From the sales trends that I noticed (more on this in another post), the winter season brings extra good deals to chinese retailers. This time around, banggood is having a deal on quad frames. One was particularly interesting to me – a Martian_S frame by URUAV for $9.99. Martian series are a clone of Impulse RC Alien frames. In this case the Martian_S is more commonly known as Martian II made by other chinese frame cloners such as Realacc. Martian frames are probably my favorite frames, as they fly well, are durable, have ample room for the build and have arms that are wide enough to mount ESCs (I am not a fan of 4-in-1s). At $10 I could not resist, and I ordered one.
Frame arrived in a week and a half, which is unusually fast for banggood. It came in a ziploc bag with no instructions whatsoever. The frame is a little weird in a way that it does not use straight up carbon fiber like in other Martian frame. Instead it uses a sandwich-style construction, where some weird white foam is sandwiched between two layers of carbon fiber. The only other frame I have seen that is built like this is Holybro Kopis 2. The stiffness of parts feels about the same as pure carbon fiber, and it feels lighter. However, I have no idea what it does to durability.
Carbon layers on arms appear to be cut correctly, with fibers running directly the length of the arm and across the arm. The thickness of arms is 4.27mm, top plate is 1.45 mm and bottom plate is 2.06 mm. The built frame weighs 107.5g. All carbon pieces fit well together and stiffness of the frame feels the same as Realacc Martian II (pure carbon). I am interested in building this one up to see how it holds up. So far it seems decent for the price and may be good for a beater frame. Durability, however, remains suspect.
Dimensions compared to Realacc Martian II:
| URUAV Martian_S | Realacc Martian II | |
| Arms | 4.27 mm | 4.00 mm |
| Top Plate | 1.45 mm | 1.51 mm |
| Bottom Plate | 2.06 mm | 1.71 mm |
You can get it HERE. Use code “martians” at checkout. It can be used only once per banggood account. If you would like to order more than one, just make another banggood account with a throwaway email.
PS. Not sure how they counted the hardware to be included with the frame, but most of it is included as extra.
Somehow there are no durability reports for this frame. Strange, that it didn’t get popular. I like it very much. Feels very stiff and durable.
BTW. Those extra parts are mount for antenna and plate for RX/VTX mounting on the stack.