Note that I'm rigging the motors top-side too, as this makes the drone wholly easier to work on, set as it is around elbow-height. I shall be rigging it as a straight quad tho' as it will be evident to all concerned that the drone can as easily be configured as an X-8 octocopter by merely subbing a four-way tube-connector for the three-way seen here.
The frame at foot-level I've retained however, albeit minus the four stubs used to fix the motors in place. My gut-feeling is that an octocopter driven from top and bottom would be altogether more manoeuvrable than one with all eight motors top-side, tho' finding out is by no means an inexpensive exercise.
I think what we're trying to showcase here is that human beings can ~ and will ~ one day be lofted skywards in something not at all unlike a piece of street-furniture in the shape of a phone-box... and then my work, like that of Shane, will be done here.
Incidentally ~ as we're learning-by-doing ~ the one fly in the ointment in all this is that the wires do not emerge from the motor facing the way I'd want. Going forward this is solved by tightening the M8 foot-plate fully, and afterward removing and re-orienting the threaded tube-insert prior to fixing; better than leaving the motor-mount loosely tightened, when torque-reaction might loosen it altogether during operation.
