Stephen: but not professional price. You don't need an old terra, you're not lifting 30 kilo payloads
[1229.1] Chris Rosser: type of stuff. No, no, you're not even getting up to sort of the cost of like an X8 Sicario,
[1234.78] Chris Rosser: where you've got eight big motors and like more expensive ESCs and you're running like 12S and all
[1242.78] Chris Rosser: of this stuff that adds so much cost. With the UL10, you can put one together for
[1250.3] Chris Rosser: certainly under a thousand bucks, a thousand dollars US or like 750 pounds. And yeah,
[1257.1] Chris Rosser: and then you pay a similar amount for the camera. And then you've got something that shoots gorgeous
[1264.54] Chris Rosser: footage. And it's way, way, way better than like any GoPro. So that's kind of the, that was why
[1273.42] Chris Rosser: those kind of exist. But as you start getting up to the bigger sizes, like a 13 and 15 inch,
[1280.06] Chris Rosser: I mean, it's, it's kind of a different price point and it's moving away from like what,
[1285.66] Chris Rosser: like just your average market, your average pilot might aspire to. Like I think we could,
[1291.9] Chris Rosser: like any, any FPV pilot who loves flying like five inch drones could, could if they wanted to,
[1297.1] Chris Rosser: and they wanted to get really amazing footage, like aspire to like a UL10 with a, with a ZD10.
[1305.18] Stephen: It's the same technology set, isn't it? Like you can start racing minis and micros with
[1310.86] Stephen: beta flight. You can take that, you know, beta flight, you know, AM32, you can build a five
[1316.38] Stephen: inch, you can build a seven inch, you can probably take that up to a 10 inch, but you start going to
[1321.1] Stephen: like, you know, 14 inch and bigger. You want to learn autopilot, you want to think about connecting
[1326.78] Stephen: your ESCs via Canvas or something ludicrous. And it's just a whole other way of building and
[1331.9] Chris Rosser: maintaining. Yeah. And also like on the price point side of things, I mean, if you're looking at,
[1336.94] Chris Rosser: if you want to pick up like, like an ESC that will do a 10 inch drone, like you can pick up a whole
[1343.82] Chris Rosser: stack for like 120, 130 quid that will do like a eight S 10 inch. If you wanted to do like 13
[1356.78] Chris Rosser: inch or something, it's going to go up to like 300 quid just for the ESC. That's a lot. Yeah.
[1363.1] Frank: One of the reasons I asked about the X-LAS is because like, when I have seen the X-LAS frame,
[1370.3] Frank: you know, quads flying around, they have had some quite interesting noises to them.
[1377.74] Frank: I've always wondered, like, is that frame resonance? Is that just sort of because
[1382.78] Frank: tuning that sort of size board is a challenge? Is that aerodynamics? Like,
[1388.38] Frank: they have a very interesting whistle to them. It's a bit like the whistle on the Mustang or
[1394.54] Stephen: something like that. They burn out a lot, don't they? Due to resonance. They burn motors from
[1399.42] Frank: resonance. I mean, they, it seems like a very expensive hobby. There's a reason there's not,
[1405.18] Chris Rosser: there's not much of it going on, I think. Yeah. I can imagine that resonance on those bigger,
[1410.06] Chris Rosser: bigger drones gets to be a big issue. Especially if you're coming up from like a sort of an FPV
[1416.62] Chris Rosser: racing standpoint, like a five inch FPV that, and you're going up and then maybe you race seven inch
[1422.7] Chris Rosser: FPV and then you go, I'm going to build a beast class. Like, none of that prepares you skill set
[1430.46] Chris Rosser: wise for the challenges you're going to face with vibration resonance and filtering on a like 13 inch.
[1437.02] Chris Rosser: It's like, you can get up to like seven, eight, 10 inch if you've got a really well designed frame
[1446.46] Chris Rosser: and you don't need to worry too much. And once you get past 10, it starts getting really,
[1451.66] Chris Rosser: really difficult for like a powerful quad that you want to be responsive. I mean, once you get
[1456.38] Chris Rosser: up to sort of 13, 14, 15, 24 inch type props, like really big stuff. Again, you're mostly talking
[1462.86] Chris Rosser: RG pilot and they do not fly like an FPV. Like there's, they're not as responsive or anything.
[1470.86] Chris Rosser: You don't fly them like an FPV. They're all autonomous. And that's a very different ball
[1475.42] Chris Rosser: game. You know, you're talking about having like filters at like 20 Hertz. You'd have a filter at
[1481.9] Chris Rosser: you know, what the lowest filter might be like 75 or 20 Hertz. That's going to mean your quad is
[1488.7] Chris Rosser: considerably less responsive. Yeah, it's like flying in the creek or like you just, it doesn't
[1494.14] Chris Rosser: move. It doesn't, like there's noticeable lag on, on, on your sticks at that point. And it's not
[1502.7] Stephen: but these are separate parts really aren't they? You've got one part with the racers and you could
[1506.54] Stephen: argue a lot of Chris's frames are freestyle, not racing. And when you get up to X class and B class,
[1511.9] Stephen: there's a racing quads. Whereas what Chris is, is really providing freestyle quads, which when they
[1516.7] Stephen: get bigger, become closer to Cine quads, not racing quads. And there's a vast gulf between Cine and
[1522.62] Stephen: racing, you know, the racing stuff that they're trying to push them as they get larger. But I've
[1527.42] Stephen: seen a lot of the people, just to back off from the power and avoid burning stuff, they don't go
[1533.26] Stephen: full throttle on those rigs. And a lot of the Cine people, they're absolutely the other way. They're
[1538.7] Stephen: obsessed with tuning and they want the thing to fly like it's, you know, sliding over glass.
[1543.74] Chris Rosser: Yeah, that's exactly it. And so that's, that's certainly more the, yeah, I mean, as I said,
[1551.42] Chris Rosser: it's something that I could definitely look at, like beast class type stuff. But for the bigger,
[1555.42] Chris Rosser: like the UL10 and those, they are all Cine, Cine or long range frames. Just because that's what,
[1563.74] Chris Rosser: you know, if you, you know, why are you building a 10 inch, you're building a 10 inch either because
[1567.42] Chris Rosser: you want to carry a camera that is much better than a GoPro and is therefore bigger and heavier
[1572.22] Chris Rosser: than a GoPro and you need more prop and motor to carry it. Or you want something that's super
[1578.3] Chris Rosser: efficient and can fly for an hour, in which case, it's very hard to imagine freestyling
[1586.22] Chris Rosser: those big quads. Because I don't know about you guys, but after about five minutes of freestyle,
[1592.3] Chris Rosser: I'm knackered and I want to land and have a rest. It's very intense. But if you're flying long
[1598.14] Chris Rosser: range, if you're cruising long range, you can cruise long range for half an hour. It doesn't,
[1601.34] Chris Rosser: doesn't, you know, you don't get tired out. So yeah, it's just about the, like the actual effort
[1606.86] Frank: of flying, I think. I guess the other reason for your frames leaning towards the Cine side is
[1613.26] Frank: probably because of your specialization in the vibration side of things. And that's where
[1618.46] Frank: that's going to add extra value. Yeah. I mean, like it helps, it helps with certainly it helps
[1624.22] Chris Rosser: with the Cine side of things because everyone just wants as smooth as possible footage.
[1628.38] Chris Rosser: And so low vibration is, is the way to get that. And in racing, I think,
[1636.38] Chris Rosser: yeah, I mean, for five inch racing frames, I mean, they're so small. They're so compact now
[1643.98] Chris Rosser: that they don't typically have, and they, like vibration isn't a huge issue. Like they'll,
[1652.78] Chris Rosser: if there's a little bit of vibration in the footage, like it's not really going to be noticeable or
[1656.86] Chris Rosser: matter. Particularly like if you're using like an HD zero type system where the resolution is lower
[1662.78] Chris Rosser: and you can't even see it. So I think that's, it's just a different application. They care
[1669.5] Chris Rosser: about different things. I have designed a racing frame. Quite a few people fly it and like it a
[1675.1] Chris Rosser: lot. But it's, it's definitely a, the sort of vibration is not typically what racing pilots
[1683.34] Stephen: are thinking of when they choose a frame. Yeah. When you released your first frame,
[1689.5] Stephen: Chris, it flew really well. And I remember being able to push the kind of on beta flight master
[1695.82] Stephen: pit slider, put it up to like two, 200% pits and just thought, wow, this just goes exactly where
[1701.98] Stephen: it's instantly where I put the stick. You know, it was just perfect. I do fly quite gently,
[1707.34] Stephen: but, you know, cruising around like a Nana or a lot of the time. So I didn't break stuff,
[1711.42] Stephen: but people were breaking stuff. And I did notice that as you started revising, you started to
[1717.9] Stephen: include some kind of ease of life type features into frames rather than just being absolute
[1725.5] Stephen: flight performance. How, how did that evolve? And did that kind of lead itself into racing in any way?
[1731.5] Chris Rosser: Yeah. So it's sort of, yeah, it's the, the quality of life and what, what I've always
[1737.1] Chris Rosser: struggled with. And I think this, you know, we'll all, we'll all kind of have this feeling is that
[1740.38] Chris Rosser: when people are choosing a frame to buy, they want like the best flying lightest thing.
[1744.38] Chris Rosser: And then about three seconds after it breaks in a crash, you want the most durable thing.
[1755.58] Chris Rosser: So you should try and find the balance where you don't want to make something that's so big and
[1759.9] Chris Rosser: heavy that people are going to look at and go, why is, why is this frame 160 grams? And I don't
[1766.94] Chris Rosser: want to fly 160 gram five inch frame, but you still want it to be durable enough. So find that
[1774.06] Chris Rosser: balance has been kind of where the frames have evolved over time. And they've gotten a lot more
[1781.5] Chris Rosser: durable without getting all that much heavier. I mean, like the, the, I think I've only like added
[1789.34] Chris Rosser: less than 10 grams onto, onto the AOS five, like going from V one all the way up to V five. And the
[1795.66] Chris Rosser: V five is a heck of a lot more durable than the, than the V one. So that, that's kind of the trade
[1802.54] Chris Rosser: off. And then just trying to, as you say, quality of life things, like just trying to make them
[1806.78] Chris Rosser: really, really easy to build. Um, it's one of the things that people comment on. And one of the
[1812.14] Chris Rosser: things I'm really proud, proud of is like, I don't ship instructions with my frames and most people
[1819.18] Chris Rosser: don't need instructions to build them. Um, we have started doing build guides, but those build guides
[1825.1] Chris Rosser: are for people who are like new to FPV. And this is like the first frame that they're ever building.
[1828.54] Chris Rosser: They never built a frame before. If you've built like a few FPV frames before you get an AOS frame
[1834.22] Chris Rosser: and you're like, I mean, it's just obvious how this goes together. And there are no different parts,
[1839.34] Chris Rosser: like all the arms are the same. Um, so it doesn't matter what order you put them in. Like everything's
[1844.62] Chris Rosser: symmetric. Um, and you can't get it upside down on the one around. So that's, that's sort of what
[1851.98] Chris Rosser: I've, I've been really focusing on. And I think with like the V five frames, I'm really, really
[1858.06] Chris Rosser: pleased with like, they do just go together exactly as you expect.
[1862.14] Stephen: Was that something you, you learned or that you had already from your previous roles?
[1867.34] Chris Rosser: Oh, I, so I actually, um, this was, I kind of got, uh, I guess interested in
[1874.38] Chris Rosser: ease of like assembly of frames. I was actually doing some work for, um,
[1879.02] Chris Rosser: um, company called tool labs. So they make vapes. Okay. Yeah. And they, they had a designer there.
[1890.62] Chris Rosser: Um, James, who is now worth lots and lots and lots of money, many billions of dollars, um,
[1899.58] Chris Rosser: who was obsessed with symmetry. He was like, it must be symmetric because if it's symmetric,
[1904.22] Chris Rosser: you can't get it wrong. And, and so I kind of, I was like, that's actually a really good point.
[1909.26] Chris Rosser: So that's when I started trying to make all the parts of my frames as symmetric as possible. So
[1913.82] Chris Rosser: that, you know, all the arms, for example, are the same. So you can't get the arm, you can't
[1919.34] Chris Rosser: choose the wrong arm because they're all the same. If you need a spare, then it's just one spare.
[1925.1] Chris Rosser: So that's the, that's kind of where I've been pushed to and trying to make the things really,
[1930.14] Chris Rosser: really easy to put together. Um, yeah, that's just, I don't know if it, I don't know how much
[1935.82] Chris Rosser: it matters, but it is something that I, I've tried to do with the designs as far as I can.
[1943.18] Stephen: Yeah. And I guess not having lots of screws and bolts that are almost the same size,
[1948.06] Chris Rosser: making them into distinct sizes as well. Well, I had a great experience with that because, um,
[1954.14] Chris Rosser: the, uh, Mr. Steele got hold of one of my frames, the AOS5V1 in a, in a video. Um,
[1962.22] Chris Rosser: someone handed it to him and he was like, I, this is a really interesting frame, but it's got way
[1966.7] Chris Rosser: too many screws. Um, and it looks like it'd be really difficult to put together because it's
[1971.34] Chris Rosser: got so many screws. What's really interesting is that it, that frame has four less screws than
[1977.66] Chris Rosser: the impulse RC Apex. Um, but apparently four less screws than Mr. Steele's frame is still way too
[1984.62] Chris Rosser: many screws. So, um, that was when I decided that we were going to try and go for fewer screws in
[1991.1] Stephen: future designs. Something about it made it more, more evident visually, I guess that just, yeah.
[1999.02] Chris Rosser: Yeah. And what's important guys is that I'm not bitter about that.
[2003.26] Stephen: And it doesn't keep me at night. No such thing as bad, bad press, right?
[2008.46] Chris Rosser: Oh, actually it was great. I mean, actually those are people were like, oh, that's a really
[2011.42] Chris Rosser: interesting frame. I'm definitely going to try it out. I'm not sure why Mr. Steele was hating on it,
[2015.42] Chris Rosser: but, um, no, no publicity is bad publicity. And, uh, I take all the feedback seriously and try and
[2021.9] Frank: try and make the design better. Um, because the fast things I imagine is another kind of difficult
[2029.5] Frank: thing of an FPV framework. It's a very key part of, and it's going to be a very key part of the
[2034.94] Frank: vibrations in a PV frame. And like carbon fiber, as you said, is already a tricky material, but
[2041.98] Frank: now how much of, how much effort have you had to put into actually sort of modeling
[2047.02] Chris Rosser: those connections between different carbon components? Oh yeah. So that is, that is a tricky,
[2054.38] Chris Rosser: that is a tricky problem. Um, in general, the, the gaps sort of, if the frame is like
[2061.26] Chris Rosser: assembled tight, so there aren't any gaps and any wobbles, then in general, the joints, um,
[2067.18] Chris Rosser: either don't do much or they add a bit of damping. Um, but yeah, when I model the frames,
[2077.37] Chris Rosser: so I typically do most of my resonance modeling with assuming that the joints like a stiff
[2082.81] Chris Rosser: and that there's no slip. Um, I have done some models with slip and as I said,
[2086.81] Chris Rosser: it doesn't change the frequencies much at all, but it will add a bit of damping sometimes.
[2092.65] Chris Rosser: And if it's loose, of course, then it makes everything a lot worse.
[2098.33] Frank: Top tip, you had it here first, tighten up your screws.
[2101.85] Chris Rosser: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's it. And it's important to make sure that you have a design which
[2106.57] Chris Rosser: is going to apply sufficient like clamping force on the arm to stop it moving.
[2110.09] Chris Rosser: Okay. A lot of people will do that thing with frames where you like do that, right? And you
[2114.81] Chris Rosser: try and move the arm. Um, I don't find that like, that's not a particularly useful test
[2120.25] Chris Rosser: because if you can move it by hand, you can apply so much force to do that. It's not going to move
[2127.85] Chris Rosser: in flight. Like if there's enough friction in, in there that it's still in flight, then you don't
[2132.81] Chris Rosser: see any vibration characteristic. And a lot of effort has been put in, I think 533, like they,
[2139.21] Chris Rosser: they've done a lot to try and like completely remove any movement of the arm. Um, what's your
[2145.45] Stephen: life? Sorry, if you, if you pick up a frame and you want to see if it's tight or not, if you don't
[2151.37] Chris Rosser: move the arms like that, what do you do? Uh, what I do is I would hang it off a string and tap it
[2159.29] Chris Rosser: with something and then listen to it. Oh, interesting. You can get me if it's a good frame,
[2164.73] Chris Rosser: um, by, by the tap test. Yeah. Hang it, hang it off a bit of, um, a bit of string or fishing
[2170.25] Chris Rosser: line or like a batch battery strap or like something, something that moves and then give
[2174.81] Chris Rosser: it a tap. You'll know if it's a good frame. Cause if it's a good frame, the tone will be high. And
[2181.21] Chris Rosser: if it's a bad frame, the tone will be low. Um, you want to make sure that it's got motors mounted
[2185.93] Chris Rosser: to it. That's the only thing. Yeah. But you can do it. If you can take a frame, you can screw
[2192.41] Chris Rosser: motors onto it and nothing else and give it a tap and you'll know. And in fact, I had a, there's a
[2196.73] Chris Rosser: guy, um, uh, Vladimir in the Czech Republic who has done a load of, uh, laser vibrometer testing
[2203.69] Chris Rosser: of AOS frames recently. So I have a video on that. Um, and yeah, he did all that testing just with,
[2210.33] Chris Rosser: just with motors mounted and nothing else motors. I'm just imagining the, the shelf that you can't
[2216.33] Frank: see in, in Jack's room at the moment of all his quads hanging and just becoming some kind of big
[2221.69] Chris Rosser: xylophone. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, so that, that, that thing of seeing if the arms will move is
[2228.73] Chris Rosser: kind of a meaningless test. Um, unless it's so loose that you, unless it's loose that you think
[2233.85] Chris Rosser: that the arms are actually going to move in the air. Um, in that case, it's a problem when you
[2239.29] Stephen: didn't tighten the screws. I did have one frame that did that. It was touted as folding frame,
[2243.05] Stephen: but they didn't realize that in flight it would tend to fold itself. And it was kind of a disaster
[2248.33] Stephen: the number of times because they were trying to close onto the quad. Not good.
[2253.29] Stephen: So, um, when we talk about damping that you, you hit the press with, with an amusing trend
[2258.25] Stephen: a couple of years ago, very well intentioned, I'm sure. Yeah. But one that people had trouble
[2265.61] Stephen: getting on board with, which was to add damping grease onto things. And I understand the principles
[2270.01] Stephen: behind it. You're trying to soak up those vibrations. You're trying to, you know,
[2273.69] Stephen: turn them into heat, stop them causing problems. What, what's the story on damping grease now?
[2281.93] Stephen: Do you still do that to your frames? Has it evolved any, if you found any slightly easier to
[2286.81] Chris Rosser: use products because they weren't very sticky. Yeah. I mean, yeah. So that's the thing about
[2291.61] Chris Rosser: the damping grease, right? Is that it's, it does work and it does help, but on balance, I don't
[2299.85] Chris Rosser: think that it's the right approach for managing vibration because it's not user-friendly.
[2309.05] Chris Rosser: So I think that overall, so like I've done some testing like with older frames, like the
[2316.73] Chris Rosser: V2, I think I did the damping grease test with, like it does make things better. Like it does
[2320.25] Stephen: improve the vibration performance. I tried it, but it was just all over me and my bench. Yeah.
[2326.57] Chris Rosser: But it's just a nightmare, right? Like it's just so messy. It just goes everywhere.
[2332.01] Chris Rosser: So that's a problem. And if you take like a V5 frame and you compare it to a V2 frame with grease,
[2340.33] Chris Rosser: the V5 frame performs better vibrationally without grease than the V2 performs with grease.
[2346.17] Chris Rosser: And so I don't grease the frames anymore because it's just, it's just not user-friendly.
[2350.65] Chris Rosser: And the way to go about managing vibration is to just keep incrementing the design of the frame
[2357.05] Chris Rosser: to make the vibration performance better. And I mean, it would be even better if you added grease,
[2364.73] Stephen: but right. Is there something that's easier to work with than grease, like a sheet material?
[2373.61] Chris Rosser: I tried some sheet materials. No, they don't work as well.
[2380.09] Jack: What about those really annoying, greasy, sticky pads made from the thermal conduction stuff?
[2390.09] Chris Rosser: Oh, yeah. Like I haven't tested like, yeah, the PTFE tape, like you see,
[2397.29] Stephen: or radiator valves with. I've got loads of that kicking around. It's very, very thin, you see.
[2404.33] Chris Rosser: The challenge that you're going to have with anything solid is that solid things
[2412.89] Chris Rosser: don't do as good a job at dissipating vibrational energy as viscous things.
[2421.53] Chris Rosser: So the moment you move to a solid, even if you go for like a rubber,
[2425.45] Chris Rosser: like a soft silicon rubber or something like that, like it's like orders of magnitude worse
[2430.49] Chris Rosser: than the like mechanical damping greases. They are really good at dissipating energy.
[2438.97] Chris Rosser: They are really good. Like if you think about like you make a solid ball of silicon rubber
[2444.09] Chris Rosser: and you throw it at the ground, it will bounce. If you take a ball of damping grease and you throw
[2448.81] Chris Rosser: it at the ground, it will bounce. I mean, that's the difference.
[2453.37] Stephen: Why does it absorb the energy the other one has not?
[2455.93] Chris Rosser: Yeah, exactly. You know which ones absorb the energy, right? It's the one that's just gone
[2460.57] Chris Rosser: and done nothing. You know, so it doesn't even like it's not even going to splash or anything.
[2468.73] Chris Rosser: Like it just it will literally just absorb all of the energy in one shot. So yeah,
[2473.85] Chris Rosser: you can't do a lot better than like a NIA gel damping grease. But I think even though it works,
[2478.89] Chris Rosser: I just don't think it's good.
[2482.73] Stephen: Maybe the usability will be solved with some brainwaves in the future. Who knows?
[2487.37] Chris Rosser: Yeah, yeah. I mean, there are other benefits to like the damping grease.
[2490.17] Chris Rosser: Like you can it actually makes a really good thread lock for screws as well.
[2494.97] Chris Rosser: Like corrosion, which is like it's it's like it keeps the screws in,
[2500.17] Chris Rosser: but it can make them difficult to undo. So damping grease keeps the screws in,
[2505.45] Chris Rosser: but makes the screws easier to undo. Like it will stop the screw coming out. It will stop it backing
[2511.53] Chris Rosser: out under any situation, but it will never bind up. So you'll you'll always, you know,
[2518.09] Chris Rosser: the screw will never bind in in the. So if you're going into like a steel
[2522.89] Stephen: aluminium post or it won't just bind in there, they'll never bind in there. No,
[2526.81] Chris Rosser: the grease the grease will effectively lubricate the screw when you're trying to take it out,
[2531.13] Chris Rosser: but it cannot. It will never vibrate loose or back out by itself.
[2535.77] Chris Rosser: Mm hmm.
[2536.33] Chris Rosser: So it's it's like it's like I still wouldn't advise it because it's just so gross. It just gets
[2545.93] Stephen: everywhere. It's not a really easy way to deliver it. You've just had like a blob of it and you've
[2551.13] Stephen: got to get that onto all the parts of this frame and inevitably it just kind of
[2556.81] Jack: it just gets everywhere. It needs a redneck solution. And that solution is
[2563.93] Chris Rosser: you've got a damping grease syringe or a sponge on a stick.
[2571.21] Jack: You need a sponge on a stick and buy them. That's what they look like. They come in big packets.
[2578.33] Jack: They're great for using to I use them to remove flux because they don't leave any lint.
[2588.57] Stephen: That was also the other thing I did end up with. And after having talked to wipe it up,
[2592.73] Stephen: lint all over the frame and it seemed to attract dust.
[2597.13] Jack: Sponge on a stick.
[2600.01] Jack: Do you want me to send you some sponges on a stick, Chris? It's the future.
[2607.93] Frank: Specially branded from Sticky Jack's New Emporium.
[2611.45] Frank: Are we ready for the future?
[2612.97] Stephen: I'm not sure we're ready.
[2614.97] Frank: Future, isn't it?
[2616.09] Frank: Fun per volt FPV in the chat is that when applied with pinpoint accuracy, there is no
[2623.53] Frank: problem with mechanical damping grease. So that's certainly the application that's the challenge.
[2630.17] Stephen: If you're a damping grease sniper, it's fine, but not many of us are. And you only have to
[2634.57] Stephen: go wrong once and then it just starts spreading.
[2637.05] Chris Rosser: Yeah, it just starts spreading. It seems like even a tiny amount will cover every surface.
[2643.69] Chris Rosser: Oh, and if you use the NIA gel stuff, it's really chemical resistant, which is obviously
[2648.89] Chris Rosser: good if you want to damping grease for your airline wheel. But it means that you cannot
[2656.65] Chris Rosser: wash it off. You cannot wash it off. It is impervious to soap, water, ethanol, isopropanol,
[2667.37] Chris Rosser: dry cleaning fluid.
[2669.37] Chris Rosser: Sorry, dry cleaning fluid. I haven't tried like a...
[2671.69] Frank: This sounds like another good challenge. Next time I'm around Jack's, I'm going to
[2677.13] Frank: get hold of some NIA gel and just leave it on his desk. And I'm sure he'll be there
[2681.93] Frank: trying all the various solvents around his desk.
[2686.17] Chris Rosser: Yeah. Let me know which one works because I've still got stuff with grease on it from
[2693.37] Chris Rosser: when I was doing grease a year ago. And you can find out, Jack, what dissolves NIA gel
[2700.65] Chris Rosser: and will it also dissolve my face?
[2705.45] Frank: There we go. Here's the Sticky Jack's Glue Emporium new line of products.
[2711.61] Frank: It's very, very cheap NIA gel, very, very expensive NIA gel remover.
[2716.57] Chris Rosser: Yeah, that's it. Yeah, it's a lost leader on the NIA gel.
[2723.85] Chris Rosser: I love that.
[2724.57] Jack: Can you send me some dampening grease and I will test it? I work with Plastisol
[2729.61] Jack: and it's ink that never dries. The only way to dry it is by either grilling it with heat
[2737.05] Jack: or waiting till you die and then it will...
[2743.29] Chris Rosser: That's like this, though.
[2744.89] Chris Rosser: You can just, yeah, you can do anything with it. You can heat it to like huge temperatures and
[2748.97] Chris Rosser: it doesn't do anything. It's fair. They designed it. They've designed it to be like really,
[2754.17] Chris Rosser: really resilient. But yeah, it's not great.
[2758.89] Koel: Well, according to the internet, apparently, NIA gel can be dissolved with hydrocarbon solvents.
[2765.21] Koel: So, okay, so like, hydrazine, oh God, I'm not going to eat that.
[2774.57] Koel: That's not a great day.
[2777.13] Koel: Xylene, limonene.
[2778.33] Koel: Yeah, test this out.
[2779.61] Koel: Yeah, old stuff.
[2780.73] Koel: What are you doing?
[2782.65] Stephen: Rocket fuel or you're trying to clean NIA gel off your desk.
[2788.01] Chris Rosser: And all of those things sound like either they're going to asphyxiate me or melt my face.
[2792.41] Chris Rosser: So, maybe my tools can stay greasy.
[2797.53] Jack: Now, you have to be approved for the use of...
[2800.09] Jack: What is it? Like controlled chemicals or something to get hold of most of that?
[2808.57] Stephen: Hand on the rudder. Moving away. Moving away.
[2813.29] Stephen: We previously had the Dutch drone dogs on here and I noticed that one of your quads was one of
[2818.73] Stephen: these experimental rocket ship designs. How's that been going and kind of what got you into that?
[2825.21] Chris Rosser: Oh, I got into that because I met Luke and Mike.
[2832.65] Chris Rosser: In fact, I interviewed Luke and Mike on my YouTube channel, Shameless Plug for the channel.
[2839.21] Chris Rosser: And they had just set a world record 480 kilometers an hour when I interviewed them.
[2846.81] Chris Rosser: And we chatted a lot about the technical challenges of going really fast.
[2850.41] Chris Rosser: And foolishly, I made them the author. I said, oh, guys, I'll help you with record attempt.
[2858.81] Chris Rosser: I bet we can do something and make the drone go even faster.
[2862.65] Chris Rosser: And they were like, sounds good. And so, I've been messaging them back and forth
[2870.89] Chris Rosser: since then, basically, and trying to help them as best I can with some of the more technical
[2876.01] Chris Rosser: aspects of going really fast. I designed them a motor. I actually have a video about this coming
[2885.61] Chris Rosser: out on Tuesday. The AOS Supernova 3220 motor. The 10 inch Cinlifter motor that I designed is,
[2898.73] Chris Rosser: I mean, it is a 10 inch Cinlifter motor, but it's actually a world record drone motor.
[2905.85] Stephen: World speed record motor. What prop do they put on that for the world speed record?
[2910.17] Chris Rosser: Eight by 15, I think. Seven by 15.
[2914.81] Chris Rosser: 3220 or 3210, you say? 3220. Yeah. 3220, like 800 kV on 12.
[2922.65] Stephen: That's it. That's it. That's it.
[2927.14] Chris Rosser: And in June, they broke the world record. They've gone 580 kilometers an hour.
[2936.82] Chris Rosser: Wow.
[2937.46] Chris Rosser: With the Supernova 3220.
[2939.78] Stephen: Where's that E from work? How do you avoid supersonic props? Surely,
[2944.34] Stephen: the props are just getting crazy speeds.
[2946.74] Chris Rosser: So, the prop tips are like over 0.9 max. So, they're starting to get deep into pressure
[2952.74] Chris Rosser: lost territory. But, yeah, the solution is some really good batteries. I think they were using
[2965.86] Chris Rosser: possibly some packs from SMC. I have to check with them.
[2968.82] Chris Rosser: Yeah.
[2972.5] Chris Rosser: And the 3220 motor I designed, which, I mean, I designed it for a 10 inch Cinlifter and I was
[2979.78] Chris Rosser: like, yeah, I mean, this should be, you know, this might be what you want for a world record attempt.
[2983.46] Chris Rosser: I mean, it's about the right size and it's got the most torque that I could possibly cram into the
[2988.98] Chris Rosser: form factor. And it's made by RC and Power with their super high temperature insulation.
[2995.06] Chris Rosser: So, it probably won't smoke itself, even if you push it really hard.
[2998.98] Chris Rosser: And, I mean, yeah, they were just taking it to the absolute limit. I mean, this is a motor
[3004.1] Chris Rosser: that's designed, the 800 kV version is kind of designed for 8S or like 6 to 8S. And they're
[3010.18] Chris Rosser: running it at 12S. That motor's got like a maximum instantaneous power rating of something
[3017.86] Chris Rosser: like two kilowatts. And they're running like four kilowatts through it for multiple seconds.
[3025.94] Chris Rosser: Like 10 seconds during the run. They had to like cool it with dry ice, minus 80,
[3035.7] Chris Rosser: because it was getting so hot during the record attempts that all the magnets would lose all of
[3042.5] Chris Rosser: their magnetism. And that is an amazing failure mode that I have not seen in a motor before.
[3052.26] Chris Rosser: So, when the magnets get really, really hot, they start to lose their magnetism.
[3058.5] Chris Rosser: And the biggest effect that has is it causes the kV of the motor to rise.
[3064.34] Stephen: Huh. The motor goes fast. So, it draws more current.
[3070.18] Stephen: Oh, right, yeah.
[3071.3] Chris Rosser: And so, it gets hotter. And so, the kV goes up more and so it draws more current. So,
[3075.46] Chris Rosser: it gets hotter. And so, the thing just runs away and basically just vaporizes itself. It's amazing.
[3082.5] Stephen: How heavy is that motor? That must be a 50-gram motor or something.
[3086.74] Chris Rosser: Oh, the 3020 weighs like 150 grams.
[3090.02] Stephen: That's a lot. To get that hot, that's so much power.
[3092.9] Chris Rosser: It's for like a big 10-inch thin lifter. And they're running like a seven-inch bi-blade on it.
[3099.46] Chris Rosser: Wow.
[3099.78] Jack: In moving air that's cooling.
[3102.9] Chris Rosser: Yeah.
[3103.38] Jack: So, you have to like, I've fit fins to the outside bell.
[3107.78] Chris Rosser: Well, that was the interesting thing is that it was kind of just about hanging together
[3112.9] Chris Rosser: when they were testing in South Africa when the ambient temperature was like 15 degrees.
[3117.78] Chris Rosser: And then they were like, we're going to Dubai.
[3125.06] Chris Rosser: And so, they were then doing their like world record attempt runs at like 50 degrees.
[3129.86] Chris Rosser: No way.
[3130.5] Chris Rosser: 40 degrees.
[3131.62] Chris Rosser: And it was just overheating really badly. But I mean, you know, that's just the nature of it.
[3137.94] Chris Rosser: But they solved the problem. They got the record more power to them.
[3142.18] Jack: And so, pre-soaking the motors in nitrogen.
[3145.7] Chris Rosser: In dry ice. Yeah, they use dry ice. They got them down to minus 80.
[3150.5] Jack: I mean, nitrogen I got expected to have the right answer.
[3154.66] Chris Rosser: But you think that the record run is like 15 seconds. And in 15 seconds,
[3159.06] Chris Rosser: the motor is going from like minus 80 to over 100 degrees.
[3162.58] Chris Rosser: Wow.
[3164.5] Chris Rosser: The thermal shock is just bonkers.
[3166.9] Stephen: And the bell still turns after that temperature change.
[3170.98] Stephen: Yeah, I mean, kudos to engineering.
[3175.22] Chris Rosser: And yeah, RC in power, RC in power make a good motor.
[3180.5] Chris Rosser: And they're running it at like twice the race RPM as well.
[3183.3] Chris Rosser: So like the bearings are getting hot. And it's just, yeah, everything.
[3190.02] Chris Rosser: But we've learned a lot actually, or I've certainly learned a lot about what it takes
[3194.58] Chris Rosser: to make a motor that's capable of doing those kind of speeds.
[3197.86] Chris Rosser: So we now have a new version of the 3220 that's coming.
[3203.06] Chris Rosser: I don't know if we're going to release it for like everyone to buy.
[3207.06] Chris Rosser: Because I just don't see the point.
[3209.46] Chris Rosser: But Luke and Mike are going to be using this new version and they want to try and go.
[3213.7] Chris Rosser: Their next attempt is they want to try and go 624K.
[3217.86] Chris Rosser: And which would make their drone the fastest all electric vehicle of any type ever.
[3223.86] Chris Rosser: Wow.
[3226.18] Chris Rosser: We'll see if that happens.
[3227.54] Chris Rosser: But yeah, so that's that's kind of how I got into the high speed drone stuff.
[3232.34] Chris Rosser: And then the HS5 was just a like we can like it's the HS5 is the like,
[3243.94] Chris Rosser: you can build this and it will just work.
[3246.26] Chris Rosser: High speed drone.
[3248.42] Chris Rosser: You don't have to do crazy things with crazy voltages and burn out all your motors and blow
[3253.78] Chris Rosser: up your ESCs.
[3254.82] Chris Rosser: You can just build something that will do 200 miles an hour on 6S.
[3259.22] Chris Rosser: If you just use the components in the video and it will do 200 miles an hour.
[3264.66] Chris Rosser: Or you can run 8S and then it will do more.
[3271.7] Chris Rosser: It will do more.
[3272.82] Chris Rosser: And people have been running it on 8S and getting super, super high speeds.
[3276.1] Chris Rosser: I mean, that's 200 miles an hour is enough in my mind.
[3280.36] Stephen: Some reading required to go faster.
[3282.76] Chris Rosser: Yeah, some kind of more research.
[3288.76] Chris Rosser: More research and more testing required.
[3290.92] Chris Rosser: Like the 6S version is pretty bulletproof.
[3293.64] Chris Rosser: The 8S version is a bit, you know, you have to make sure you pick the right parts and
[3301.24] Chris Rosser: be cast on it.
[3301.96] Chris Rosser: But people still, people are using it.
[3304.52] Chris Rosser: I mean, the main thing people are using it for is just like chasing fast bikes and cars
[3309.48] Chris Rosser: and stuff.
[3310.28] Chris Rosser: And they don't go 200 typically.
[3311.96] Chris Rosser: It's sort of, you know, 150, 160.
[3314.44] Chris Rosser: But the HS5 will keep up with that no problem.
[3316.84] Chris Rosser: So you get some nice footage.
[3320.36] Chris Rosser: I tried to build an HS7 and even my relatively tolerant approach to safety was like,
[3331.88] Stephen: this is probably, yeah, finding stuff, walking out of the fire extinguisher all the time,
[3337.4] Stephen: I think this is necessarily the right direction.
[3340.04] Chris Rosser: Well, that was the thing about the HS7 was that it was just big.
[3344.68] Chris Rosser: It weighed like a decent amount.
[3347.16] Chris Rosser: And it was like 220 miles an hour easy.
[3352.44] Chris Rosser: And it was just starting to feel like a bit of a risk.
[3355.4] Stephen: I remember, Frank, we had what was it?
[3358.36] Stephen: A Omeguli bird on and he was making his own custom 14S packs.
[3362.92] Stephen: And he was getting like one run out of these packs.
[3366.12] Stephen: This was on a plane on a wing.
[3368.68] Stephen: And he had a carbon fiber prop individually, like shaped carbon fiber blades that attached
[3374.68] Stephen: to a central hub.
[3376.28] Stephen: And it, you know, break off prop blades and do one or two runs on his custom 14S packs
[3382.04] Stephen: before they were just puffed and dead.
[3384.76] Chris Rosser: My God.
[3385.48] Chris Rosser: Yeah.
[3386.52] Chris Rosser: So there are people out there who, you know, if you want to do that, I mean,
[3391.96] Chris Rosser: more power to you.
[3392.76] Chris Rosser: I think it's great.
[3393.48] Chris Rosser: But I didn't want to like productionize a seven inch 200 and what it would have probably been
[3401.4] Chris Rosser: when I finished it and got everything working would have been around 250 miles an hour probably
[3406.68] Chris Rosser: would have been kind of a top speed on AS.
[3409.88] Stephen: You'd need to sell it with the proviso that people do,
[3412.2] Stephen: of course, on how to land it safely afterwards.
[3415.08] Stephen: Because I'm convinced that most people when they've got the adrenaline pumping and have
[3418.6] Stephen: done a couple of high speed passes on these things, they're going to be pretty stuck when
[3424.04] Stephen: they turn around, try and land it and realize that all they're looking at is the sun.
[3428.44] Stephen: And they can't see any of the horizon even.
[3431.24] Chris Rosser: Yeah, yeah, you do need to practice.
[3433.96] Chris Rosser: I mean, I think it is pretty doable to land it if you've got a spotter who can help you out.
[3442.44] Chris Rosser: Or you just put a net up or something so that, you know, you just suspend the net
[3446.92] Chris Rosser: so that you can drop it into something soft.
[3449.48] Chris Rosser: But yeah, the HS7 is just another level.
[3453.88] Frank: So are there any other FPV trends that you sort of see over the next few years that you're
[3460.6] Frank: either thinking about or have got in the back of your head?
[3465.16] Chris Rosser: Yeah, I mean, like trends, FPV trends.
[3467.96] Chris Rosser: I think that, certainly for me, I want to try and do a little bit more
[3481.9] Chris Rosser: tuning guides for not just B2Flight and RGpilot.
[3484.46] Chris Rosser: I think that, I mean, it's not a trend, but I think that there's still, we need a bit more
[3490.86] Chris Rosser: educational material out in the hobby for iNav and the new B2Flight version.
[3499.82] Chris Rosser: Trends, I mean, I think GPS is just going to become standard on B2Flight drones now with 4.6.
[3507.74] Chris Rosser: So kind of thinking ahead and making sure that all of the prints and stuff for the frames have
[3514.3] Chris Rosser: GPS support, because I think everyone's going to be using that.
[3518.38] Chris Rosser: But yeah, I mean, I don't think we want to go too much further down the kind of route of,
[3527.99] Chris Rosser: like, maybe remote ID is going to become, obviously it's a requirement in the US,
[3532.39] Chris Rosser: isn't it? It's not over here yet. I don't know how many people sort of comply or,
[3540.95] Chris Rosser: but yeah, so that might be a trend. I don't know what you guys think. I'm interested to hear.
[3546.79] Stephen: I think we're going to see something like remote ID increasingly built into the backside of GPSs
[3552.39] Stephen: and being part of, like, ELRS rather than a standalone unit. Like, just, what, are you GPS
[3557.99] Stephen: to ELRS? ELRS hands the GPS data via MSP over to B2Flight and you have the receiver and GPS
[3566.63] Stephen: acting as remote ID without needing separate components. I think that's probably going to
[3571.43] Chris Rosser: arrive at some point. Oh, that would be great. If you could do it with an, if your ELRS receiver
[3577.11] Chris Rosser: could just occasionally chirp out whatever's needed for remote ID, that would be perfect,
[3582.07] Stephen: wouldn't it? It's got Bluetooth already or Wi-Fi or whatever. Yeah, it's got Bluetooth, it's got Wi-Fi.
[3587.43] Chris Rosser: I mean, you could even, you know, you can even, if you've got like a 2.4 gig antenna on there,
[3592.79] Chris Rosser: you could even just chirp out a packet that your radio just ignores. Yeah. I mean,
[3600.15] Stephen: it's got chip antennas. I think chip antenna is all that's actually mandated. So, yeah. Yeah.
[3606.47] Chris Rosser: I've never found chip antennas to be particularly good. Do you guys use them?
[3609.91] Stephen: They're not a bit terrible, but why waste your noise, your signal budget on remote ID? I mean,
[3618.15] Chris Rosser: you're optimizing for control, like not for remote IDs. Yeah. I've tried some of the like ESP ELRS
[3625.11] Chris Rosser: receivers with little chip antennas and I found that they had a lot of packet loss, even at
[3629.59] Chris Rosser: relatively short range. And then you move over to like the type with the little T and it's just
[3634.47] Chris Rosser: perfect. So, I think, yeah, I think the chip antennas are kind of cool, but probably only
[3640.55] Chris Rosser: for like tiny whoops and stuff. I think, yeah, once you get up to anything reasonable size,
[3645.19] Chris Rosser: you're wanting a little T antenna. Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, remote ID. Any other trends,
[3652.23] Stephen: what do you think? Well, like you said, I think beta flow, it's kind of getting their maturity
[3658.39] Stephen: boys. I think there's going to be more people getting a panic button. So, in the middle of
[3662.31] Stephen: maneuvers, if your power loop isn't going where you think it should be, you can just do the kind
[3666.71] Stephen: of freeze and your quad writes itself and just position holes so you can take a deep breath and
[3672.55] Stephen: not smash into a wall. Oh, that's going to be great. I'm so looking forward to that.
[3679.11] Chris Rosser: That's going to be amazing. Yeah.
[3683.43] Frank: Jack seemed to have something on his mind. All right, so we're out of time anyway.
[3688.39] Chris Rosser: Yeah, I love that. I'd love like if you, if, you know, if it's all going wrong and you disarm
[3695.83] Chris Rosser: the quad that it doesn't actually disarm, it just sort of like flips itself around and just like
[3701.75] Chris Rosser: holds position, holds position until you can collect yourself and then carry on.
[3706.63] Koel: Deep breaths. That'd be nice. I think that'll be amazing.
[3715.99] Stephen: That should be me in 4.6, I think. Yeah. And they're freezing that. So, 4.6 should be out
[3722.79] Stephen: by the end of the year, I think. Oh, fantastic. There's a freeze message out already, end of
[3726.71] Chris Rosser: August. Yeah. Yeah. So, I've got my eye on it because the moment that it starts like coming
[3733.83] Chris Rosser: out into release candidates, I need to start working on my tuning guide series for it.
[3737.91] Chris Rosser: We'll do a whole, I'm going to do a whole new tuning guide for 4.6 and then also put together
[3743.27] Chris Rosser: a course for people who are doing things a bit more sort of professionally, like for a company.
[3749.75] Stephen: Oh, yeah. Big cine quads. That's going to be so valuable for the kind of like, and now just freeze.
[3756.23] Stephen: Don't disarm that 5,000 pound lens assembly into the ground, just freeze them.
[3761.83] Chris Rosser: Yeah, it's going to be perfect. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to that. I think it will definitely
[3766.07] Chris Rosser: see Betaflight being used on bigger, more expensive rigs if it's got that kind of functionality,
[3772.39] Chris Rosser: which currently people are using RGPilot, but RGPilot doesn't quite fly as good as Betaflight.
[3780.47] Stephen: If you want to be up close and personal doing chase stuff, you could do a high level pass down
[3785.51] Stephen: a street and program it to do that exact thing several times over with RGU, but if you want to
[3791.75] Stephen: be tracking sports cars really close and going under bridges and stuff, I'd be slightly skeptical.
[3797.91] Chris Rosser: Yeah, well, you just won't be quite as sharp and responsive as Betaflight will be.
[3804.63] Stephen: It's designed for different things.
[3806.63] Chris Rosser: Yeah, I mean, and actually, what's really interesting is to see features from one going
[3811.75] Chris Rosser: into the other. I mean, a lot of features from Betaflight, like RPM filtering and
[3817.83] Chris Rosser: bi-directional de-shot and all that, all that support has been added into RGPilot now.
[3822.23] Chris Rosser: So I think, and you're starting to see more autonomous features coming into Betaflight.
[3828.87] Chris Rosser: So yeah, I think they will, their feature sets will sort of not converge, but there'll be more
[3836.15] Chris Rosser: overlap between them for sure. So that's probably a trend, is just these open source projects
[3842.39] Chris Rosser: continuing to borrow from each other and you're starting to see more and more common features
[3846.95] Chris Rosser: that are appearing in both.
[3852.23] Stephen: Awesome. Well, I look forward to seeing people tearing around with their Betaflight enabled
[3856.31] Stephen: crop dusting drones.
[3860.07] Jack: Unfortunately, that's all we got time for. Sorry to cut you guys off. Massive thank you to all our
[3865.03] Jack: Patreons, you guys rules. Thank you for helping us carry on. We're not too sure what's happening
[3872.87] Jack: with the episode next week. Frank's away and I don't think he's going to return and Curry
[3880.47] Jack: has now left. So it'll only be me and Steven and maybe Carl. So we've got to figure out what we
[3888.31] Jack: want to do. If we don't appear, then we will definitely be on Patreon for the rest of the
[3893.51] Jack: month of September to finish ourselves out. But that might be it for LDI until we can figure
[3901.03] Jack: something out. Thank you, Chris, for being our guest tonight.
[3906.87] Chris Rosser: You're welcome. You really enjoyed it.
[3909.19] Chris Rosser: Thank you. Thanks.
[3911.19] Jack: Yeah, I would love to talk to you more. I'd love to find out your opinion on tricopters
[3915.99] Jack: and whether you think you'll ever try good.
[3919.91] Jack: Yeah. But yeah, that's all we got time for. We were joined by a wonderful guest,
[3924.87] Jack: Chris Rosser. Thank you.
[3927.03] Jack: Come, guys.
[3928.71] Jack: The man with the moustache, Steven.
[3930.63] Jack: Cheers. Thanks, everyone.
[3932.23] Jack: Andrew Stas Frank. Good luck in your new endeavors.
[3936.23] Jack: And please don't die on a Catalina because I will be very upset.
[3942.95] Jack: My buddy, Cole.
[3945.03] Jack: See you.
[3946.23] Jack: And I've been bright until fly. You've been listening to Letro now.
[3949.35] Jack: Thank you for getting us to 10 years. Good night.
[3952.95] Jack: Good night.
[3954.87] Chris Rosser: Telemetry loss.