After a series of test flights and jobs with the A8, i´m coming to the conclusion that the A8 is State of the art Multirotor... it handles a RED and a Movi 15 like I´m flying with a GoPro... nice altitude hold on fast flying and great flight time with 2X12.000 tattos...14+ minutes landing with 21,56 volts... Some small issues encountered in the way... like it is little jumpy in high winds (no GPS, I only use it when I need to use the A8 like a crane), I need to tune it a little bit maybe... it over reacts to compensate the movement of the wind... The other thing is the case is huge!!! compared to the A6...!!! but those are things that I can actually live with it... The A8 outperforms the capacity of the M15, when I´m flying with the RED sideways @ 10 ms the pan motors can´t hold the camera... (and my pan hold is @ 270) The FPV camera position is better than the A6... protected between the booms and no exposed like the A6, the view is nice with a lot of ground and sky and the 2 arms for reference... it feels very confortable doing shots in FPV only. The flight of the bird is rock solid, giving a lot of confidence to the pilot, and the scream the blades mades when doing a high speed shot is incredible... I really like the way it climbs, in one of my latest flights it was a requirement to take a 90 degree down footage of a YERBA complex from a altitude of 300 meters... so I need to go up in manual mode (PLEASE FF solve the problem of the height limit!!! not all of us lives in the States!) it was really smooth climb maintaining between 1,4 and 1,6 m/s I just arrive at 300 and switch to alt hold... then do the shot and came back down again with the alt hold @ 1,0 1,2 m/s (I don´t have the guts to take this beast down in manual). My setup: A8 + M15 2 X 4S 2.1 auxiliary pack from FF one for the MOVI, DJI Focus and Connex the other one only for the RED Amimon Connex DJI follow focus 2 X 12.000 tatto batts RED scarlet or RED dragon with CZ CP2 (EF mount) or CZ Milvus (Nikon mount) All the A8 setup is factory And in accordance with the post flight check, in 35 degree celsius ambient temperature, the highest motor temp with these load and after at least 12 minutes flight was 65 degrees celsius... Total weight around 15,5 Kg... For now thats are My impressions in the first 20+ flights of the A8 I hope these review will be useful for fellow pilots... PS.: sorry about my bad English...
Nice write up! we just got our ALTA 8 today, had been looking at the ALTA 6 since it came out but was afraid it wouldnt be quite enough for doing what we want to do with the RED. Im really looking forward to getting ours in the air soon. I have to agree the case is huge! but it holds everything nicely which will be great for traveling.