I've finally built a modern drone! After a month of messing around with an ancient ZMR250 with a Naze32 and dreaming of modern capabilities, I was ready to upgrade. I'm sticking to 4S for now, so I decided to salvage the motors off the old drone. When I'm ready to go 6S, I'll get a new set of motors, revive the old fella and do something silly with it, maybe put a modern ESC in it and slam it. 

  
Frame: GepRC Vapor X5

Stack: GepRC Taker F405 BLS 60A V2

Motors: Multistar V2 2206-2150KV Baby Beast

Camera: CaddxFPV Ratel 2 

VTX: Speedybee TX800

RX: Radiomaster XR1 Nano

TX: Radiomaster Boxer w/ AG01

Goggles: Betafpv VR02 w/ Pagoda antenna

  
I chose this frame for how it contains everything nice and neatly, with a capacitor mount, buzzer mount (that I couldn't use because my buzzer is too big, will rectify later), a lovely receiver and VTX mounting stack in the rear, and TPU bits for the antennas. 

With the ESC mounted backwards to fit the capacitor mount and me wanting the FC mounted the intended way so I wouldn't have my cables snaking around the stack, I had to solder on longer wires between the FC and ESC. Then, due to the connectors on the board having different voltages than what I needed (and a little bit of me wanting to be consistent), I had to solder everything else into place too. I really should've chosen an FC with solder pads on the top - I had to dry fit everything, cut my wires to length, solder everything into place outside the frame, then mount everything in one go. It was a hassle, but it looks quite tidy. 

  
As you can tell, soldering the motor wires and especially the battery leads gave me trouble, as is tradition. Even with the gas soldering iron I borrowed off a friend, it took an embarrassingly long time to get the battery leads to kinda sorta stick. Not the worst I've ever seen, though.

  
I stayed up until four in the morning yesterday planning, soldering and mounting everything, lol. Once I'd ensured no magic smoke would escape, I went to bed, and set up the software side today. I'm using Supafly presets for now. It was rainy today so I only managed a tiny indoor test flight in Angle mode (appropriate caution and care was taken dw), but I'm already impressed. The old ZMR felt... uncertain at the best of times, wobbly at the worst - this thing is \*locked in.\* I'm sure part of it is the radio - going from the old Devo 7 to the Boxer in simulators instantly dropped my times by a solid quarter - but I'm still extremely happy she flies. Can't wait to go fly for real.

  
Do let me know if anything looks particularly off!

My first build! GepRC Vapor X5