Kilowatt: the 3 inch unibody that replaced the Gizmo

Of everything that survives from Mode 2 FPV's catalogue, the Kilowatt is the frame with the most captured detail. Its shop page recorded a full specification sheet before the site's last real capture in 2020, which is unusual: most of the company's other frames survive only as a single quoted sentence from the open source frames page. If you are trying to identify or rebuild a Kilowatt from a photo on Thingiverse or RotorBuilds, this page has real numbers to work from.

What the Kilowatt was

It was a 3 inch micro frame, built as a single unibody main plate rather than a bolted top-and-bottom sandwich, in a 145 mm symmetrical X layout. The whole frame weighed 30 g.

• Size class3 inch
• Wheelbase145 mm, symmetrical X
• Weight30 g
• Frame bodyUnibody
• Side cage thickness2 mm
• Bottom plate thickness3 mm
• Locking tabs2 mm
• StandoffsTwo, 19 mm, aluminium
• FC mounting pattern20×20 mm
• Motor compatibility13xx / 14xx size
• Material3K matte carbon fibre
• HardwareSix stainless fasteners

What the unibody build meant

Most micro frames of this era were built from a top plate and a bottom plate bolted around a stack of standoffs, with the side arms as separate pieces clamped between them. A unibody design cuts the side cage and bottom plate from a single piece, which removes the joints where a hard landing usually starts a crack. The 2 mm side cage and 3 mm bottom plate are thin by frame standards generally, but that is normal for a 3 inch micro: less material is flying at a lower stall speed, and less weight overall is the point of the class. The 2 mm locking tabs are the detail that matters most for a builder actually working on one: if a photo you are trying to match shows tabs that look noticeably thicker or thinner than that, you are probably not looking at a Kilowatt.

The two 19 mm aluminium standoffs and the 20×20 mm flight controller mount are what tie the frame to everything bolted onto it. 20×20 mm is one of the two common mounting patterns for small flight controllers and stacks (30.5×30.5 mm is the other, used on larger builds), and a 3 inch frame built around it is committing to a genuinely small stack rather than a shrunk version of a bigger build. 13xx and 14xx are stator-size codes, the first two digits giving stator diameter in tenths of a millimetre and the second two the height. A frame specified for that range is built around small, moderate-KV motors suited to 3 inch props, not the larger motors a 5 inch freestyle build would carry.

Replacing the Gizmo

The Kilowatt did not appear in isolation. On its own shop page, Mode 2 FPV explained why it existed: "with the Gizmo gone we needed a new 3" frame." The Gizmo was an earlier 3 inch frame in the company's line, and beyond that one sentence, almost nothing about it survives in the archive. Whatever the Gizmo was, the Kilowatt is what replaced it, and it is by far the better documented of the two.

Licence and source files

Like the rest of Mode 2 FPV's frame line, the Kilowatt's design was released under the GNU GPL v3, with source named as living on GitHub and Thingiverse, per the company's own open source frames page. No GitHub repository URL for it was captured, and none has been located since, so this page will not guess at one. The one link that can be pointed at directly is Brian Welch's Thingiverse profile: thingiverse.com/mode2fpv/designs. Whether Kilowatt files specifically are still listed there is something you would need to check on the day; this archive does not claim they are.

What this page cannot say

No price, release date or production figures for the Kilowatt survive in the record this archive was built from. Nothing says how long it stayed in the catalogue, or whether it was itself eventually discontinued the way the Gizmo was before it. If you own one and the numbers above do not match what you are holding, trust the frame in your hands over this page: specification sheets get revised, and only one capture of this one survived.

For the frame it replaced, see Gizmo. For the rest of the catalogue and the GPL v3 release in full, see open source frames or the archive overview. For how a modern frame is chosen and specified, see frames.