Hi all. I'm brand new to the forum and am humbled by what you are all doing. I've been a DP in the business for 20 years and am just getting into the aerial work. I have clients asking me to do aerials and am ready to buy with an eye toward the HL just rolled out at NAB. I too believe the best time to start is now given you never know exactly when new product will roll out and when the software will be truly ready. With that in mind, I'm hoping you all might give me some advice as to how you would proceed with buying your first kit. I want to buy as much gear as I can that will move forward when i upgrade to the HL with the Movi. I know there is a ton so here are the key points I'd love advice on... 1. Is the MX20 the way to go? Will this serve me well with non Microcopter FC's? 2. Does anyone have a client side HD downlink they'd recommend that has the range? 3. Should I get longer booms straight away to enable my Flight control/motor changeout? Can I just get the bigger motors right away? 4. Is there a real need for goggles? Is that a good place to put money, and which one? 5. Should I just buy bigger batteries or is that determined by the FC software? 6. What is the one thing you think I should really pay attention to starting out? Ok i'll stop now. I need to go make my avatar for my postings... first things first! Thanks in advance for any advice, and I look forward to becoming a new member of your community here. Steve.
Hi Steve, I just went through what you are about too and can offer you some advice from someone who started out "green" as you are. I'm not on here much but you can add me to your skype im superdavez on there. But to answer some of your questions, I went with the graupner system because its german and I figured the best... it seems there might be simpler options out there at a more reasonable price if you don't need all the bells this thing has, not to mention it will take you a week to really learn what this can do. (perhaps longer) You must also decide if you want to go microcopter or DJI for your flight control, I am with DJI at the moment and it seems pretty solid for the time being however time will tell and I might goto microcopter on my next build. Your graupner can pull telemetry data right from the microcopter setup without adding huge expenses such as DJI Downlinks and Telemetry kit. You can also get the waypoints included with microcopter so I hear where you have to pay for DJI waypoints. As for the heavylift kit.The way I see it now that I have spent over 10k on cinestar stuff, I would strongly consider looking around at other options. The big expenses are the motors, radio, and flight control. The frame kits realistically are made of carbon fiber poles / half rings and stainless nuts and bolts that can all be procured really inexpensively. I am in the middle of cnc'g my own hubs to use with conventional carbon fiber poles as that is the real magic here. Your hub is the centre point and the weight/pressure point of the craft. The booms In my opinion only need to be longer to permit larger props + more lift. Two MAJOR things to consider are camera technology.** as this improves, you might have an overkill craft. People seem to want HL to lift scarlets and the like. If you can get away with 5D's you dont need such a big craft. Think about your use first. Secondly Battery technology. As this improves your crafts will fly longer, the good news here is that it really doesnt matter what you are flying today, as time goes on it WILL fly longer as the technology improves. in short, after building from scratch with the help of the people on here, sincerely don't think you need to spend 10k to build a heavy lift option with a good gimbal. it can be done much cheaper; that being said if you are wealthy and just want to get in the air, I would suggest buing a prebuilt machine and paying someone to teach you all about how to fly it, and how to set everything up. To do this properly I would need a week however we all learn at different paces. Hope this helps! Dave
Steven, Welcome to the FF Forum! My strong advice is to consider the level of support vs. costs. Most of the folks here are flying some variation of the Quadrocopter RTF birds with Mikrokopter electronics and Graupner radios. There are certainly folks who've gone off on their own with different configurations, and I applaud their efforts. Some have done it to save money, others have done so to enhance performance. But if you're new to this field (and most of us are), you'll quickly find that we're still very much in a bootstrapping, startup mode, so support is critical. And this forum has proven to be an amazing, helpful, and informative place. Good luck, and tally ho! Steve
I think David's advice is sound. Re-stating it slightly: Money is a labor saving device. Thus, if you have the funds available, you can get into the air faster by buying a ready to fly. That said, I notice that Quadrocopter are now offering what appears to be an excellent compromise: You buy a kit and you buy their assistance at their shop to help you build it. This has the best of both worlds in that (a) you end up with a solidly built copter (they literally look over your shoulder see http://www.quadrocopter.com/In-House-Build_ep_85-1.html) (b) you know how to maintain the copter when you're done. That maintenance aspect is pretty critical. I suspect you will be constantly "fettling" (that is tweaking, modifying, testing, adjusting) the copter. It's likely to be a permanent work in progress as you keep it in top condition. Furthermore, I have a sneaking suspicion (this is purely speculation) that the FAA, when it issues regulations, will require the copters and possibly the propellers, as well as the pilots, to have log books and be inspected periodically. Thus, you might well want to be able to do all of this work yourself. Graupner is also a good choice -- the integration with the MK telemetry is, as David again rightly points out, very useful. There are two separate systems, you can use the MK voice response to speak certain flight critical data at you, or you can use the Graupner system to speak other flight critical data. Personally, I went with the MK board set because that seemed to be the default at the time == this was way back in May of 2012 (this industry is moving so fast, that actually is a long time ago!) There is certainly some merit, right now, in holding off and buying the HL. You can always use an HL to lift smaller cameras whereas the converse is not true. While you're waiting you might consider (a) buying a copy of AeroSimRC and the Graupner MX20 so that you can learn to fly copters on a simulator, and (b) buying a smaller copter such as a Blade mQx to get actual flight training. The downside with the Blade mQx is that you cannot use the MX-20 to control it. You might want to consider getting a Spektrum DX6i -- I realize that QC now offers a package that includes AerosimRC and a DX5 transmitter. My concern with the DX5 is that, once you're trained, it would be nice to repurpose the Spektrum for, say, a Gimbal controller, but I wonder whether you will "outgrow" the number of radio control channels on the DX5? The Spektrum DX6i is available for $140 without a receiver on Amazon. Hope this helps. Andy.