Happy new year one and all! I hope 2021 gives you back more than 2020 took away!
I'm a sustainability consultant (specialising in renewable energy and electric vehicles), living off-grid on 35 acres in a beautiful valley near the Hawkesbury River (90 km north-west of Sydney, Australia).
Two weeks ago I acquired an Air 2 ;-) Lovely little machine, the most amazing bit of engineering I've seen in quite some time! I have been building, flying and crashing high-performance quads and tri-copters for many years, it's a fantastic hobby. By "high performance" I mean cheap and cheerful FPV250 racing class and 450 (my favourite!) machines, mostly with Hobbyking KK2 flight controllers, separate ESCs (electronic speed controllers), RacerStar motors, 9-inch props. These quads are amazingly fun to fly, totally mad! Mine have no GPS, no obstacle sensors, camera, etc. Bare bones flying machines. My 450 (450 millimetres diagonally from motor to motor) weighs just over a kilogram and has around 1 kilowatt of power in total; it flies about 4.5 minutes on a 2.2 amp-hour LiPo pack.
You think climbing at 3 metres/sec is cool? (that's the max ascent rate of my Air 2). Try giving the 450 full stick - WOW! It vanishes into a dot in the sky in a couple of seconds, like a rocket! With high stick gain and the right PID settings (PID = proportional-integral-differential control, an algorithm that determines motor response based on the aircraft mass, prop pitch/diameter, etc.) the 450 will happily spin in a crazy barrel roll and execute insane G-force loops in any direction. Needless to say, these high speed manoeuvres are extremely risky and often end in earth-thwacking crashes! I also should mention my tri-copters. Lovely machines to fly, they handle more like helicopters because they have a distinct front and back; two motors in the front and one on the tail (the frame is Y-shaped, it can be made from bits of wood, really simple!). The tail motor is mounted on a servo and dynamically changes angle to counter the torque of the other motors. Tri-copters are like Philip Glass's music - absolutely minimalist.
Back to the Air 2. Beautifully made, clever design, gimbal performance beyond words and sooo well-mannered in the air ;-) I love the idea that you can take hands off sticks and the quad will just sit there. Haha! I wish my high-performance quads did that! What impresses me about the Air 2 is that the DJI engineers have already figured out all the hard stuff. Stick gain, PID parameters and prop design all optimised for smooth, stable and (relatively) long-duration flight, straight out of the box. And that gimbal, with high-res camera, seriously impressive! Not to mention flawless telemetry, high quality video feed in real time, and my favourite, return to home if anything goes wrong! I guess that's the difference between a $1,500 flying camera and a $120 absolutely nuts sport quadcopter ;-)
Anyway, I definitely have been talking too much, so I'll leave it here. Just inspired by wonderful flying machines, so cool! ;-)
I'm a sustainability consultant (specialising in renewable energy and electric vehicles), living off-grid on 35 acres in a beautiful valley near the Hawkesbury River (90 km north-west of Sydney, Australia).
Two weeks ago I acquired an Air 2 ;-) Lovely little machine, the most amazing bit of engineering I've seen in quite some time! I have been building, flying and crashing high-performance quads and tri-copters for many years, it's a fantastic hobby. By "high performance" I mean cheap and cheerful FPV250 racing class and 450 (my favourite!) machines, mostly with Hobbyking KK2 flight controllers, separate ESCs (electronic speed controllers), RacerStar motors, 9-inch props. These quads are amazingly fun to fly, totally mad! Mine have no GPS, no obstacle sensors, camera, etc. Bare bones flying machines. My 450 (450 millimetres diagonally from motor to motor) weighs just over a kilogram and has around 1 kilowatt of power in total; it flies about 4.5 minutes on a 2.2 amp-hour LiPo pack.
You think climbing at 3 metres/sec is cool? (that's the max ascent rate of my Air 2). Try giving the 450 full stick - WOW! It vanishes into a dot in the sky in a couple of seconds, like a rocket! With high stick gain and the right PID settings (PID = proportional-integral-differential control, an algorithm that determines motor response based on the aircraft mass, prop pitch/diameter, etc.) the 450 will happily spin in a crazy barrel roll and execute insane G-force loops in any direction. Needless to say, these high speed manoeuvres are extremely risky and often end in earth-thwacking crashes! I also should mention my tri-copters. Lovely machines to fly, they handle more like helicopters because they have a distinct front and back; two motors in the front and one on the tail (the frame is Y-shaped, it can be made from bits of wood, really simple!). The tail motor is mounted on a servo and dynamically changes angle to counter the torque of the other motors. Tri-copters are like Philip Glass's music - absolutely minimalist.
Back to the Air 2. Beautifully made, clever design, gimbal performance beyond words and sooo well-mannered in the air ;-) I love the idea that you can take hands off sticks and the quad will just sit there. Haha! I wish my high-performance quads did that! What impresses me about the Air 2 is that the DJI engineers have already figured out all the hard stuff. Stick gain, PID parameters and prop design all optimised for smooth, stable and (relatively) long-duration flight, straight out of the box. And that gimbal, with high-res camera, seriously impressive! Not to mention flawless telemetry, high quality video feed in real time, and my favourite, return to home if anything goes wrong! I guess that's the difference between a $1,500 flying camera and a $120 absolutely nuts sport quadcopter ;-)
Anyway, I definitely have been talking too much, so I'll leave it here. Just inspired by wonderful flying machines, so cool! ;-)
