The Arris Raptor landing skids for M2P and M2Z are available now! (Great for hand landing)

[Elton Hammonds]

They are here!

 

[Kingram]

How long was shipping and I hope he is working on a new Gimbal cover .

 

[ricphoto]

They are here!
View attachment 46265View attachment 46266View attachment 46267View attachment 46268

Thanks for the shots...I have a set on order that seems to be lost in space...

How easy are the legs (not the pontoons) to attach/detach? How secure are they? Hand catching stable or just easy landing stable?

Thanks...

 

[ricphoto]

How long was shipping and I hope he is working on a new Gimbal cover .

Pay close attention to their shipping...they said I'd have them by last Sat but didn't even get the "label created" notice till sat and nothing since...USPS says they haven't received it and unhelpful text from company says tracking may not update till delivered...Huh?

 

[Elton Hammonds]

I gave the owner a call and had another nice conversation with him about these skids.

He reminded me that they have a LIFETIME warranty and any suggestions for design improvements are always welcome and appreciated.

In all fairness, I will disclose the only potential issue that I've seen in my 20 minutes of ownership is that Reaper (my drone's name...my former radio call sign as a Casualty Notification and Assistance Officer in the military) is sitting a tad bit lower on the bow than I think it should.

This is feedback I just texted to the owner with this picture from my pool.

But, let's be honest, if I'm too lazy to go buy a pool noodle at Dollar General and do some trimming on it, I would be to lazy to be playing with water landings in the first place.

Right?

 

[Elton Hammonds]

After a quick trip to the pool store, I bought the larger noodle.

After taping it down with blue take to a board, taking some rough measurements of the original noodles, marking, drilling and slicing the new ones to match the skids, I have seen an increase of buoyancy, better COG and the extra clearance will only aid to keep the Reaper safer from the surface of the drink.

 

[leenanj]

I gave the owner a call and had another nice conversation with him about these skids.

He reminded me that they have a LIFETIME warranty and any suggestions for design improvements are always welcome and appreciated.

In all fairness, I will disclose the only potential issue that I've seen in my 20 minutes of ownership is that Reaper (my drone's name...my former radio call sign as a Casualty Notification and Assistance Officer in the military) is sitting a tad bit lower on the bow than I think it should.

This is feedback I just texted to the owner with this picture from my pool.

But, let's be honest, if I'm too lazy to go buy a pool noodle at Dollar General and do some trimming on it, I would be to lazy to be playing with water landings in the first place.

Right?View attachment 46269

Wow you would think he would have balanced that out a little better,
easy enough to make the foam a little longer at the bow for the price he is charging.

 

[Elton Hammonds]

The value of this system is for his design of the skids and the interlocking noodle mounts.

It's unlike anyone else's solution and it provides a sustainable and reliable flotation solution.

By sustainable, I mean absolutely anyone can get a noodle and do what I did in the few minutes it took me to slice the noodle if they need to or would like to.

I also see the skids as a potential mounting location for owners to play with add-ons like on the Phantom, not to mention it gets the aircraft out of the grassblades in my yard and off the sand on the beaches here.

 

[leenanj]

The value of this system is for his design of the skids and the interlocking noodle mounts.

.

That's like saying the product you just bought don't work correctly but you paid for the design so it was worth it! Really!

 

[Kilrah]

Buyer's bias is a thing but I've never seen such a strong case of it. For 90 bucks I wouldn't expect to have to fix a fundamental (and trivial to fix) design flaw, or I'd just make the whole thing myself...

Also it seems one of your mounts is already cracked.

Re the title I still don't see how in the world it could be any "great for hand landing" unless that's with a 2nd person to catch with both hands...

 

[NAUIDIVER]

I’m curious what the impact is to antenna performance since those skids are full on covering the front legs which if I’m not mistaken are where the antennae are located.

 

[Elton Hammonds]

I’m curious what the impact is to antenna performance since those skids are full on covering the front legs which if I’m not mistaken are where the antennae are located.

I'm hoping to get an initial hope with them on today if I can get my wife's RE goggles updated despite my current tablet being entirely overwhelmed by the Go 4 app. (A new one is in the mail to me now...)

My signal strength was weak from the start, but I'll try the same set up again and take it to 400 AGL like before to see if I notice a difference.

Then I'll try the reflector ears before flying over the lake and see how the noodles affect the handling.

Just on any pontoon aircraft, I'm sure there's gonna be some loss with regard to the flight time.

Stay tuned sports fans.

 

[Elton Hammonds]

Buyer's bias is a thing but I've never seen such a strong case of it. For 90 bucks I wouldn't expect to have to fix a fundamental (and trivial to fix) design flaw, or I'd just make the whole thing myself...

Also it seems one of your mounts is already cracked.

Re the title I still don't see how in the world it could be any "great for hand landing" unless that's with a 2nd person to catch with both hands...

Don't further assign a mischaracterization of me anymore unless you want me to return the favor. Not judging...just sayin'.

Is it perfect? Nope.

Is that something I mind? Nope.

Can it be and will it be? Yep.

In fact, I'm enjoying modifying it and look forward to sharing my results with the owner.

There was also a warranty issue with a small crack on a rear motor clamp that occurred when I installed it, but I've already spoken to the owner and he is going to make the required increase of thickness for reinforcement and send a replacement part for free.

Until then, a soldering gun healed it.

The cost covers that level of service, which is something very rare in today's world with cheap disposable Chinese goods.

I've worked with people to develop and improve designs of products before and I live for this sort of stuff.

After all, I've read A LOT of conversations here and elsewhere where people talk about how the Mavic 2 firmware wasn't, in the opinions of some (right or wrong), ready for release.

Has anyone here returned their Mavic 2 because it wasn't perfectly refined out of the box when it was first introduced?

I seriously doubt anyone did that.

So now here we are, right?

 

[Meta4]

And, after talking to him, which the trolls here have never done and most likely won't ever because they lack the backbone to pick up the phone, I can say he's a very pleasant guy.

Having an alternative viewpoint doesn't make someone a troll.
He may be very pleasant but the issue that matters is how much does the weight and windage affect the performance and flight time of a lightweight drone like the mavic.
I look forward to seeing actual flight data because no-one promoting something like this has ever shown any.

Don't further assign a mischaracterization of me anymore unless you want me to return the favor. Not judging...just sayin'.

The hypocrisy there is off the scale.

 

[joeliu2003]

Received today, returned today.

Very tight fit, which is good, but makes them quite cumbersome for removal and reattaching.

 

[Elton Hammonds]

How long was shipping and I hope he is working on a new Gimbal cover .

I pre-ordered, so I'm not sure what his backlog is now.

I wish someone would make a gimbal cover of better material than the OEM.

 

[Elton Hammonds]

Thanks for the shots...I have a set on order that seems to be lost in space...

How easy are the legs (not the pontoons) to attach/detach? How secure are they? Hand catching stable or just easy landing stable?

Thanks...

I didn't get much time to fly today due to the typical Florida afternoon electrical storm that rolled in.

The skids were cake to mount, but one of the housings for a rear motor cracked right away.

I flew with it like that without any problems, but he said he will be reinforcing it in the future and will send a replacement part out as soon as it's available.

Like I said, he's a really good guy to talk to and easy to deal with.

 

[Elton Hammonds]

Pay close attention to their shipping...they said I'd have them by last Sat but didn't even get the "label created" notice till sat and nothing since...USPS says they haven't received it and unhelpful text from company says tracking may not update till delivered...Huh?

USPS didn't tell me when it was in the area until this morning.

I know he's a one man band that's flooded with a ton of orders to fill, so I'm confident he will take care of everyone.

Like I said, he now needs to jump into reinforcing the rear attachment points around the motors, so I'm guessing he's going to do the best he can instead of as fast as he can.

 

[Elton Hammonds]

That's like saying the product you just bought don't work correctly but you paid for the design so it was worth it! Really!

You mean like the DJI Mavic 2?

They are a multi-billion company and they have made mistakes and didn't deliver everything up front as advertised.

As a former small business owner, I'm impressed by these skids and appreciate the stress the owner is under to make these as good as he can while keeping them light, etc.

 

[Elton Hammonds]

Good idea

You do recall the current Mavic 2 models have a lifetime warranty on them, right?