I had been searching for a racing drone frame for a few months, the Fury 5X Lite really caught my eyes with its unique design and impressive spec, so I decided to give it a try.

Further Reading: What differences does an ultralight racing drone make?

What’s Special about the Fury 5X Lite?

The Fury 5X Lite is a 5″ mini quad frame, which is basically the stripped-down version of the original Fury 5X. It weighs just over 50g assembled, which is pretty amazing that DemonRC pulled this off using all carbon fibre. Many other light weight frames often use 3D-printed canopy that can break easily in a crash, and just looks ugly.

Further Reading: Learn about the basics of mini quad frame in this guide.

I think DemonRC was being generous and sent me more spare parts than a standard frame kit :) All the parts are separated and well packaged.

The arms are 4mm thick, with the motor mount simplified to have only 2 holes to keep the weight to a bare minimum. Bottom and top plates are 1.5mm thick.

The carbon edges are not chamfered… But i guess it won’t make sense to invest in chamfering all the edges while you might have to replace broken arms frequently, because things break a lot easier on a skinny frame like this.

Anyway, if you fancy chamfered edges here is how you can do it yourself.

The frame layout is a symmetrical “pure X” with 195mm motor to motor distance.

Most of the times we will be using a fairly fragile micro FPV camera in these light weight builds in order to further save weight, and camera protection often is poor in these light weight racing frames. I am excited to see the FPV camera is fully protected in the Fury Lite.

Another great feature is the support for the GoPro session HD camera.

The Fury frame comes with foam pad for mounting your battery under the frame, so it won’t get scratched or punctured by the screw heads. This is an excellent addition, but I wish it was a “sticky rubber” pad which can hold the battery more tightly.

Limitation with the Fury 5X Lite Frame

The more I look at the Fury Lite, the more I like it, it’s light as a feather and the design is just beautiful and unique.

However you only truly get to know the frame and realize the downsides after building and using it more.

There is definitely a trade off between weight and frame size. I love the fact that this thing is only 50g, but it also means the frame is so compact, it won’t be compatible with certain hardware, for example:

You can only use micro size cameras

4in1 ESC with wide “tabs” might not fit

Your stack height has to be really tight, I mean, really really tight (<15mm)

It was really hard to find info about the Fury frame on the internet, build logs and photos are non-existent. It would be nice if there are more guidance on how to build it, and recommendation of components that would work well with the frame (since there are so many restrictions).

The first challenge I had was fitting the Holybro 30A 4in1 ESC, somehow it’s just too big for the Fury to fit.

Luckily I managed to remove the corners of the ESC to get it fit perfectly.

The next issue I encountered was the stack height limitation. It’s impossible to fit the stack in the frame with the original standoffs. So I had to get creative and found a way to fit this stack using some different hardware.

I will show you how I did it in the build log below :)

Building the Fury 5X Lite

Parts list:

The Kakute F4 isn’t the best choice for this frame, because the soft-mounted gyro and ribbon cable require extra room otherwise they can come in contact with the frame. It’s possible to do but it’s just more challenging :)

In order to mount the Kakute F4 and 4in1 ESC stack in this frame, you will need to get some 14mm screws to replace the original 10mm for the FC stack. You will also need to make the 5mm standoffs shorter, I used sand-paper to sand them down them to 4mm.

I used nylon nuts as spacer between the frame and ESC. But later on I realized that might be a bad idea, because if you need to replace an arm, that screw might not come out that easily because of the nylon nut. I should really have used a non-threaded spacer instead.

I Installed the 4in1 ESC, put the 4mm standoffs on, and finally installed the FC on top.

The stack is perfect, we have more than enough clearance between the Gyro, ribbon cable and the frame.

Note that the flight controller and the ESC’s are both rotated 180 degree, so that the Gyro ribbon cable doesn’t get in the way of the FPV camera. I had to add a 180 degree offset to yaw axis in Betaflight, and remap motor outputs using resource remapping.

After making sure the electronics are going to fit, I began building the frame! First off, mounting the motors. Because we are only using 2 screws for each motor, threadlocker glue is a must! Also put your battery strap on before installing the ESC.

Soldering the motors to the ESC, and the XT60 connector and low ESR capacitor (470uF 35V in this case).

I don’t normally recommend soldering the XT60 connector straight on the PDB or FC, we should use some short wires in between which allows the wires to bend in crashes and won’t stress or damage the boards. But to save weight I decided to take the risk and direct solder them together.

Soldering the rest of the electroincs: FC, RX, VTX and FPV camera, and we are done with soldering!

In order to mount the micro camera, you will need to use the rubber o-rings that come with the kit. The reason for that is because the frame body is 20mm wide, while the width of the camera is only 19mm. (I guess DemonRC couldn’t find any 19mm standoffs :) )

This seriously increases the difficult of building, especially repairing, because you have to take apart the whole camera cage first every time you want to remove the camera.

After mounting the camera, and installing the “cage”, I decided to mount the RX on the top plate.

This is how I fixed the RX and VTX antennas with zip-ties and heatshrink tubes, works well every time!

And finally I added some liquid tape on the XT60 solder joints and the leads of the cap to prevent accidental short circuits.

And it’s done! :)

Oh, did I mention the quad only weighs 212g?! :D It’s pretty good considering we have some 27g 2205 motors on there, and 30A ESC!

Flight footage coming soon…

Conclusion – Is the Fury Lite For You?

If you are a hardcore racer, the Fury is worth considering for its extreme lightweight and awesome design. I am also really happy with the frame quality! The flight performance is just phenomenon, probably one of the best quad I have flown :)

But, it’s not for everyone.

if you are relatively new to mini quad flying, maybe you want to consider something easier to build and more resistant to crashes, such as the Martian II :D For me, the Fury 5X Lite isn’t the hardest frame to build , but it was certainly a challenge getting everything to fit.

The first impression I get flying this quad is how floaty it is! A little bit of increase in throttle the quad just shoots up in the air, and it seems I can stay inverted for longer. It takes a while to get used to the high responsiveness and power.

After about 10 flights, I broken an arm, the top top, and one of the aluminium on the standoff just stripped.