Drones. Who's got what?

That makes me proud to be an American.

 

Nope. We got all caught up in having the new RV built. Time and money became short, pretty quickly.

 

OK, I'm not "Bob", but I just bought one....the Bebop 2 with the skycontroller black edition. I received it Friday, too late to fly it after getting the batteries charged and reading a bit about it and how to hook up to it, etc. I flew it yesterday (remember, this is my first ever drone/UAV), and was pretty cautious with it.....slow and easy. It is a ton of fun to fly, it's rock solid/stable, and battery life is in the 22-23 minutes range. I can't compare it to any others, since it's my first one, although the thing that caused me to buy one is after flying my brother-in-law's Phantom 3 standard Thanksgiving weekend, a couple of times. I've got a lot of the controls "dialed back" so that it doesn't get away from me and crash because of my lack of experience, so in that regard, the FreeFlight Pro app is awesome and allows you to notch it up when your capabilities get better. I've also got two more batteries ordered, as one just isn't enough. It comes with two, but of course the skycontroller needs one of them, so when the new ones get here, I'll have three available for flying. In my opinion, it's a great starter unit, but yet capable enough to to be pretty fast and agile. I'm sure there are others out there that would make this one look like a Moto3 bike in the MotoGP race, but as a beginner flyer, it's a very good choice for someone just starting out.

BTW, the ebay seller where I bought mine, still has the package that I purchased for $299.....great price for what you are buying.

 

Don’t let it get over the ridge or you will never see it again.

 

I don't know enough about them yet to know whether you are serious or not. It's suppose to RTH if it loses the connection with the controller, as long as you made sure that the GPS function had a lock when you took off. No worries though, at least for now.....I'm keeping it within sight and staying pretty close to my location.....trying not to crash it right off the bat!

 

Thanks for sharing your experience, xrated....also for cluing me in on the skycontroller using one of the batteries.....

I purchased the Power Adventurer kit which only includes 2 batteries so it looks like I'll need at least one other but also has the FPV goggles and carry case. Should arrive today...I'll give my review in a few days. I will say tho, I read a LOT of great reviews on this model so I think we done good. The only real feature the Mavic has that I wish was standard in all higher priced drones, is the obstacle avoidance....if that is real, that's pretty awesome.

I came VERY close to just biting the bullet and going with the DJI Mavic but I didn't feel like spending twice the cost of this one for a similarly packaged Mavic....esp with Xmas shopping/spending amongst us. Dang how expensive some of the man toys are getting.

 

XFBO......if you are going to buy an extra battery or batteries, BHphotovideo.com has the OEM batteries (MSRP $69) for......$55.40 each for the white stripe ones, and $61.xx for the red stripe ones. And honestly, I thought about some of the aftermarket batteries (mostly cheap Chinese made I'm guessing) and just decided to go with OEM stuff. I've read a couple of reviews on some of the brands of aftermarket stuff and some folks say that they are OK, others curse them as junk.

So, congrats on the new drone. I've already been out flying mine twice today, and have the battery on charge for another round. Adding two more batteries to the loop, should almost allow me to keep flying between battery changes.

 

I still have a DJI Phantom 3 Standard.

I have had it a while and it does everything I need and has never given me a problem except when I flew it to far with the wind and it could not get back before the battery died. It shoots in 2.7k which looks great. It is not 4K but I can't tell that big a diff at all.

If it is for a hobby you can get a lot of bang for the buck. You can get a factory refurb for $399.

I put a video from it on the youtube thread from when Matthew cam thru here and we had some flooding down the street.

 

OK so I wound returning the Parrot Bebop2 I had purchased in December, I had non-stop connection issues that rendered the FPV option useless. And that was just flying it around my property (1ac) so I can't imagine ever having had a successful flight pushing it's 1 mile claim. I was kinda torn on sending it back because I REALLY liked their FlightPlan option, sucked that I had to buy that separately ($20) via the app store but for the little bit I used it, I loved being able to preplan a route before sending her up. If I had any where near 25 minutes worth of flights on that thing, I'd say 23 were utilizing that flight plan app.

Anyhow, while at our local Costco during the holiday break, my wife noticed that they sold the DJI Mavic Pro there for a great price!

So now she got that lil bugger back in my head and a week or two later after getting frustrated over the connection issue I said F it.....and returned the Parrot and ordered the Mavic Pro.

Only came with one battery, any Mavic owners have a heads up on the where to buy accessories for this thing on the cheap?

I've only flown this thing twice for a minute or two each time. So far, it's NOT blowing my mind away, the UI is a little more confusing than what I had gotten used to with the Parrot. And if I'm not misunderstanding what I read the other day, the ONLY way to preplan a flight route is by sending her up and flying the route first...not digging that. SO I did a few searches and it looks like there might be a 3rd party vendor who makes their own UI app for this and it includes the flight plan option I grew to like with the Bebop....it's called Litchi....anyone have/use it here? Thoughts?

 

Just so you are aware, it is 100% illegal to fly a remote vehicle beyond line of sight. It doesn't mean that people don't do it, but make sure you understand the risks.

 

Picked up an Hubsan H501S based on reviews and price, about $200. Haven't flown it, yet.
GPS, RTH, altitude hold, follow me, 20 minute battery life and some other features.
YouTubes showed promise...