List of currently available accessories

[Elton Hammonds]

Very interesting to hear you say the drone is safer now to fly than out of box. What mods did you do to make it safer?

And yes, I am very surprised someone has not come up with some marketable product where one can attach like 2 batteries to this drone or some other drones to achieve a flight time of around an hour. I am sure many people have come up with all kinds of crazy designs for that. We just have to wait to see who will someday come up with such great inventions. humans are amazing. they never stop coming up with new wonders in the world. Or maybe someone will just come out with a battery that actually lasts about an hour.

By safer, I mean several things...

1. In the brighter the sun, which we commonly have here in central Florida, the easier it is to see the aircraft at much greater distances because of the hi-vis orange wrap.
2. Possibly because of mineral deposits in the ground and/or my neighborhood HAM radio operator, I couldn't get more than a few hundred feet before my weak signal strength alerts started sporadically going off, which resulted in a mild panic as the video feed was severely delayed, sometimes froze and was sometimes completely lost for several seconds. (The Raptor XR antenna has completely fixed that issue!)
3. On one of my first few flights, it lost signal AGAIN and decided to auto land on the lake for a second before the signal reconnected and I was able to pull it up off the lake. (It didn't sink on account of the pontoons being mounted on the skids.)
4. Even when I was only flying 500 feet away and wanted to fly with the naked eye instead of cheating with the tablet display, the skids, with or without the pontoons serve me well by telling me when the aircraft is facing port or starboard.
5. The Lenovo Tab 4 10 64k tablet has a screen big enough that it reminds me of a Garmin 1000 glass in manned aircraft, in that it isn't all bunched up so badly that potentially critical real time data could be overlooked by having to squint at a tiny cell phone screen.
6. The Strobon strobe lights are amazing and meet FAA requirements for flying in the night, but they really help keep an eye on where it is and which way it is facing over my lake, which is dark as ink at night, so the camera isn't something to completely relied upon. (I'm waiting for my two Lume Cube lights, which will make keeping VLOS even easier and knowing which way it is facing out there!)

For what it's worth, these are based upon my flight experience in the last month.

 

[Elton Hammonds]

I cant see what the purpose of the pontoons would be; What reason would you have to want to land on water? You are going to be spraying water on the camera and AC and if it is saltwater even worse.
The skids also dont see to be that useful to me as i can easily catch it without the skids and have been doing so for literally years with both M1 and M2

Having landed on water with them, the down draft from the rotors keeps the water from getting on the aircraft at all, which is elevated on the skids and further more so by the pontoons.

Even without the pontoons, it's nice to have these skids and not need a landing pad to launch from my thick lawn or on a local beach to keep debris, known as FOD in the manned aviation world, out of my engines, camera and cooling vents anymore.

 

[Elton Hammonds]

I have to agree... the $50 dollar skids were a waste of money. I bought them... tried them... don’t like them. My fear was ground clearance... I got a $20 landing pad and I am very happy with that. Not to mention... I would never purposely land any drone over water... not a good idea.

Hey, water landings are things that not everyone is comfortable with, but that DOES NOT make them a bad product, nor does it make water landings a bad idea for others, nor is $50 a big deal to other people here. I'm waiting on $220 of Polar Pro filters, so it's a drop in the bucket compared to the other stuff I have gotten...TRUST ME.

I started out with a landing pad, but I hated fiddling with it and having to put down and pull up sand covered ground stakes every time I flew because of the constant onshore or offshore breeze here.

A piece of scrap plywood works better than a landing pad and it cost even less, but I don't want carry around a piece of plywood for my decked out drone...

After all, my MavMount for my tablet cost cost just as much, but people don't balk it, right?

To each their own, right?

 

[Gregdd]

Having landed on water with them, the down draft from the rotors keeps the water from getting on the aircraft at all, which is elevated on the skids and further more so by the pontoons.

Even without the pontoons, it's nice to have these skids and not need a landing pad to launch from my thick lawn or on a local beach to keep debris, known as FOD in the manned aviation world, out of my engines, camera and cooling vents anymore.

Water will still land on the AC as the props stop spinning. You didnt answer my question. What use are the pontoons?

Regarding the skids; the biggest issue I have is getting the bird level enough so a landing pad makes that easier and solves the grass issue. In all but the shortest grass your skids wouldn't help. The landing pad I have is super light as well so I don't see how adding more weight to the AC does any good. I think you just like to to tinker and like the look of it. From a pure flying/Battery life perspective the skids and pontoons are a complete waste of time IMHO.

 

[Elton Hammonds]

Water will still land on the AC as the props stop spinning. You didnt answer my question. What use are the pontoons?

Regarding the skids; the biggest issue I have is getting the bird level enough so a landing pad makes that easier and solves the grass issue. In all but the shortest grass your skids wouldn't help. The landing pad I have is super light as well so I don't see how adding more weight to the AC does any good. I think you just like to to tinker and like the look of it. From a pure flying/Battery life perspective the skids and pontoons are a complete waste of time IMHO.

I asked you to agree to disagree, but that isn't something you wish to do, huh?

Read my post about the emergency landing I had happen do to signal interference while flying over my lake, or not.

I'm not childish enough to think I can sway someone's opinion on the internet at I don't personally know.

I've said all I'm going to about this with you and enjoy the rest of my beautiful day.