Going for a spin on the motorbike tomorrow (out to Abergavenny, turn left and head up to the Keeper's Pond in Blaenavon), so gonna grab my little X4 and try to get some decent footage up in the Brecon Beacons.
Boo, too windy up at the Keeper's Pond for my puny little X4 . It would have been underwater within seconds!
better to live another day..... just one more battery never ends well! in other news, I decided to start my second LoFlo last night. Happy where I got to so far.. Also using an f4 fc that I havent used before and cant find an exact pinout for..
Something a little different on the bench today... A baby TriCopter. Always fancied one of these but never pulled the trigger on one. A guy I fly with got this a while ago and has never been able to get it to fly right so I said I would have a look for him. Firmware flash, new motor and esc, fixed the broken buzzer (need it to tune the tail) basic tail tune and setup and a quick hover in the courtyard and its ready for the field to dial in the PID tune and tail tune. Looking forward to flying this!
Another day, another update. Nothing to special this time. Thought it was about time to update the firmware on my Laforge Diversity receivers from V1.7 to V2.1... Plugged in the USBasp and flashed away including custom boot screen.. I love what you can do in this hobby!
Brrrrr, I want to get back flying. The freedom one feels when flying is amazing. Before I can get a second hand Mavic pro, I'm thinking to just buy a cheap tiny-whoop-like toy to play in-doors. Anyone have any knowledge of Chinese quad scene? What would be a good Chinese made tiny quad? My parents are visiting China next month, I can use this opportunity to buy from Taobao. These Chinese made electronics are very cheap on Taobao, for example, a Mavic pro from DJI official Taobao shop costs 6500 CNY = 740 GBP (would have been £650 before the referendum )
I really need to find a decent site to get out and fly. The local parks are too busy and too close to residential areas for aerial photography. I can't think of anywhere quiet and out of the way that isn't up a mountain somewhere (where it would be windy). Might not be much help here, but most of these nano quads you see all over ebay/amazon/etc are probably all clones of each other. I don't really have much experience with any of the really tiny ones TBH - my Hubsan X4 is the smallest thing I've ever flown.
The best tiny quad on the market atm is the Emax babyhawk. 85mm of brushless fun. Can be used indoors and outdoors. Going to be a good weekend. Our group is having a day at the model rail track before winter sets in. Its a brutal place to fly in terms of breakages but its just so much fun. I will be going armed with 3x5inch quads and im taking a 180 basher. I expect to break at least one... maybe two depending on how hard I push.
These are two videos that I recorded with the Mavic Pro. No editing, other than stitching sections of video together as I was in a bit of a rush to get them ready. Really want to get a set of Polar Pro Cinema Series ND filters. This is a test of the new "Fixed Wing" mode that the Mavic can now do.
Haha, yeah, I wish! Even at £700, it's a lot of money for a toy that will be out of date in a few months time. Like my computer and photography hobby, I prefer buying second hand when a newer generation comes out works best for me. £300-400 sounds about right for the epicness of Mavic the toy for me. As someone who've only dealt with Phantoms, I'm a bit confused. These small crafts for hobbist, do they usually come with TX remote? there's no mention of remote or battery. https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a230r.1.14.84.o0dO0i&id=549342881246&ns=1&abbucket=6#detail
Correct. You can grab a Turnigy Evolution and a receiver and away you go. A set of cheap DIY box goggles and a boscam receiver and you can have the full fpv experience without breaking the bank.
The term "toy" was thrown around a lot before the Mavic became properly released and it's anything but to be honest. I've flown in 35km/h winds at an industrial site as part of a site visit and it performs amazingly well. The light weight and small size might make some people think it's a toy, but the camera, the flight controller and battery life (along with all the functionality) makes for a genuinely useful tool for aerial photography. With 3 batteries I managed to get 2 photogrammetry missions done, surveying (imagery) and site inspections done in Spain 2 weeks ago. Something I could never have done with the P2V+. I would have needed about 5 batteries to get that lot done with the P2.
Well the trains was a bust.. both literally and figuratively Killed a Steele motor on my main quad and a cam on another. I was flying like a bag of c%$p. Had zero confidence and didnt enjoy it all! Well you win some and loose some... time to repair and jump back in the saddle!
Went for a stroll around Pontypool Park while visiting my mum earlier and I took my little X4 with me. I hit: A lamp post A rugby pitch score board (this is not a small object...) A dry ski slope (to be fair I was trying to avoid a tree and I'd lost sight of the quad's orientation before I lost control and binned it) Three trees The last tree was one too many and this happened when it fell to the ground: I only managed to kill one propeller but that arm is totally dead! I managed to hover over a lake perfectly smooth yet I pranged a whacking great score board...! Good thing I've got a spare body shell; it should be a case of just swapping the innards over to the new body shell, but I might take this opportunity to replace the motors. Because I crashed it so much I lost half of the recordings . I'll go through the footage that remains and try to get it up on YouTube. It seems we've both been killing quads .
Thanks for the links. That's still a bit of money, I was thinking under £100 for everything. Well, you are earning money off it, that doesn't place the drone into toy category. But I'm buying and flying purely for pleasure, it's similar to my computer, my photography gear, it's all toys because they are all just a hobby. Not because the drone is less capable, it's definitely very capable
Yeah the word "toy" as applied to quadcopters is a little blurry, it's all a matter of opinion IMO. I quite often see/hear the terms "toy-grade" and "hobby-grade" in quadcopter reviews/articles but what does that even mean? Even my puny little Hubsan X4 has a 6-axis gyro-stabilised flight control system, adjustable rates, acrobatics mode, an on-board camera, and a bundled controller; yet it only costs ~£30. 5/6 years ago something like that would have easily cost north of £150. Frankly I don't really think it matters. If you have fun and enjoy flying it then who cares whether it's a toy or not . EDIT: Although to be fair, videography quads like the Mavic or the Phantom are in a totally different league.
