This is a budget frame with a curved aluminum chassis. While the carbon quality isn't spectacular, it's slightly thicker than 4mm, so that should translate to higher durability. It's a really tight fit, but the stack is well protected. Also, because of this, you're limited to an AIO flight controller/ESC board or a PDB flight controller with individual ESCs. I don't think you can fit two boards, a VTX and RX in there. Other than that this is a great looking, compact frame.

Dry weight 328g Build difficulty Easy - Moderate

Wiring the Motors

I chose the DYS Storms not only to match the purple, but for the long wires. I don't know why more motor manufacturers don't use longer wires, especially with the influx of 4-in-1 boards on the market. The first thing you'll want to do is screw the motors to the arms. I generally start with a couple screws each so I can loosen them later. This is mainly to get the shrink tube over the paracord and flush with the base of the motors. If you aren't using paracord you can go ahead and screw all the motors down with blue loctite.

You might notice that the flight controller is designed for a rear-facing power lead and and front-facing USB. This isn't good because it'll be impossible to connect to your computer after the build is complete. The best way to mount it is to rotate it 90 degrees with the USB and power tab to the sides. You'll need to run your motors wires under the board, but the end result is much cleaner.

Before soldering the motors it might be a good idea to add the XT60 connector to the power tab. Snip two pieces of 12awg or 14awg wire to about 2cm and solder them to your XT60. Slide some shrink tube over the joints and melt it on. Now mount the flight controller to the frame and bend the power leads up into the circular wells holding them in place with the weight of the frame. Add some liquid soldering flux and fill the pools until you've got a nice smooth dome covering the wires.

Now can dress up the motor wires with paracord or wire mesh or just tape them down to the arms. The wires need to enter under the flight controller and around the standoffs. I found them a little easier to manage with some double sided tape on the baseplate. This will keep them out of the way when you mount the flight controller. Cut the wires to the edge of the frame and bend them back up to each pad with some tweezers to solder.

Wiring the RX and FPV gear

Wire the RX according to the photos. Once you've got it in place you should bind it to your transmitter. Double check your main power leads for continuity and power up your rig. Don't forget this step because you don't want to bury your RX only to dig it out later to bind.

Protect your VTX with some large shrink tube or electrical tape. There's a good chance it'll short in that tight aluminum space. Solder the VTX power input to the flight controller and relay 5v to the camera through VTX. This ensures you won't need to doubling up any wire on those tiny flight controller pads. Attach your camera to a single side panel to cut the wire to size, but don't build the entire canopy. It won't go on in one piece, so you need to attached it one side at a time. Once you've wired the VTX and camera you should apply power to set your VTX channel before you close everything up. After everything is in place you can shrink tub the RX antennas to zipties on the arms.

BetaFlight Configuration

A few adjustments need to be made to accommodate our board layout. First you'll want to update your firmware. I chose Betaflight 3.2. Once you've done that go to the Configuration tab, find "Board and Sensor Alignment" and if your power tab is on the left as I did you need to enter "90" beside "Yaw Degrees". Leave everything "Default" on the right. Save and reboot and confirm that the orientation is correct by moving your quad and watching the 3D model on the Setup screen.

I decided to go "props-out" on this build. What that means is the typical clockwise/counter-clockwise configuration is reversed. So motor 1 (back right) is CCW and motor 2 is CW and so-forth. What this does is is push the props out like a breaststroke swimmer. The advantages are that you'll push away from trees or gates rather than pull in and you won't pull grass and debris in toward your lens. The disadvantage is you'll spray grass all over your stack, but this frame does a nice job of covering the stack. To set this up you just need to ensure the motors are spinning the proper direction and, if you're using Betaflight 3.2, go to the Configuration tab, look for the Mixer with the quad image and select "Motor direction is reversed".

Since we rotated the flight controller the motor positions won't match the ESC diagram. What's great about BetaFlight is that you can re-arrange them via the CLI. What I normally do is open the motors tab (without props!), apply battery power to the rig and spin each motor. I take note of which motor is spinning and where it should be then I go to the CLI and type "resource" to get the resource IDs. Then it's just a matter of re-mapping them to the proper positions. Here is what I used:

resource MOTOR 1 B09 resource MOTOR 2 A02 resource MOTOR 3 B08 resource MOTOR 4 A03

Here is a general checklist to follow when configuring BetaFlight:

Flash firmware to the latest version.

Configure battery settings for voltage and current monitoring.

Use resource commands to order the motors.

Use BLHeli Configurator to set motor rotation.

Bind TX/RX and ensure the Receiver tab is properly configured.

Set switches to arm and change modes.

Configure OSD.

Set your rates.

Use camera OSD to adjust your camera settings

Conclusion

This is a neat frame. The canopy is very compact, even more compact than the Japalura. I prefer the look over the Japalura, but the carbon quality isn't quite there. Armattan excels in that department. Since this is a more compact frame, the lens is quite exposed. You can avoid this with a 1.8mm lens, but that option doesn't exist for the Eagle 2. You'll need to use a different camera such as the Runcam Swift 2. This isn't a lightweight build weighing in at 328g, but these 2207 motors provide more than enough power to carry an HD cam. All-in-all this was a pretty easy build. I loved that I didn't need to extend the motor wires and the AIO board saved a fair bit of time.