Hello, I made some other posts on this forum already, but this one is an interesting one in my opinion, it's how I got here in the first place.
In December 2020 I decided I wanted a drone, and made a huge mistake: I bought a cheap DIY F450 kit on AliExpress. Got it, assembled, bought a LiPo and went flying, I mean crashing. Without proper knowledge of how to set it up I made many mistakes - didn't set failsafe, used manual mode instead of GPS stabilized, put the propellers the other way around...
Yes, I knew how to solder, connect, firmware update the controller, but I was lacking basic drone knowledge.
Crashed it - fixed it. Replaced motors, props and frame. Finally, learned how to set up GPS mode, RTH, Failsafe and many more cool stuff, even got it into flying autonomous missions.
Still it was lacking some important aspects of a drone: gimbal and live view (or FPV).
Bought FPV transmitter and FPV OTG phone receiver, got it working with my action cam.
Flown it for a while and understood I needed a gimbal, bought it, and what would you think - more issues! Now the drone weighted too much, the motors overheated, and it fell.
Bought another frame (S500) and telemetry module - got scammed on the telemetry, it didn't arrive, however the frame was pretty good.
Mounted it together and went flying. All good except two things again - flight time and video quality. Video quality was kinda ok, but flight time definitely not, it was 4 minutes!
After making some more improvements I got it flying for 7 minutes, not much still but at least better than 4... Struggled some more on stabilizing video in premiere for 2 hours per 5 minutes of video and so on...
Another issue was that the drone was freaking giant, a little smaller than the inspire 2, very big for a DIY drone. It also weighted 1.5 kg.
In August 2021 I thought: screw it, I'm going and buying a mavic - and yet it was the best decision of mine when it comes to drones.
Bought the Mavic Air 2 Fly More Combo at a local store here in Mallorca, Spain.
Took it for a flight right the same day two times - one during day, the other one at night.
The 25ish minute flight time seemed like an eternity for me after the 6-7 minutes with my big drone.
I can mention that I made some stupid & illegal flights with it the first month, like flying it 6.4 km away or 500 m high. Not doing that anymore, very scary...
Now I'm very happy with the mavic - very stable and good drone for its price!
The takeaway/conclusion:
So was it a bad experience at first? Yes, but it gave me basic knowledge and made me learn more when it comes to drones and their batteries. For example how to take care of LiPos, flying in ATTI mode (if necessary some day) and how the drone works in the first place. Said that I still think that for a complete beginner like me definitely NOT a good idea to make a DIY drone like that, better buy something like the mavic mini 2, especially mentioning that the DIY drone costed me around $800 in total, almost twice as much as two mavic minis!
In December 2020 I decided I wanted a drone, and made a huge mistake: I bought a cheap DIY F450 kit on AliExpress. Got it, assembled, bought a LiPo and went flying, I mean crashing. Without proper knowledge of how to set it up I made many mistakes - didn't set failsafe, used manual mode instead of GPS stabilized, put the propellers the other way around...
Yes, I knew how to solder, connect, firmware update the controller, but I was lacking basic drone knowledge.
Crashed it - fixed it. Replaced motors, props and frame. Finally, learned how to set up GPS mode, RTH, Failsafe and many more cool stuff, even got it into flying autonomous missions.
Still it was lacking some important aspects of a drone: gimbal and live view (or FPV).
Bought FPV transmitter and FPV OTG phone receiver, got it working with my action cam.
Flown it for a while and understood I needed a gimbal, bought it, and what would you think - more issues! Now the drone weighted too much, the motors overheated, and it fell.
Bought another frame (S500) and telemetry module - got scammed on the telemetry, it didn't arrive, however the frame was pretty good.
Mounted it together and went flying. All good except two things again - flight time and video quality. Video quality was kinda ok, but flight time definitely not, it was 4 minutes!
After making some more improvements I got it flying for 7 minutes, not much still but at least better than 4... Struggled some more on stabilizing video in premiere for 2 hours per 5 minutes of video and so on...
Another issue was that the drone was freaking giant, a little smaller than the inspire 2, very big for a DIY drone. It also weighted 1.5 kg.
In August 2021 I thought: screw it, I'm going and buying a mavic - and yet it was the best decision of mine when it comes to drones.
Bought the Mavic Air 2 Fly More Combo at a local store here in Mallorca, Spain.
Took it for a flight right the same day two times - one during day, the other one at night.
The 25ish minute flight time seemed like an eternity for me after the 6-7 minutes with my big drone.
I can mention that I made some stupid & illegal flights with it the first month, like flying it 6.4 km away or 500 m high. Not doing that anymore, very scary...
Now I'm very happy with the mavic - very stable and good drone for its price!
The takeaway/conclusion:
So was it a bad experience at first? Yes, but it gave me basic knowledge and made me learn more when it comes to drones and their batteries. For example how to take care of LiPos, flying in ATTI mode (if necessary some day) and how the drone works in the first place. Said that I still think that for a complete beginner like me definitely NOT a good idea to make a DIY drone like that, better buy something like the mavic mini 2, especially mentioning that the DIY drone costed me around $800 in total, almost twice as much as two mavic minis!
