Am I Overthinking It ?

[lc25]

Hi All,

First i must say i have put great thought into my preorder of a vision 2 + and did a shed load of research on a range of forums to see what the common problems are etc. Basically the more i have read the more i have doubted myself on if its a wise purchase and if i should buy one of the larger kits such as a f550 as they seem more "repairable".

I have flown model helicopters (indoors) and the AR drone for a while and wanted a step up to something a bit bigger more suited for outside and an ability to record video. I don't have a large amount of spare capital to invest but would be willing to spend more if i wasn't putting as much at risk (i get the general feeling if a vision + goes down its scrap or near to scrap whereas other are more repairable).

Now i know people only really come online to talk about disasters and not that stuff is working as it should so are the horror stories of phantoms just flying off and doing what they want that common ? or are they rare freak occurrences ?

What i want is a copter i setup for an hour or so fly around get some brilliant shots of the countryside etc, see what I'm recording and be able to edit it later without a car full of bits and additions.

I suppose what I'm asking is are vision + good enough or am i better to go all out and get something like a f550 ?

Hope that makes sense.

 

[Ozzyguy]

Sounds like in your heart you already know the answer. Anything with a small sensor will struggle with the countryside particularly I have noted this with flight because of the slight vertical wobble makes the processor work overtime and it keeps trying to adjust the exposure but by the time the scene has changed its to late and this show up in the video. Even with a gimbal smaller cameras with slower processors struggle with the rapidly changing scene going by.(of coarse thee go pro handles itself well) With an F550 you can fly a larger point and shoot camera that the F550 will handle the weight of better.

 

[RickF]

Now i know people only really come online to talk about disasters and not that stuff is working as it should so are the horror stories of phantoms just flying off and doing what they want that common ? or are they rare freak occurrences ?

I am regularly (often) on the forum to learn, to see what to avoid from the mistakes so well, and so frequently, reported by others. But you do make a good point. The forum does not seem populated with stories of joy, of endless hours of trouble-free flights. Just like the daily news on US television, which only seems to capture all the problems they could uncover that day, the forum also has a fair share of bad news. People seemed bored by the story about the Phantom flight that was uneventful, but they are held captive by any reported disaster. At least I am.

So let me say that I am new to this hobby as of December 2013, flying my first remote-controlled device, a Phantom 2 Vision, and I have now done this many, many, many times without mishap. I've simply had one blissful flight after another, from many different parts of the US( Chicago to Seattle to Houston to Jackson, MS). Other than one time when I got caught up doing something I shouldn't have been doing (and I'm too prideful to tell what I was doing on this forum), lost my bearings, and crashed my copter into a neighbor's deck. All that was required was some cleaning of my copter, a recalibration of the compass, and four new props, after which I was back in the air, experiencing yet another happy, fun, happy flight. In fact, I have so much fun with the Phantom, in spite of all that I read here, in spite of all that scares me,that I now have a Phantom 2 non-Vision highly tricked out so I can use the ground station, and most recently I have added the Phantom 2 Vision+, for a grand total of three Phantoms. The horror stories are instructive and insightful and there are a lot of people here who know a lot of things about this hobby and I value and enjoy what they have to say. But there isn't anything I've read on this forum that has given me pause. Rather, I continue to plunge full speed ahead. My opinion: You should too!!

 

[Hawkeye 1]

I had two Phantoms before one flew away on the day after Easter....now I have three. Don't worry about the doom and gloom, flyaways are actually rather rare. You'll love your Phantom, I promise, so go ahead and make the move....you won't regret it.

 

[Gizmo3000]

It's a slippery slope.. but honestly, while the 550 might be able to carry a bigger load, it would still struggle with a larger camera, since the 550 itself weighs much more than a Phantom, and flies only half as much as a Phantom 2.

to get a 3-axis gimbal for a larger camera, you're looking at at least $600 or more.

the Phantom 2 and Vision+ are great starter quads, that's for sure.