Can a single-cell FPV quadcopter really cover five kilometers and stay airborne for half an hour?
That is the question a builder going by Mediocre Nerd set out to answer with Swift, a 1S long-range quad designed from a blank sheet. Most 1S machines are cheap, feather-light toys that land after four or five minutes because their tiny LiPo packs run out of both capacity and voltage. Swift keeps the 1S simplicity and attacks the endurance problem instead, and the result flew past the 30-minute mark on one test at 34 minutes.
The answer turned out to be wiring, not motors
Swapping the usual flat LiPo for cylindrical lithium-ion cells did most of the work. An 18650 cell gives roughly 20 minutes of cruising; a fatter 21700 pushes the number past 30. But the stock nickel-plated battery contacts were quietly eating volts under load, so the tray was rebuilt with wide copper strips and 18 AWG wire. Measured against BT2.0 and XT30 arrangements, the copper tray showed noticeably less voltage sag, which means more of the stored energy actually reaches the motors instead of warming up a connector.
- Frame: 2.5 mm carbon fiber in a deadcat layout, so the front props stay out of the camera's view. Home-cut prototypes on thinner sheet kept snapping during crash tests.
- Flight controller: a Flywoo GOKO HD 1S all-in-one with 12A ESCs and an ExpressLRS receiver already on the board, which kills a lot of solder joints and wire weight.
- Motors: 1303 units at 11,500 KV. Earlier 11,000 KV and 15,000 KV attempts felt worse; the bigger stator trades KV for torque and spins the Gemfan Hurricane props more efficiently.
- Video and nav: DJI O4 Lite Air Unit, a GPS module in the canopy, and an ND filter in front of the lens to cut vibration jello.
The finished aircraft is heavier than a typical ultralight 1S quad and still hovers at about 30% throttle. Over open water it held an HD digital feed and GPS telemetry past the five-kilometer mark.
Try the cheap half of this on your bench
You do not need a drone to test the core idea. Grab any 18650 holder, solder a load resistor across it, and probe the cell terminals and the holder tabs with a multimeter while the load is on. The gap between those two readings is the voltage your contacts are stealing. Swap the nickel tab for a strip of copper and 18 AWG wire and measure again. That same trick applies to a battery-powered ESP32 logger or a robot chassis that browns out on motor startup. Full build notes and the flight video are on the Hackster writeup.
Originally published on blog.circuit.rocks.
