I am a very excited and stupid, night flying quadcopter enthusiast and this was the first time i played with RATE mode on my 250 class racing quadcopter.... its not like i hadn't lost minor things like ONE vibration damping ball or one screw (thank god i had a spare for the screw) but then i lost 2 of my landing skids.... on the same night because i lost orientation (yes i had ample lighting) and even after that crash i put on rate mode and tried to flip it, bringing the quad down with a lot of speed.... i lost 2 landing skids... i removed the two remaining landing skids and continued flying it with my PCB touching the ground nothing really happened but there was always a risk!

i found this piece of foam today that the glass repair men left behind a few days ago, it was dirty so i gave it a wash as the softness of this foam was just perfect and it was over a foot long and it wasnt very wide but 1.5 cms thick and i see people in the forums doing all sorts with foam and coro so i thought maybe i could do something too.

and then it hits me that i could make landing skids from foam!
so i traced out the motor mount part of the arms with orange sketch pen because i was in a hurry and had no other pen around me except that sketch pen...
i had to make 4 so i made 4 traces and thought of making a hot wire cutter but it was too complicated and i didn't even know what foam i was dealing with and a hot wire cutter is too complicated to make in a day

then i went on to cutting it and i realised that i don't have a foam cutter... but i can do the old hot knife trick but i had been though very bad health issues so i didn't want any vapours coming near my face! so i avoided that and went towards knives! i had a hex blade and a ceramic knife and i knew from before that i will still need means to actually get nice clean and proper fittings and edges!

i then thought i could sand it and i had some thick grain sandpaper and a 120 think grain sandpaper.
but sanding is a time consuming way if u want to reduce so much mass so i cut the traced out foam as close to the orange border as i could!

I then decided to make a sanding stick using all fix and a wooden stick in such a way that while sanding i don't sand my own hands...
It is a perfect fit in the palm and u can switch it to what side you are using and the backside is just wood!

then i went ahead and did the sanding! it was time consuming buy gave me the final product!

u will know The sanding is done when u cannot see any orange. Just to recheck with the fit .compare it to your quad arms and if it sits almost perfectly leave it there and start with the next one, after say 30 minutes you will have all 4 foam skids ready to glue on to the quadcopter...
sorry, none of them are similar and none of them fit perfectly  i was terrible at sanding such a thick foam piece
sorry people with OCD,



And now the toughest bit to figure out! what glue to use... the motor had been mounted and i didn't want any glue to fall into the motor so i tried hot glue-ing it directly to the arms but for some reason the foam wouldn't stick... so i did the reverse

the reverse had a few challenges, what if the hot glue went in the motor, what if it was blocking the shaft from rotating? and then i found out that it would take the impression of something obstructing its surface to a limit and i used it to my advantage

this gave me a basic idea of where the hot glue is to be applied and where it isn't and i could tackle the problem easily!

Not all i had to do was to align the screw impressions and i was done.... or was i?
shaking the landing skid around i found out that they would have there little gaps near the screws where it was clear that it would compromise the landing skid, so i put glue on the joint and after dipping my finger in water for 2 seconds, spread the hot glue by hand, this pushed the hot glue inside the cracks and i could beautify it a little but i was impatient!

the quad finally looked like this from underneath, i can paint radium colours on the skids for orientation so i wont loose these landing skids at least!

nice one dude