Mission Accomplished!

[Chaosrider]

My little Mini-1 Reliant passed her full quals today, 1000 ft ATL, and 2000 ft away, above the opposite canyon wall! Some of the controls were a little sluggish, rotation in particular, but I may still be scrubbing some of the barnacles off of her hull...

That little beast is a ZIPPER in Sport mode! Climbed like a bat, and that was from a starting elevation of 5300 ft MSL. Coming downhill and moving forward on the way home, I got her up to almost 30 mph. I haven't seen that kind of speed with either my Mini-SE, nor my Mini-2s.

One characteristic that the -1 and the -SE seem to share is "ungraceful" RC signal degradation. With the -2s, it drops from a solid 5 bars, down to 4, then to 3, etc. With the -1 and -SE, I get the weak signal warning sometimes when the RC signal indicator is showing 5 bars. Weird.

If you can find a Mini-1 FMC for around $230, which is what I paid for mine, that would be a great way to get started with droning. The Mini-SE is a somewhat better aircraft, but a Fly More Combo for it, the aircraft + the Mini-2 Fly More Kit, will run you close to $450. Perhaps not that much more, but if a couple hundred dollars matters to you, you won't go far wrong with a Mini-1 FMC, for half the price of an -SE FMC.

All Minis are good!



MM-FPV!

 

[scro]

Interesting to note you felt the Mini1 to be as fast, if not faster than the SE and Mini2. On paper the mini1 should be the slowest of the 3. If you really want to see the Mini1 zip then try flying out into the wind, push the RTH button and then give it full forward stick while it does its RTH. I've seen mine hit 35mph doing this. A bit of parameter tinkering can let the drone hit 6m/s vertical speeds too! You get up to 120m remarkably quick, and it makes "standard" sport mode seem quite slow in comparison.

A lot of people dismiss the mini1 as "useless" but with a simple appreciation of its limits and capabilities it can be an excellent drone. Sure the mini2 is better in many ways (and overhyped in some, I feel) but that doesn't automatically make the mini1 bad.

 

[Chaosrider]

Interesting to note you felt the Mini1 to be as fast, if not faster than the SE and Mini2. On paper the mini1 should be the slowest of the 3. If you really want to see the Mini1 zip then try flying out into the wind, push the RTH button and then give it full forward stick while it does its RTH. I've seen mine hit 35mph doing this. A bit of parameter tinkering can let the drone hit 6m/s vertical speeds too! You get up to 120m remarkably quick, and it makes "standard" sport mode seem quite slow in comparison.

A lot of people dismiss the mini1 as "useless" but with a simple appreciation of its limits and capabilities it can be an excellent drone. Sure the mini2 is better in many ways (and overhyped in some, I feel) but that doesn't automatically make the mini1 bad.

All Minis are good!

And I know that, because I have them all...



Good tip for that speed test, I'll definitely give that a shot.

Shifting to Sport mode seemed to make a bigger difference with the Mini-1 than it does with the Mini-2s. It was really quite striking.

I'm really glad I got this Mini-1 FMC!

Thx!

MM-FPV!

 

[scro]

I have often pushed the limits by deliberately flying in windy conditions. Where I live it is rare to have a calm day and I have been surprised at what the Mini1 can handle. I've only seen it get pushed off course by the wind on 2 or 3 occasions and those were when I knew it was very marginal conditions - on the ground it was pretty blustery.

I've never failed to fly the drone back to my takeoff site and only once been caught out by the wind being so strong I couldn't make headway into it. Simply dropping altitude solved that problem and that incident was what prompted me to do some test flights in windy conditions to properly understand the capabilities and limits of the drone. I find the app gives wind warnings a long time before you're actually in trouble, which is not a bad thing if you don't have any feel for the drone's capabilities - better safe than sorry, as they say. The warnings do give an impression that the drone can hardly handle any wind though. I get at least 1 or 2 warnings on nearly every flight I do.

 

[Chaosrider]

I find the app gives wind warnings a long time before you're actually in trouble, which is not a bad thing if you don't have any feel for the drone's capabilities

I've reached that same conclusion. During my unintended loss of signal RTH test, I had gotten a couple of high wind warnings, and reducing the altitude made it happy in each case.

At $230 for a used Mini-1 FMC, I am completely satisfied with the performance of this little beast! It's not close to a Mini-2 in terms of performance, but it's a fully worthy aircraft.



MM-FPV!