QOTW: Do you own a drone?

[Moby-Dick]

I think I managed about 2 seconds of airtime with it, which is a shame as she'd spent a fair whack of cash on it.Ashamed to say its sits on a shelf by my PC , taunting me at my lack of co ordination

[Saracen]

If you have no RC heli experience, it's kinda like learning to ride a Motorbike by jumping on a MotoGP bike .... a recipe for disaster.

However .... there's two approaches I'd suggest.

1) Buy either a very easy heli, of the 'co-axial' type first, or if feeling braver, a 'fixed pitch' type. The first are inherently stable, and suitable for about a five year old. But you will learn elementary co-ordination. The second, the FP designs, are STILL not easy. They're an order of magnitude harder than coaxials, but a couple of orders of magnitude easier than that Nano. Flying FP is still a challenge, but absolutely doable, with time, practice .... and a small collection of parts to repair crash damage.

2) It IS possible to jump straight into RC heli's with CP (collective pitch) models like the Nano, BUT, in my opinion, it needs to be planned. The approach is to 'detune' the Nano. You DO need a programmable transmitter for this, not the one that comes with the Nano if you got the "RTF" (Ready To Fly) version, because you can then extensively adjust the way the model responds to movement on the controller sticks.

If you're learning, AND are jumping in the deep end with going straight to CP, then IMHO the Nano is bar far the best model to do it with. Why? Because the very thing that makes it so damn fast and twitchy, the extremely low weight (mass) also makes it very, VERY much more resistant to crash damage. But you REALLY want to detune it if you do that. Then, as you gain in control and coordination, you can gradually turn up responses, rates, etc. And then you have an EXTREMELY fast, agile aerobatic heli capable of just about anything you can think of, and probably quite a lot you've never dreamt of.

Thing is, the Nano looks like a toy, looks to the inexperienced eye like those learner models the 5 year-olds get. But it isn't. It is, as stated by Blade, for "Advanced" users. If a shop sold your wife that, unless they knew you were already flying other heli's, I'd say she was badly advised.

Mind you, it has one advantage. Most of the time, if you crash, you can pick it up, put it down right way up, and go again. My bigger models (think three feet or more long, not 7") if you so much a touch spinning rotor blades on pretty much anything, you're looking at (a minimum of) broken linkages and a repair job. Resilient, they ain't.

[Flibb]

I fly a blade and have built / fly a couple of quadcopters. The use of the term drone comes up quiet a lot on the forums, then again its a bit moot point when loads of companies use the word as part of their name.

Flight wise the initial setup of multirotors can be tricky, especially for the kit ones, but flying is easy compared to other aircraft. There are a lot of examples of fly aways, but many are put down to user error, mainly not giving the aircraft time to get a proper GPS fix. There are also a lot of options for flight controllers, some are pretty plug and play, others need a lot of setup and customisation. I have a couple of different slight controllers, although haven't had the courage to try out one of the more DIY ones yet.