Ok, it's time to tackle a question we've been getting asked a lot. No, we aren't going to develop wishbone/boomerang arms for the God_mode and there is a few reasons why. Here is a picture that I want to speak to as I go through the points:
Firstly, at QuadRacer we always look at market trends and see how we can incorporate them into our designs when and IF it makes sense to do so. We take our Adapt, Evolve, Dominate. slogan very literally and we are constantly making iterative changes (even if we don't always announce them).
1. Maintainability
The God_mode, among other things, was designed to be a really maintainable frame, one of the main features of this maintainability is the easy and fast replacement of arms. The wishbone arm goes against this in two key ways:
- In order to maximise strength, quick change would likely need to be removed
- Changing a double arm is a lot more time than a single arm
2. Flexibility
The God_mode allows you to be really flexible around configuration, including running a second strap front to back which would not be possible with a wishbone. Other people also do things such as run different length arms front and back etc.
3. Strength
This is the big one. The configuration of the God_mode is not a true X, nor do the arms sit at true 90 degrees relevant to each other, which means cutting a wishbone arm with respect to fibre direction for maximum strength is not possible and ultimately produces weaker individual arms (within the wishbone). This offsets any strength gains you may see in joining them at the centre.
I also have concerns with regard to other frames that people are using, that if the same circumstance is true, you may actually find the wishbone breaks easier. This won't be true for all frames which are implementing wishbone as there are ways around it, but I would encourage some critical analysis. #fibredirectionmatters
4. Cost
Wishbone arms would cost more to cut and waste a lot more space on the plate. A wishbone arm would be more than double the cost of a single arm.
5. Data
Except in very few circumstances, we haven't seen many crashes with breakages that a wishbone would have counteracted. I have seen a few crashes where both plates were broken and the arm survived indicating that the arm is stronger than the plates; we're rectifying this to some extent with changes to the base plates. In these rare cases, the frame had already sustained major crashes with and without arm breaks and the crash was so severe that there was more costly things to worry about. The cost to replace two plates is less than what a wishbone arm would be, although a little more inconvenient to do.