WREKD Hoku: Ultralight Carbon-Fiber airframes

The Hoku race frame is my attempt create the perfect True-X drone racing frame, incorporating complex internal features for arm interlocking to balance rigidity and weight.

Why?

After years of trying different drone frames that are readily available on the market, I realized that while there are many amazing options to choose from, almost every one of them lacks something or has flaws that make them inconvenient in certain scenarios. For some, the arms (longest carbon parts that hold the motors) delaminate too easily, or they are next to impossible to maintain or repair in the field, and others are too heavy or cannot be tuned aggressively. At some point, I decided to just create my own frame that would be a good balance of features and suit my needs well.

V1 Design & Launch

The Hoku V1 works so well because of a key feature: the keystone and longitudinal beam interlocking system. The arms mesh together into a V-shape channel in both ends of a bowtie-shaped carbon piece that runs from end to end of the frame body. Each arm has half of a countersunk screw hole, allowing the arms to be compressed into the beam piece with a single screw, which when tightened will eliminate any play in the frame over time regardless of manufacturing tolerances or wear. This design allows for easy assembly and disassembly, as well as quick field repairs if you do break almost any part. That is less likely to happen with this design because it does not use overlapping milled arm joints like many frames on the market, all of which are prone to significantly earlier delamination and breakage.

This interlocking system is completely unique to the Hoku frame line, and offers more benefits than just durability. The compression system creates a structure that is rigid both laterally and longitudinally, reducing flex and improving resonant performance, allowing for extreme tuning and less gyroscope or D-term filtering.

The Hoku V1 was launched at MultiGP International Open in 2024, and has been a huge success, selling out multiple batches. In a little over a year, the Hoku V1 has won the Collegiate Drone Racing Association (CDRA) championship twice and Canadian Drone Nationals, taken multiple spots in the Top-16 at international races, and has been in the hands of Saudi VIPs at the World Drone Racing Cup. Only a couple of months after the release, I began work on the Hoku V2, with many of the same features but in a reimagined form factor with invaluable customer feedback integrated.

V2 Design & Launch

Coming soon!

Manufacturing

The Hoku are manufactured in China by our partner factory for sales at WREKD, which allows us to package clean-cut high-quality carbon fiber components with the assortment of hardware needed to assemble the frame. We experimented with different carbon types and fiber geometries to find the optimal combination for our frames, and include a combination of 12.9 Steel and Aluminum screws to save weight where applicable.

This project has been a wonderful collaborative effort with WREKD, and has helped me to hone my skills as a product developer and designer while working with international factories. Creating products that make a meaningful impact on the drone racing community has been a passion of mine, and I am excited to continue doing so in the future.

More Information

For more information about the Hoku, visit the WREKD product page.