Lycan ULTX 5.1

Lycan V1.1 Upgrade 15/08/2018

Lycan now comes with a few more finishing details on the main base plate, including counter-bored holes for the 20x20mm micro stack bolts and chamfered edges in the battery strap area. 

The arms also see a small upgrade in the shape of a tapered profile running from root to tip. We have blended the bolt hole area out more, closest to the fuselage to prevent stress raisers as much as possible. 

For those guys who are weight conscious, don't stress! These new upgrades have not affected the weigh of the frame.  The JonyHavoc Edition with the Aluminium upgrade fastener pack still weights 55 grams including all the fasteners and carbon.

We would love to hear from you, if you have any suggestions, comments or feedback, please mail us diectly at, mail@fridayfpv.com.

Hope you enjoy,

Dave.

Lycan pre-order  07/05/2018

Lycan will be on pre-oreder for the next 4 weeks. Pre-orders will be couriered out to clients on the 6th June 2018. 

Customers doing pre-order frames do get free extras included in their kits and will also receive the all new FridayFPV Huggy Bear battery strap! This isn't a regular battery strap,  keep an eye out for more details on this product to be released soon. 

We will also be releasing details about new printed covers and camera protection options for Lycan in the next couple weeks. These prints will be available on the store for purchase or if you have access to a 3-D printer, the STL files will also be available for free download. 

Lycan

Lycan is our smallest, lightest and most aggressively accelerating 5.1" racer we have ever released!

The Lycan ULTX 5.1 is a 195mm true-X design, weighing in at 55grams with a titanium fastener pack or 60grams with the stainless steel fastener pack. This frame is extremely light and compact, allowing you to fly around your competition with very little room.

Lycan has been designed to be as light as absolutely possible while still offering really good protection to your camera and centre electronics stack. Simplicity and ease of maintenance were then the two, most important aspects to the frame we focused on.

We worked with team pilots Devon Barnett (aka. HolyHavok) and Jonatan Sanchez Echevarria (aka. Jonylito FPV) to develop this frame, this frame is purpose built for racing with the help and feedback of true race pilots. These guys wanted small, ultra-light and insane performance, you guys get small, ultra-light and insane performance.

(For the full story and prototyping phase of this frame see below) 

Preproduction Frames

We have had loads of comments from loyal customers about not wanting to wait the 4 week pre-order we run on first release for our frames! We do this to give ourselves a little extra time to make sure we get your order correct, mistakes do happen, especially when you are releasing a new product, we do our utmost to make sure mistakes don’t happen.

For you guys who cannot wait for pre-order and want Lycan right now, we have introduced pre-production. These frames are identical to the pre-order frames which will be released, without the chamfered edging and finishing of production frames.

These are the exact same frames our team pilots fly!

We will release a very limited number of these frames before we do our pre-orders.

If this option is for you keep in contact with us and up-to-date, to find out exact release dates. Obviously, loyal customers who truly believe in our products and what we do, get extras and a small discount when they take a pre-production frame from us.

Included in the Kit

• Carbon
• 4 x 5mm carbon fibre arms
• 2 x 2mm carbon fibre top chassis plates
• 1 x 1.5mm carbon fibre main chassis plate
• 2 x 3mm carbon fibre side plates (notched to indicate cam angle, 45, 55 and 65 degrees)
• Fasteners
• 4 x 16mm M3 button cap bolts
• 4 x 12mm M3 button cap bolts
• 4 x 8mm M3 button cap bolts
• 4 x M3 aluminium nylock nuts
• 2 x 20mm aluminium standoff
• 4 x press nuts
• Fasteners have been matched up together in separate packets to make it easier to assemble the frame.
• Miscellaneous
• 1 x Battery Pad (low density foam, keeps it light, self-adhesive backing keeps it in place)
• 1 x Zip-tie pack
• Stickers!!!!

Recommendation

 AUW

This frame is designed for racing!

This is not a proximity or acro frame for chopping down trees and concrete pillars. If you are looking for something like this, perhaps have a look at either Yeti or Taboo.

You should aim for a AUW of between 255-265grams. Be mindful of the electronics you select for this frame and the weight added to it by ancillaries, often not necessary.

 The response and feel of this frame is something truly awesome at low AUW's and it is more than possible to get the AUW weight below 250 grams with some careful planning and component selection.

We do not recommend using anything bigger than a 2206 size motor and a 1300mAh battery!

Electronics

Lycan is designed to take a triple electronics stack, either 20x20mm or 30x30mm, and either a 14x14mm or 19x19mm camera.

Please contact us, we would love to hear from you!

If you have any questions or comments, or you would like to get more details and info about Lycan or anything else we do, please get hold of us, else email us at mail@fridayfpv.com

We do understand that nothing in this life is perfect, but we do constantly try to improve, refine and better what we have done previously. We would love to hear your experience, both good and bad.

Cheers,

Dave

The Full Story

Let’s start at the very beginning.

This frame was developed in conjunction with team pilots Devon Barnett (aka. HolyHavok) and Jonatan Sanchez Echevarria (aka. Jonylito FPV).

Jony and Dev, approached me with only one requirement for their frame, they wanted to go fast, really, really fast!

After much discussion, the design brief was simple, well to them, they wanted the electronics to be held in place with no frame at all basically, but the frame must also protect their entire electronics stack and camera in a bad crash.

Hmmmm.........

So, with Dev and Jony both really happy with the design brief they had given me, I sat back scratching my head for some time, not entirely sure where to start. Never one to back down from a challenge, I set off with pen and sketch pad in hand to try and track down the illusive unicorn these two crazy pilots had just given me!

Enter Lycan, this tiny little frame was developed over about 8 months, with countless failed ideas and prototypes under its belt.

Before we even set out on this path, I had a couple of questions Dev and Jony needed to answer. Namely, this frame is purpose built for racing, does True-X, Stretched-X or Compressed-X make a difference and if so, how much? Secondly,  a pure race specific designed frame, how much should it weight? As little as possible or is there a good middle ground we are shooting for?

Jony was more concerned about weight, Dev wanted something super light but wasn't entirely sure about the whole true, stretched and compressed frame planform  that the FPV community so fiercely debated.

 Jony got a super skinny, super light frame to test, Dev got a geometry adjustable frame based on Apex to test. After about a month of testing, going backwards and forwards between frames, weights and planforms, I got the answers I needed.

Although the shape-shifting frame Dev was testing was pretty heavy you could change its geometry really quickly and without affecting anything else of the frame. At full stretch the frame was ridiculously long and narrow and visa versa for the compressed-X, this ridiculously exaggerated geometry would definitely give us answers to this debate.

Dev could definitely pick out the differing geometries of the frame, even on a blind test where he was given his own frame without knowing the configuration, he could still notice the difference, so this wasn't just in his head. The problem was, Dev would get used to how the frame flew in any configuration within the first 30 seconds of the first pack. He wasn't convinced the physically geometry had such a big influence over flight handling that flight control settings couldn't replicate with no additional weight added to the frame due to the extra long arms.

 Dev wanted to go light, at all costs!

 Jony had been racing his Taboo airframe for some time now and had just recently gone over to Apex, he loved this drop in weight and liked the further drop in weight to the skinny ultra-light prototype he had just started flying. Jony's decision was simple, he loved the light weight airframe over anything else he had flown.

So with the first phase to testing completed, both Jony and Dev had confirmed that a lower weight frame was more important to them over any other single defining aspect to the frame.

So, weight would be the number one goal, with frame geometry being whatever it ended up being, to get the lightest frame configuration possible.

What I wanted to add to this frame would be as much equipment protection as possible, without sacrificing this unicorn type blistering performance both Jony and Dev were craving.

Lastly, from past experience we have come to understand the importance of race frame simplicity. This was the main focus and goal, on-par with low weight, when we designed Apex, and this has proven itself over and over again.

 So with all that said, I listed what would be most important for us to achieve, listed most to least important below. 

Capturing the unicorn

1. Light weight and aggressive performance

2. Equipment protection

3. Simplicity

Skipping forward about 6 months and about 5 iterations of prototypes we finally found a recipe which ticks all the boxes we were looking for.

Hope you enjoy!

Please note the photos for this product were taken during final prototyping, finish, component flow, fastener colour and selection may change without notification!