Quadcopters anyone?

Don't encourage him.

Would you say the mavic takes more skill to fly than the spark? They both seem fairly easy compared to my cheap piece of shit I got for $80. But I love my cheap piece of shit haha. Taught me how to fly

 

You quiet over there, you don't even HAVE a drone.

Yeah, personally I couldn't justify spending $1K on a toy. I say toy because I'm not using it for work, rather just for fun. Plus spending money on the truck AND drone was too much, and overall was just impulsive. So far I love it though and it does everything I need/want it to do.

 

I do HAVE a drone. I had one before you did so shove off! It just so happens to be cheap and shitty.

Just wait till I get my mavic and I'm still up in the air flying while youre landing and having to change batteries. Sucker.

 

I've never flown a Spark so I'm just speculating at this point. I didn't / don't have a need for one and they were released well after I bought my Mavic. Since you "can" fly it with a remote I would say that it would probably control similar to the Mavic though probably wouldn't handle the wind quite as well. Even though the Mavic is small it has enough power to counteract the wind as shown in the shot I posted.

If you really want a pucker factor put your Inspire 1 over 2000' out over a lake and lose video signal. That is where you HAVE to know what to do to get it back. Happened to me last year while filming at Table Rock Lake. I flipped to the map screen since I still had that telemetry and just turned the craft around point directly back to me. Came back until the video signal returned. I flew a little more that day but scrubbed the flight as there was so much interference that day for some reason that no matter the channel I picked it didn't matter. Better to be safe than sorry and have a $5000 craft sink into the lake.

By doing what you did you actually did the right thing. Buying a cheap craft so you can "learn" how to fly it and what to do in case something goes wrong (and it will).

Nothing wrong with that at all. If it fits your needs then perfect. If you're getting the shots you want, that's all that matters.

 

I would imagine it's similar to the mavic as well. As far as going against high winds, I was up in a windy area this past weekend, and I kept getting that "high wind velocity" warning, yet it kept up pretty well in my opinion. I've had a few moments where it'll be too far out, I'd lose the transmission signal, I'd start to panic a bit, but it would automatically "come home". So that's definitely a little peace of mind.

 

drone wars...

 

I'd be shitting my pants if I lost video that far away with an inspire haha. I think the spark would suit my needs just fine, but I think I'd be left wanting more, so I'm just gonna get the mavic when the time comes. I'm glad I went with my cheap one first though, made me realize drones are cool af and I wanted more. But I didn't want to buy a thousand dollar drone first and completely suck at flying it and crash/lose it.

@lesterb315 and I are also just busting each other. He brought his spark to a meetup last week and renewed my insatiable "need" to get a new one. The bastard.

 

What I've found while owning a drone is this. It's much like riding a motorcycle. Every time you put it in the air you are taking a chance. It's not a matter of if something will go wrong. It's a matter of when it will go wrong. Knowing what to do in those situations will help you get your craft back safely. Not knowing means you will have a long hike ahead of you trying to find your broken drone.

 

Ya, the loss of signal feature is going to be super clutch to have haha. I love that.

 

You did it right. You have to be a pilot first (yeah I know that sounds stupid) and a photographer / videographer second. ALWAYS do your pre flight checklist (even with a Mavic that you can throw up at a moment's notice). If you don't do that you are eventually going to lose your craft no matter the size.

 

Very true. Although, and i might be saying this because I'm not too experienced, but isn't it a little hard to lose the drone nowadays with so much technology packed into these things? I mean when it has low battery it'll return home just like the loss of transmission. So to me it seems like you either gotta have very bad luck, or pretty careless it.

 

I can honestly say I've never touched the RTH button on the controller no matter the drone I owned at the time. The thing you have to remember is to set your RTH elevation higher than anything you are flying around. If you don't do that then (even with the forward facing cameras) you will take a chance of your craft running into something if you don't have the RTH elevation set correctly. It's a good feature to have but I never rely on it. I'd rather fly it back than have it try to bring itself back. I've got a few friends that use it because they are lazy and just let the craft do the work. What happens if something goes wrong on the way back? If you're not watching all the telemetry it's on you, not the drone.

 

A myriad of things happen. Loss of transmission is the only true test that I've had to face so far and I used to put the Inspire in some pretty tight places. But if you lose a spark you can see it's last transmission point on the map but good luck finding it in a wooded area if it goes down. Same could be said for the Mavic also which is why I say you need to know how to actually fly one before starting to go for shots. Buying a cheap drone that "makes" you fly it will pay off dividends.

 

See that @lesterb315 I did it right. You did it wrong!

I know what you mean though. Learning to fly my cheap one with no stabilization or fancy shmancy technology in there really helped a lot. I'm by no means great at flying it, but I can definitely fly it well enough where I feel confident enough to fly any DJI with all their gizmos in there safely.

 

Absolutely. DJI have built quality drones that have many safety features built into them lowering the chance of losing one. But eventually you will be faced with a problem and being able to actually fly the drone out of harm will serve you well in the long run.

 

I gave up on flying the little drone. Couldn't get the trim to work right and generally a pain in my ass to mess with.

 

And if you notice in the "Falls" shot I didn't fly over the falls as there were people at the bottom of the falls. I never fly over people. I took off from a secluded area and kept a distance away from the falls as not to take a chance of a catastrophic failure and hurting someone.

 

You can pick up some nice little dones (I forget which one is the best now) for less than $100 and you "shouldn't" have that issue. They have come a long way in the past few years. But seeing how lenses are your focus (no pun intended) I could see where you wouldn't want to spend the $1500 for the Mavic with everything that you would need to keep it in the air indefinitely.

 

You mean they don't have a wireless battery option on the mavic?