David
New Member
I ordered one of the Drone 6 with 3 batteries, the Tarot Gimbal and the FPV kit.
Having had no experience apart from playing with my sons AR-Drone a couple of times, I was not impressed with the lack of instructions on how to assemble the unit and all the parts. It took 2 of us most of an afternoon to get most of it together, but we still couldn't figure out how to get the Tarot Gimball connected so we could use the RC transmitter to control it. It turned out to be very straight forward when we finally figured it out a few days later, but simple instructions would have made this whole process much easier. I doubt though that Storm will be making any decent instructions and you'll just have to bumble through it like we did and check out youtube videos of them, pausing the video on still frames to try to figure out how to mount and connect everything.
With regards to the actual flight I've been flying it for about a week now and am very happy with it with one glaring exception. The drone goes into an auto land mode without warning when the battery runs down to a certain point. There is absolutely no indication this is about to happen and the landing is basically a hard, crash landing. We have managed to break the horizontal part of the landing struts as it hits the ground with such force. It's about the same as dropping it from about 2 meters. Apparently there is an audible alarm you can buy and we intend to buy this now and strongly recommend you do too. Why Storm wouldn't include this critical part in a standard delivery is beyond me. If the drone tries to auto crash land on an uneven surface, or god forbid over water, you could do some serious damage to it or lose it altogether.
The biggest draw back on the FPV is the poor range of the video transmission. When flying FPV at even 100m or less, it becomes very scratchy and flickers terribly. Although when in close range, the FPV view is excellent and works well. Just don't expect alot from it. At some point we will probably have to upgrade the FPV transmitter to a long range one just to get it to more closely match the range of the RC transmitter.
When decending from altitude (Say about 50-100m), you need to do it slowly or the drone rocks quickly back and forth as the Gyro tries to stabilize and over compensate.
Otherwise, I'm happy with the drone and think it was a good buy even for a first timer. The flight skills required are very similar to flying a small hobby RC helicopter. I suggest buying one of those and learning to fly, hover and land with that first before you do it with your Drone 6. Actually hovering the Drone 6 is pretty easy once your a few feet of the ground with the GPS tracking, but if you lose the GPS signal, or you want to fly it somewhere and back again, you will need some basic flight skills or you'll crash it into the nearest tree for sure.
Anyway, that's my experience with it.
Having had no experience apart from playing with my sons AR-Drone a couple of times, I was not impressed with the lack of instructions on how to assemble the unit and all the parts. It took 2 of us most of an afternoon to get most of it together, but we still couldn't figure out how to get the Tarot Gimball connected so we could use the RC transmitter to control it. It turned out to be very straight forward when we finally figured it out a few days later, but simple instructions would have made this whole process much easier. I doubt though that Storm will be making any decent instructions and you'll just have to bumble through it like we did and check out youtube videos of them, pausing the video on still frames to try to figure out how to mount and connect everything.
With regards to the actual flight I've been flying it for about a week now and am very happy with it with one glaring exception. The drone goes into an auto land mode without warning when the battery runs down to a certain point. There is absolutely no indication this is about to happen and the landing is basically a hard, crash landing. We have managed to break the horizontal part of the landing struts as it hits the ground with such force. It's about the same as dropping it from about 2 meters. Apparently there is an audible alarm you can buy and we intend to buy this now and strongly recommend you do too. Why Storm wouldn't include this critical part in a standard delivery is beyond me. If the drone tries to auto crash land on an uneven surface, or god forbid over water, you could do some serious damage to it or lose it altogether.
The biggest draw back on the FPV is the poor range of the video transmission. When flying FPV at even 100m or less, it becomes very scratchy and flickers terribly. Although when in close range, the FPV view is excellent and works well. Just don't expect alot from it. At some point we will probably have to upgrade the FPV transmitter to a long range one just to get it to more closely match the range of the RC transmitter.
When decending from altitude (Say about 50-100m), you need to do it slowly or the drone rocks quickly back and forth as the Gyro tries to stabilize and over compensate.
Otherwise, I'm happy with the drone and think it was a good buy even for a first timer. The flight skills required are very similar to flying a small hobby RC helicopter. I suggest buying one of those and learning to fly, hover and land with that first before you do it with your Drone 6. Actually hovering the Drone 6 is pretty easy once your a few feet of the ground with the GPS tracking, but if you lose the GPS signal, or you want to fly it somewhere and back again, you will need some basic flight skills or you'll crash it into the nearest tree for sure.
Anyway, that's my experience with it.