It flies!

Yes, my bad luck drone flies!

A nice windy day today, but I was keen to take the new drone out. I was worried at first because as soon as I plugged the battery in, the warning buzzer started beeping.

The video looked fine, and nothing showing there, so played around with arming, telling me my throttle was up even when it wasn't. Oh yes, I have seen this before, silly me forgot to hit "save" when I configured the input channels.  D'oh.  A quick walk home, reconfigure, and head out again and we're in business!

To make sure I'd have a proper GPS lock straight away, I plugged a USB power bank into the drone while I walked to location. The initial lock (after approx 60 hours in between), can take several minutes. So why not use those up while walking? Right after power up, 12 satellites locked... perfect!

So flying into a headwind, I was going approx 40km/h (according to the GPS), not super quick, but this drone is meant to be a cruiser, not super quick, so I was pretty happy with that.  Heading back with a tailwind however.... wow, 110km/h, crazy!

My RSSI/Link Quality meters weren't working (have to play with the config here), so I didn't want to push the distance too far, so I only went maybe 500m. But the video was still nice and clear, so can definitely push it a LOT further. It is a long range drone after all.

So what did I upgrade from the standard Flywoo Explorer LR4? For starters, I added a Caddx Baby Turtle to it, so that I can record something that resembles High Definition footage. A GoPro it's not, but it did come out a lot better than I expected.

On top of that (actually, technically underneath given the way it's built), I added a Rush Tank Mini for better long range video (just watch out for heat while it's stationary, I managed to burn myself today after on a few minutes of it being plugged in).

Then, coupled with a CNHL Ministar 4s 850mAh battery, I was happily getting 7 1/2 minutes of flight time, not bad considering the wind! Will be curious to see how I go on a calm day.

So what do I need to tweak from here? The RSSI/LQ data mentioned above is the main thing, beyond that, I need to change the multiplier on the current sensor, at the end of my flight, it said I used about 1100mAh of power, which is interesting given the battery is only 850mAh.

I've since made this change, but I changed the Caddx Baby Turtle to automatically start recording as soon as I plug the battery in, no need to press a button.

So today was a definite success!