Brighter in the Darkness (Betaflight 4.4, Custom Marmot Mod Frame, EFAW 2407 Motors)

So I finally got around to pulling one of my favorite quads off the shelf and getting it back in the air. I've been flying a couple other setups regularly and had left this one hanging on the wall for a while. I designed this frame as a one-off a couple years ago when the Marmot first came out. I loved the cage, but wasn't thrilled with the arm design, so I did a bit of a fusion with some of the other frame design concepts I had at the time.

For those of you who remember the EFAW motors, I threw some of those on there as well. I have to say, though they were short lived, they were some of the best motors I've flown. That whole situation was sad for a couple of reasons, but I'm glad I still have some of these kicking around.

This thing is probably the best flying quad I own honestly. CG is bang on and it flies on rails with those motors. I actually wiped this setup this week when I upgraded to Betaflight 4.4 and started a tune from scratch. Sometimes you just luck out and nail the tune on the first try! This was my first pack with the updated setup and I don't think I could actually improve on it at all. I love it when it works out that way. I should probably make a Betaflight preset. I feel like I've got a base profile that is pretty universally good on 5" freestyle quads.

What's wild is this is on like a 5 year old Pyrodrone F4 OSD flight controller. I used cloud build to strip down the features to only what I needed and it's running Dshot 600 at 8k without issues. Pretty impressed.

I also finally got some padding for my Goggles 2 that I'm happy with. I picked up one of the foams online and cut it down to remove the nose and inner stuff, so it is just the outside bits. They're actually pretty comfortable now. I'm definitely loving the Goggles 2, I haven't had any major issues with visibility. They honestly remind me a lot of my old Dominator v2 goggles that I had before I went DJI. If I position the strap well I can see the whole screen well and everything is in focus. My Doms has the same issue with needing to be positioned right to see the whole screen, so it feels pretty natural to me. The quality of the image and the reliability of the transmission is next level. In my experience even my Vista and OG Air Unit systems have better signal reliability on the Goggles 2 than on my V1 goggles. I definitely have no regrets with the upgrade, especially since I managed to snag them before the price went up.

Anyway, here's a quick pack I got on this setup. We had a game night at the church for our small group and I had a quick chance to fly a demo flight for the kids (and parents!) right at dusk. It wasn't as dark as it seems in the footage, but my GoPro still had an ND filter on and was ISO limited to 400. It looked a lot brighter in the goggles, even with just the base DJI camera. Sorry for the grain, but with these settings , there's not many options. Anyway it was a quick pack and the kids (and parents!) were fascinated. Nothing too impressive and I was flying carefully due to all the spectators, but it was a fun fly!

Hope you all enjoy!